The One That Got Away

Abraham Wald, was a gentle kind-hearted man with a genius that was breathtaking.  He was born in Hungary in 1902 and was the son of a Jewish baker.  Fascinated with equations he studied hard and became a graduate student at the University of Vienna.  His mentor was the great mathematician Karl Menger.  Karl Menger had attended the Döblinger Gymnasium in Vienna where two of his fellow students were Wolfgang Pauli (Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1938 ) and Richard Kuhn (Nobel Prize for Physics in 1945).  It is perverse that in just one city during a short period of time so many great minds began their careers.

Menger would pose problems to the young Wald, problems that stumped great minds across academia.  Wald would spend time reflecting on his given task and invariably return within a month with a solution to the problem and an urgent request for another to solve.  His hunger for problems and ability to solve them became known to mathematicians in the US.  When the Nazi threat grew this mathematical prodigy was able to flee, albeit reluctantly, to the US from Vienna.  It was a timely move.  His entire family of nine members, bar one single brother, died in the extermination camp Auschwitz.

Wald was put to work in the US on the Applied Mathematics Panel.  This group was posed questions by the military and they would use their mathematical ability to answer the query.  For example, the navy was trying to shoot torpedoes against Japanese vessels  The panel was able to work out the speed of the ship from the distance between the crests of waves.  They then had to factor in some adjustments to take into account the turning motion of the ship but once they had the equations their predictions matched real life experience and proved invaluable in targeting ships.  At times what appeared real life observations could be the thing that gives you a totally wrong answer. 

The World War 2 bombing crews would limp back home peppered by bullet holes.  So high were the losses, the military examined the planes that returned to see what particular areas on the plane needed reinforced with steel plates.  It would be impossible to reinforce the entire plane as they could not fly with such weight.  After careful investigation they noticed that the bullet holes were found mostly along the wings, down the centre of the body and in the tail.  The military wanted to put the armour on the areas where holes appeared to be clustered.  Wald with his usual insightful genius stated that putting the armour there would be of no benefit at all.  He had instantly recognised that the holes showed where a bomber could be shot and still make it home.  The armour should be put on the areas where there were no bullet holes, the engine, stabilisers etc.  Any bullet hitting those would never have made it home.  He could see the survivor bias that was derailing the statistical analysis the military was so proud of.

This quiet likeable genius was an inspired problem solver.  It was his passion and his talent.  Wald published papers on geometry which were described, by his mentor Menger, as:-

... deep, beautiful and of fundamental importance.

He was an excellent teacher who was renown for being

“ a master at deriving complicated results in amazingly simple ways”.

He died in his late forties while on a lecture tour in India in a plane crash.  Having saved so many who flew, with his mathematical genius, it is strangely disturbing that it was a plane that ended his life.

A Restless Soul

A Restless Soul

To tread the path beneath

A restless soul upon this earth

Searching, listening ever alert

To find new vistas and thoughts

The four walls a cage that consumes

The fire within

Designed to burn in ecstasy

At the magnificence of this world

No fire breaks of deadening routine

To block this furnace of the soul

The wind whipping it along

Seeking fresh fuel to speed its progress

Never content to be indoors

A captive of the box

We gild, decorate and own

Not realising all this, owns us

There is a hunger here

That is not about possessions

To have, to lose, to gloat

The void cannot be filled

No trinket, no clothes or food or drink

No designer palace, or wide screen TV

No youtube video or TV series or person

Can fill the cavity, rotting within

You heart longs for a the pad of feet

Outside beating a age old rhythm

Of fresh air against skin

The reassuring resistance of the ground

Soon we will rest beneath this soil

Time for stillness, when encased

In our wooden armour

Riveted in place

our meagre portion of time gone

To act, a call to arms
to implement change, a hope of life
so I pound these pavements
searching progress, fighting stagnation

Some moments you die for
a glimpse of the beauty without
resonating with the longing within
filling that space with aching joy

When killing is the best option

Murderers are a breed apart, one thinks.  Who in their right mind would take the life of another person?  Are they monsters? Do they not appreciate the preciousness of life, any life.  Yesterday, I had no sympathy whatsoever for those who take way that most fundamental human right, existence.

