Hey.. I'm writing something sensible and useful today. Crumbs. I'm sure you all remember the disastrous Indonesian tsunami ... it killed huge swathes of people on the beaches over long stretches of coastline. However, had I been there, I could have saved quite a few of them.... especially as this one was a classic. It did exactly what a text-book tsunami does ...... most noticeably, the sea goes out .. and out ... and out ...pretty smartly, leaving stranded fish all over the place and an irrepressible desire for the observers on the beach to start walking out with it. Oh dear. Well now ... I knew about all that. It's a classic bit of Earth Science that all Earth Scientists learn. That's the thing about maths and science and the like ..... we learn things that, on the whole, are actually useful, that describe the real world. Unlike studying the novels of Henry James or the plays of Euripedes or the pencil sketches of Cezanne etc. So ... had I been on one of those Indonesian beaches, I would have told all the people to go uphill rather than out to sea. And why. Amazingly, there was a young girl on one of the beaches who had recently done a school project on tsunamis ... and remarkably, she saved loads of people ... she simply told them to go up into the hills and not to follow the "tide" out. And she told them why. And they all lived. So, dear readers .. if you are on some beach somewhere and the sea start to whizz out into the distance rather quickly ....... go inland, go uphill. You know it makes sense. OK .... I hope you feel a little bit smarter and a little bit safer. Know you know. And you can tell other people. And now, Noir Desir and "Des visages, des figures" ... very moody .... Just yesterday on the news there was a sad and tragic story about a child left in a car by a river ... and while the driver was away briefly the car rolled into the river and the child died.
I don't know for sure how that happened, but I suspect that the driver didn't put it into reverse gear, in addition to deploying the hand-brake. Lots of people don't know that the gear-system acts as an excellent brake when you're on a slope. You just put it into reverse gear when pointing downhill, and into first gear if you're pointing uphill. Just try it yourself on a quiet bit of sloping road. Engine off. Handbrake on. Put it into the appropriate gear ( see above). Then release the handbrake.The car will move a few inches and then stop. Sorted. I don't know if it works with automatics though.
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AuthorThat's the author up there ... I was young and sprightly then. Archives
October 2022
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