What changed my mind?  An incredible film entitled, ‘Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father’.  It is a documentary that chronicles the appalling confusion that followed the murder of a young doctor by an ex-girlfriend.  It is a film that touches your heart on so many levels and you know right from the start it will have no happy ending.  However, there is a scene where the victim’s father berates himself that he did not murder the ex-girlfriend.  He described how he planned it, thought through the method, how he would carry it off.  Instead of being appalled you, like me, will find yourself also regretting he did not carry out the killing.  On so many levels, it would have been just.  It would have saved yet another innocent life, apart from his son’s, it would have left him incarcerated for murder but undoubtedly it would have been the right thing to do.  His anguish comes from the fact that he did not commit a murder.

I reckon by now you are shocked that I am recommending murder as a just action.  Can there be any justification for such a step?  Well, think about it.  Imagine someone you loved, God forbid, was horrifically viciously killed at the hand of a sadistic killer.  Conjure up not only the unbearable loss of the person who makes this world joyous, but also factor in that the one who snuffed out that precious life is walking around free.   Perhaps you will even meet them in the supermarket.  You will have to wait from 1- 6 years (an average of four) before even the nightmare trial occurs.  Every day they walk free upon the earth while your loved one rots beneath it, lash upon your soul.  The justice system expects you to be civilised and await the cogs of justice to turn, to give them their sentence.  Meanwhile you must weigh up if you can swallow the impossible, endure what cannot be born, be patient and long suffering.  

Well, the honest news is you probably will do your best.  No one likes vigilantes.  Society requires laws.  The framework that upholds civil society and stops a chaotic free for all.   The even greater loss of life that revenge killing triggers.  Just because someone takes a life does not justify a reciprocal action.  The difficulty is those rational arguments will struggle with your own heart stopping pain.  If it becomes unbearable you will crack.

In my local town, in N Ireland, a young grammar school boy was playing in the school grounds when two older teenagers jumped the wall and beat him so badly he was left permanently brain damaged.  He had done nothing to instigate the attack, no provocation, no history of ill feeling.  Just two vicious thugs who thought it would be fun to beat the uniformed boy to a pulp.  They were subsequently sentenced to 6 months in juvenile detention.  A year later, the father of the severely disabled schoolboy met the two attackers giggling as they passed him in the main street of the town.  He went home and wept his pain, howled his anger to the skies but took no revenge.  Would you be able to do the same?

Years ago a friend of mine was subjected to horrific domestic abuse on the Greek island where we lived.  When she left to find sanctuary her husband was so enraged he punched me through my car window.  Filling assault charges in the local police station, availed nothing.  It would be years (and was) before it would be heard in court.  Meanwhile my friend and my family were vulnerable to this local bully.  Talking on the phone to my seventy-year-old mother in NI she became very concerned about the seriousness of the situation.  She also was alarmed that my young children might be targeted in his tactics of intimidation.  She then announced that if he killed me, she would be on the next flight to take him out.  I was amused at the venom in this tiny white haired ex-teacher who had never even committed a traffic offence.  I took her statement purely as an expression of her love and concern.  So it was startling this summer, when I found myself during a visit questioning her on whether she would have indeed carried out the murder.  My now, eighty two year old mother confirmed that there was absolutely no doubt about her carrying out the killing.  She was deadly serious!  I found it disconcerting because she is a warm loving righteous person.  So, if such a person can contemplate murder how many good souls rot in prison because the intolerable happened to them and killing became an easier option that letting a perpetrator live?

If our justice system acted efficiently and promptly such issues would rarely arise.  The shocking truth is that murder trials take years and in those years there are often more deaths and more pain.  

In Belgium, Marc Dutroux was convicted for car theft, muggings and drug dealing.  This was only the start of his criminal career.  He went on to the abducting and raping five young girls.  He liked to torture his victims and keep them in cages in his home.  When convicted for this crime he got a prison sentence of thirteen years.  Unbelievably, he was released, wait for it, for good behaviour after serving only three years.  This despite his own mother writing to the prison director to say he would continue to kidnap young girls if released.  Which, of course he did.  Inevitably, he kidnapped, tortured and sexually abused six more girls from 1995 to 1996, ranging in age from 8 to 19, four of whom he murdered.  The incompetence of the judicial system and the police in their handling of the killer brought 300,000 people onto the streets of Brussels in protest.  Despite the public call for judicial reform, Dutroux was held in prison without trial for a further 8 years!  He claimed he was part of an elite paedophile ring involving judges, police and parliamentarians.  Not bringing him to trial would obviously protect those other shadowy characters.  However, he was a killer and how much can we trust this vile man?  The delay was so long there was a discussion that Dutroux might have to be released as his human rights had been denied him.  Okay, are you feeling murderous yet?  Imagine how the parents of those violated, tortured children felt?  To rub salt in the wound, in 1998, Dutroux while was being moved from prison he managed to escape police custody for several hours.  Right by now even the gentle soul among you must be boiling in rage about now?  Fortunately, he was caught and is back behind bars.  His wife is free.  She who was told by Dutroux to feed two caged girls in their home and their dogs, while he was in prison.  She decided to feed the dogs but not the girls and they starved to death.  She now walks the streets of Brussels and those parents who have lost their innocent children know it.  Do you begin to feel the red mist of rage descend?  

Well, my point here is not to enrage you but to allow you to see that all of us are capable of murder under the right circumstances.  Whether that is driven by fanatical prejudice, a desire for revenge, to protect those you love – the list is endless.  The worrying point is when the good in our midst become murderers.  Our justice system (flawed as it can be), can handle a small percentage of vile vicious killers (albeit taking forever to do it) and it can imprison those who would take other’s lives (though the US tally of 2.4 million prisoners is extraordinary). When the system is so flawed and incompetent that the victim’s relatives can find no real sense of justice you have a system that instead of imprisoning killers actually contributes to the making of more!  The bad are ever with us, but when our judicial system makes even the good and long suffering bad, what exactly is its point?

There are no easy answers.  Of course the law must be upheld.  Caracas, Venezuela is an example where ‘tit for tat’ gang killings have tortured an entire city.  In wars killing becomes the main agenda and those whose joy is to hurt, control and destroy come into their own.  In a civilised society the structure is upheld by two pillars reward and punishment.  Those who take a life need to be severely punished and it should happen quickly and efficiently.  The legal system should not be allowed to draw the whole business out into a veritable cash cow.  The urgency of justice should not sacrifice the right of defence.  Even the guilty deserve their day in court.  But the innocent need the reward of an effective court system that respects their rights too.  The dead victims and their families too often end up bit players in a main show that crucifies them slowly and methodically week after week, month after month and even year after year.

If good people begin to kill there is something very wrong.  Our legal system should be designed to deal with those who break the law, commit a crime.  It should not take the innocent and twist them until they crack and become the killers the system is designed to take off our streets.

‘Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father’ is an extraordinary film and I urge everyone to watch it.  Be influenced by it and seek to change a badly flawed system.  The wonderful parents shown in the film forge their love and pain into a cry for justice for others.  They deserve to be heard.

Recording rancid rants in roasting rage

I fear I melt

Like an enormous unwanted ice cream

Dripping sweat

Beyond the ken of tissues or towels

Stewing in the juice

Of exertion

Head lifted to hunt for the breeze

Mechanically engineered from above

Down air ducts

Tucked away unseen

Useless tubes that are ineffectual

Because the doors to the balcony are open

Here in this airless café

The air conditioner wrestles

To cool all of Malta

Instead of hot melting me

I sit outraged

That steaming helps vegetables

Keep fresh and crisp

But reduces me to a sodden mass

Baked outside

Beaten within

The doors are automatic

Beyond my ability to close

Like much of life

We have very little control

Except to record our vitriol

Our objections to it all

To sit in silent sullen sogginess

Recording rancid rants in roasting rage

Dandelion Children - appreciate their extraordinary hardy beauty

Recent research has talked of ‘orchid children’ – those who without special nurturing and attention fail to bloom.  They have the potential to achieve a lot but with improper care can spiral downwards into addiction, self-abuse, depression etc.  There have been many articles on these orchid children – how to identify, help and encourage them flourish.  Parent’s websites and magazines abound in strategies to help them.

However, the 'dandelion children', those who thrive despite hardships tend to creep under the radar.  This piece is designed to celebrate these little rays of sunshine that make the world brighter despite being given an incredibly hard start in life.

Dandelion children they call you

No rare orchid sensitive to water and light

A resilient hardy species

Whose ugly roots go deep beneath the surface.

Through hardship they must dig deep.

Burrowing painfully in dark places.

Enduring pain and suffering

Not nurturing and kindness.

All that digging bears fruit

The bright-headed dandelion has roots

Fragrant flowers would die for.

Cheerfully resilient they are found everywhere!

Needing no brush to help them fertilise

No tender handling for efficient growth

Tear them out, eradicate with determination.

These deep roots will send shoots

Of new growth towards the light.

Dam them, enjoy them, endure them

They will out.

Once spent in their blazing brightness

They multiple a hundred fold

Scattering their off spring

With sweet abandon.

Knowing that these are a breed apart

Using every obstacle as a stepping stone

All setbacks an opportunity

To inwardly reflect

On lessons to be learned.

Steeled against philosophical circular ponderings

Or self-conscious preoccupation.

They've learned not to blame

What cannot be changed.

The dandelion children state their claim on life

Painting their happy sunshine colour

Prosaically common

Outshining the pretty and the rare.

Hounded to death by the corrupt - Aaron Swartz a warning to future coders

The government has decided to re-haul our education system and as well as banning a lot of US authors from the English syllabus (what the hell?) they have also decreed that all school kids should be able to write computer code.  This, of course, is in the hope that, like Estonia, a bunch of these youngsters will come up with something like Skype and bring riches to the nation’s coffers.  Their present attempts to get their hands on the pensions of so many workers (See http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2326105/Teachers-NHS-staff-pension-income-slashed-third.html) continues unabated but such tinkering with the education system has not a good history.  Educational reforms usually end badly.  Throwing away phonetics eventually spelt illiteracy (forgive my pun), not requiring times tables left innumeracy in its wake.  So what about code writing?  Would creating a generation of programming geniuses end well? 

Jonathan James was an exceptional programmer and became a hacker.  He was caught up in a raid by the US secret service involved in an identity theft scam of TJX.  It is unsure if he had any involvement but probably, some of his older acquaintances did.  Being raided was a big thing, as was the threat of prosecution.  Suddenly, the cool skills he’d cultivated got him in deep trouble.  It seems, behind a console, hackers like so many of us, feel that the boundaries between make believe and real life blur.  Most of us would never dream of stealing but a high percentage of us will happily download a favourite series/film and feel secretly smug and not as guilty as we should.  This weird virtual world of the web has its own laws but the general public has yet to register that this ‘anything goes’ frontier has no go areas.  Downloading the wrong images can lead to imprisonment at a time when most of the public has a naïve attitude to kids and friends using their computers, fail to install effective firewalls and have loads of unsolicited files on their hard drives they are totally unaware of.

Back to Jonathan, two weeks after that raid by the secret service, he took his own life and left a suicide note which read,

“I honestly, honestly had nothing to do with TJX.  I have no faith in the justice system.  Perhaps my actions today will send a stronger message to the public.  Either way, I have lost control over this situation and this is my only way to gain control.”

Of course Massachusetts Assistant US Attorney Stephan Heyman, who pursued Jonathan, was also the one who hounded Aaron Swartz until he too took his own life on Jan 11 in 2013.

Aaron, like Jonathan, was a technological genius.  At the age of 14 he authored the RSS web syndication, at 19 he co programmed the social news and entertainment website Reddit.  He founded Demand Progress, a group advocating against Internet censorship bills.  By the age of 24, Swartz was a Harvard research fellow conducting studies on political corruption.  One colleague spoke of Aaron’s motivation,

“What kind of millionaire founder of a tech website chooses to spend time sitting in a congressional office (as Aaron did) to really understand the work flow?  No one.  That doesn't happen.  He was a basic technocratic liberal who thought that if you worked really hard and approached a problem with openness and curiosity, then it was possible you could make life better for people.”

It was in pursuance of that goal that he downloaded academic journals from a JSTOR database in MIT.  This crime, and it is undoubtedly a crime, did not justify the 35 years and 1 million dollar fine that the US Attorney Stephen Heyman sought.

Aaron Swartz once he knew imprisonment was inevitable took his own life.  To be frank MIT/JSTOR are left tainted along with the US Justice system.  Another young coder dead, at the hands of a system that needs honest self-examination.  As long as governments enthuse about the possibility of young coders they should also be honest about the deadly big stick awaiting brilliant nerds that step out of line.  The ‘over the top’ reaction becomes even more obscene when one realises, in hindsight, that these institutions are often frighteningly more corrupt than those they hound to death. http://www.boston.com/news/politics/gallery/massachusetts_indicted_politicians/

The worst Ebola epidemic in history and the world is losing the battle to contain it

Ebola is one of those diseases that should scare us.  Especially this latest one in Western Africa. The graphs of the growing intensity of this disease has indicated frightening trends.

It has been 35 weeks since its outbreak and it is worrying to hear Medicine San Frontiers announce as it did so emphatically and publicly recently,

“Six months into the worst Ebola epidemic in history, the world is losing the battle to contain it,” said Dr. Liu. “Leaders are failing to come to grips with this transnational threat. The WHO announcement on August 8 that epidemic constituted a ‘public health emergency of international concern’ has not led to decisive action, and states have essentially joined a global coalition of inaction,” she said.

(MSF International President Dr. Joanne Liu)

she went on to stress

“States with the required capacity have a political and humanitarian responsibility to come forward and offer a desperately needed, concrete response to the disaster unfolding in front of the world’s eyes. Rather than limit their response to the potential arrival of an infected patient in their countries, they should take the unique opportunity to actually save lives where immediately needed, in West Africa.” 

This outbreak has spread from Guinea to Liberia, to Nigeria, Senegal and Sierra Leone.  The map of Western Africa shows how geographically this looks. 

http://www.who.int/csr/disease/ebola/5-september-2014-en.pdf?ua=1

and it does not look good.

“The clock is ticking and Ebola is winning,” said Dr. Liu. “The time for meetings and planning is over.  It is now time to act. Every day of inaction means more deaths and the slow collapse of societies.”

“Every day we have to turn sick people away because we are too full”, said Stefan Liljegren, the MSF coordinator at ELWA 3.  “I have had to tell ambulance drivers to call me before they arrive with patients, no matter how unwell they are, since we are often unable to admit them.”

MSF’s care centers in Liberia and Sierra Leone are overcrowded with suspected Ebola patients. People continue to become ill and are dying in their villages and communities. In Sierra Leone, highly infectious bodies are rotting in the streets.

These guys are on the front line and if they say we are losing the war then we should listen, for many moral and also totally selfish reasons.  The Ebola virus is so deadly that normally restricts its ability to spread among a population.  But this latest outbreak in Western Africa shows little sign of abating.  Looking at the WHO map, in its statement today the degree of the outbreak becomes clear. 

Most people are infected by giving care to other infected people, either by directly touching the victim's body or by cleaning up body fluids (stools, urine or vomit) that carry infectious blood.

Traditional African burial rituals have also played a part in its spread. The Ebola virus can survive for several days outside the body, including on the skin of an infected person, and it's common practice for mourners to touch the body of the deceased. They only then need to touch their mouth to become infected.

However, a recent paper (http://jid.oxfordjournals.org/content/196/Supplement_2/S142.full) has shown that the virus can be found as long as 61 days after original illness in the semen of patient.  This means that sex after recovery, for a period of months, can still spread the disease.  This is worrisome as the recent areas where the disease has been found are hubs of international travel.  Also, since the incubation of the Ebola virus can take 2-21 days it is possible that a person could climb on a plane not showing symptoms and then develop them subsequently and be contagious on arrival at their destination, spreading the outbreak globally.  In the west we are better at isolating and treating the victims, our nursing practices help stop infection spreading so easily but in today’s world of interconnectivity the importance of these travel hubs cannot be overestimated.

Just in case you think that this is impossible some one has already worked out estimates of numbers predicted in various countries if via these hubs the disease spreads.  

Not nice to see these graphs at all.  Mind you it all assumes that spread of Ebola by air routes is possible.  After all most of the people who are contagious are often bleeding and vomiting, pretty easy to spot, you'd think.  Unfortunately,  it has already happened.  The first case in Nigeria was reported by the WHO on 25 July: Patrick Sawyer, a Liberian Ministry of Finance official, flew from Liberia to Nigeria after exposure to the virus, and died at Lagos soon after arrival. In response, the hospital where he was being treated was shut down and quarantined, and the health officials who were treating him were isolated in an attempt to stop the spread of the virus. However, a doctor and nurse who treated Sawyer both died from Ebola.  Nigeria’s outbreak has arisen because of this one individual catching a plane.

In addition, there could be something worryingly different about this virus. “Scientists from the Broad Institute and Harvard University, in partnership with the Sierra Leone Ministry of Health and Sanitation, may have uncovered clues that set this Ebola outbreak apart from previous outbreaks. For this study, 99 Ebola virus genomes were collected and sequenced from 78 patients diagnosed with the Ebola virus during the first 24 days of the outbreak in Sierra Leone. The team found more than 300 genetic changes that make the 2014 Ebola virus distinct from previous outbreaks. It is still unclear whether these differences are related to the severity of the current outbreak. Five members of the research team became ill and died from Ebola before the study was published in August.” 

Given the presence of internal travel hubs effected by this present outbreak, Ebola’s high mortality rate, the chances of it spreading internationally and our own moral responsibility we should be fighting this virus with energy and commitment not inaction.

Whether this outbreak is contained in the next few months or not, it is a valuable exercise in how we can respond to such viruses in future events.  So far we are looking rather ineffectual and sluggish.  There is a lot going on at present on the global stage, Ukraine, Syria, Iraq etc and it is easy to see how a few thousand deaths in Africa don’t appear on the radar.  The Spanish flu came in the midst of a World War and killed 50 to 100 million people—three to five percent of the world's population.  This Ebola virus does not spread as easily but the Spanish Flu had a mortality rate of 2.5% whereas this Ebola virus can have a mortality rate of 50-90%. It’s time we united to fight this disease for those suffering and dying in Africa and for ourselves.

Worker bees

Sandra’s favourite movie was a Robin Williams film, entitled “What Dreams may Come”.  It had been badly received by the critics at the time of its release and despite its sombre beauty never achieved acclaim.  Its subject matter was death and focussed on the suicide in particular.  Sandra’s husband, John, refused to watch the film with her.  He loved ‘the funnies’ as he called them.

“Movies should make you laugh, not cry!” He'd claimed. 

Sandra remembered the scene in the movie where her husband had dismissed the film and refused to watch any more.  Robin Williams and his wife had two children and in one tragic car accident both children were killed.  It was after that memorable scene John announced his preference for comedy and had retired to his workshop, beside the garage, to continue working on his beehives boxes.  Sandra sat alone, tissues at hand, sobbing while the film ran on.  Robin Williams dealt with the bereavement by mentally sealing the whole business up in a box and putting it away.  His wife could not bear the loss and had a complete mental breakdown ended only by her taking her own life.  Her husband John had stuck his head through the living room door and asked if she wanted a cup of tea.  Seeing her tear stained face he asked,

“Who else has died?”

When Sandra tried to explain, he interrupted her with,

“On second thoughts don't tell me, life is grim enough without fictional tragedies messing with my head.” He left to make the tea.

Sandra sat glued to the unfolding tale of sorrow alone.  When tea and biscuits arrived from the kitchen she'd thanked her husband and told him,

“Now Robin Williams has been killed while trying to help an injured person.”

John muttered,

“Let me get this straight.  Their only children are killed, and then his wife commits suicide.  Now, you tell me he’s dead!  Sandra why would anyone watch such a depressing film.  I'll tell you now; there'll be no happy ending to this one.  You’ll spend the whole evening crying into those tissues.”

With this ominous pronouncement John had retreated to his almost finished bee box.  Glowing in soft freshly sawn, sweet smelling wood he sanded the last remaining rough edges contentedly.

Sandra continued to watch the film caught up in its imagery and haunting beauty.  It touched her in ways she couldn't put into words.  In the film, Robin travels to hell to try and rescue his wife.  In this version of the afterlife, those who commit suicide go to a terrible part of hell.  In this place they forget all they love and even who they are.  He manages through his deep love to rescue her and the film ends with the whole family reunited in the next life.  After the traumatic film she joined John in the workshop needing a debriefing from the film.  John looked at her distraught face and asked,

“Why do you do it to yourself?”

Sandra tried to explain,

“It somehow touches my heart and makes me realise that life is much more than just this.”  She held her arms out to everything around them.

John continued to sand the edges of his box evenly and queried,

“Don’t you think suicide is an awfully depressing business to dwell on, never mind losing one’s kids?  I’d like to think life is much more than all that”,

Sandra nodded, “I know what you mean. It’s too close to home after Henry isn't it?”

She broke off, unsure where to go with the mention of John’s cousin.  John sighed,

“I'll never understand why he jumped, a lovely man, what a waste!”

Sandra stood closer and rubbed his shoulder.  John continued,

“If only he’d spoken to me about what was going on.  I never knew about the debt.  Losing his job must have been the last straw.  But why didn't he ask for help.  We all thought the world of him.  I’d have lent him some, we could have done something.”

Sandra pointed out,

“Most people hide the pain they carry, it’s the way they cope.  Do you know in our knitting circle last week every single person admitted they'd thought, at some stage in their life, of ending it!”

John was shocked, “Bloody hell!”

Sandra continued,

“Many said the reason they didn't was because there was someone or something that made the difference.  One lady said she felt like she was hanging off the edge of a waterfall and it seemed easier to just let go.  But her mother had got her through and that love had been her lifeline.  John coughed,

“Perhaps, I wasn't there enough for Henry.  We laughed a lot together and joked around.  But was there even an opportunity for him to tell me….” 

John shook his head and wiped his hand across his face, wiping the thoughts away.

“Henry loved your company, John.  He looked up to you, it wasn’t that.  His life was unravelling.”

John answered,

“You know Henry told me that around 8000,000 people commit suicide every year.  It was the time of the articles about the French Telecom building in Paris having had their 24th suicide in 18 months, do you remember?  There was a discussion in the pub and Henry had read a lot of stuff about it.  How could I have been so stupid not to see where he was going in his head?”  

He sadly shook his head from side to side.

Sandra responded,

“Perhaps life is more tenuous than we all like to think.  But you weren't to know.  I like to think most of us have lifelines that prevent us getting on those ledges.”

John asked, “Like what?”

Sandra sat beside him on the work stool and held his hand examining the calluses on his palms. 

“Lifelines like people we love, or have loved.  Moments of sweetness that make everything bearable.  Even the memory of your aunt Emma feels like a lifeline to me!”

John nodded,

“You're right she was special.  She used to have these huge family gatherings with roast lamb dinners around her big table.  I loved being with someone whose heart was that big.  Always a real privilege to be with her and learn to be a better person.  It was her kindness and gentleness that shaped the home.  It always felt a place of sanctuary, full of love.  She never forgot my birthday.  She really listened, I mean really listened, not just waited for a chance to speak about herself. ”

Sandra smiled and added,

“I can still smell her soda farls on the hob and taste her pancakes with honey!”

John squeezed her hand and said,

“You know worker bees do a lot more than just make honey. They keep the hive at exactly the right temperature. If it is too hot, they collect water and deposit it around the hive, then fan air through with their wings cooling it by evaporation. If it is too cold, they cluster together to generate body heat. They are the ones who gather the pollen, which feeds everyone else in the hive.  Without them there would be no crop pollination and almost all our own food supply is dependent on them. They keep us all alive in so many ways.  They clean, defend, and repair the hive. They feed the queen, and the drones.  When responsible for the larva they will check a single larva 1,300 times a day.  You know there are people who are like the worker bees and I reckon Aunt Emma was one of those. All of us are poorer and more vulnerable without them.” 

“Do you think I got washed in on the tide?”

Sam was amused his watch had stopped.  It had become a running joke in the family because his father Ted had ruined watches consistently for decades.  Now that his father was gone Sam found his shared ability to either stop watches or make them run slow forged a vital link with his dad.

It wasn't because they manhandled them or smashed them against corners of tables by accident.  This unusual talent to mess with watches was weirder than simple carelessness.  

His father had been a young man on holiday in a small coastal village when his ability to interfere with such devices first occurred.  He'd treated himself to a cheap watch.  It had cost less than a fiver so he had not expected it to last forever.  It had stopped by the time he wore it back to his basic bed and breakfast that evening.  Taking it back to the shop, the reluctant shopkeeper replaced it.  Two days later that watch also stopped and Sam was back in the small shop.  This time the shopkeeper was belligerent.

“What are you doing to my watches?” He asked Ted.

Ted responded,

“If you had enough turnover your watches wouldn't be such old stock that they've stopped working.”

The shopkeeper, a high pitched red haired Scotchman was livid and pulling a battery tester from under his counter took the watch battery out and tested it.  The battery had lost a lot of its charge and Ted had gloated in being proved right.  He proceeded to lecture the shopkeeper on the lifespan of all batteries.

“You do realise, even on the shelves, in packets, batteries run down?”

The shopkeeper’s face was as red as his hair and he muttered,

“Do you think I don’t know my own business?”

As he blustered, he took a fresh battery tested it and then inserted it into the watch.  Feeling righteous and successfully assertive about the whole business Ted left with a working watch once more.

It lasted three days before stopping again.  Ted was back in the shop aware that there would be unpleasantness ahead but determined nonetheless.  However, this time the Scotchman would not countenance any exchange or another battery.  Despite all Ted’s arguments he would respond with the same line, red eyebrows high in outrage

“Do you think I got washed in on the tide?”

Ted walked home defeated with this effective one liner.  He told himself such isolated tiny shops were probably filled with obsolete batteries/watches.   What on earth had he expected from such a rural location, so little frequented. 

Later that year he’d bought a fancy watch.  The type young men go for when they want to impress!  Ted had just met Sam’s mother and in his excitement to create a favourable image had lashed out on a hundred pound watch.  It looked good and on their first date Ted had admired the young girl opposite almost as much as his swanky new expensive timepiece.  With such a girl on one arm and another beauty on his left ticking away Ted had experienced one of those rare moments of sweet triumph that come too rarely in life.  As it turned out he won the girl’s heart but the watch died almost as quickly as its cheap predecessor.

Ted was relieved that the five year guarantee on his new watch meant he was able to get it fixed for free in the sleek fancy city shop he’d bought it in.  However, after returning to the shop twice with the stopped watch he noted that the suave young salesman was becoming as suspicious as the red-haired Scotchman.  He commented to Ted,

“You do realise, sire, that the watch is not waterproof.  If you get it wet that will effect the mechanism.”

Ted pointed out that he didn't get it wet unless perhaps a drop of rain on the way to work.  The salesman seized on this and pointed out that if Ted had wanted to wear the watch in downpours he should have opted for the waterproof model in the first place.  There followed an insidiously pointless and fruitless argument about the type of rain Ted walked in.  Had it been the soft Irish rain as Ted claimed, or the tropical downpour the young salesman favoured.  The upshot was Ted left with a broken expensive watch.

Disgruntled by the whole affair Ted threw the wretched watch in a small dish and forgot about it.  By now his new wife was pregnant, with Sam, and Ted had discovered a new world beyond material possessions.  This tiny life growing inside his wife was a part of him and a part of her.  At times Ted thought his heart would explode with happiness.  Who knew the world could be filled with all this richness.  

It was years before Ted’s ability to stop/ruin timepieces became clear.  Only those he wore were affected.  If he carried the watch in his pocket, something he proceeded to do until well into his eighties, they worked fine.

Now, Sam had discovered he had inherited his father’s strange knack.  Instead of just accepting his lot Sam had gone online to do some amateur research.  Where there others like him and his late father?  What caused this unusual effect?  Was there a scientific explanation?  He discovered PEARS Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research which involved a scientific study of consciousness-related physical phenomena.  There was an interesting video of how the research began.

http://www.princeton.edu/~pear/implications.html

However, the following information on the project seemed to concentrate on selling dvds, lamps that changed colour with human consciousness, or devices that sent you random text messages based on your mood.  These were marketed at ridiculous prices to the gullible and desperate. Sam, gave up and accepted his lot.  He remembered his father’s last words in the hospice.

“Do you think I'll get washed out on the tide?”

  

His mother and he had loved that with his last breath he had used the red-haired Scotchman’s line and managed to touch them with his gentle humour.