Friday, August 12, 2005
Dangers, predictable and unforeseen
I laughed out loud over today’s newspaper, reading about amateur psychic Herve Vandrot and his crystal ball. He left it on the windowledge of his Edinburgh flat and went out to pursue his botany studies, failing to foresee that it would focus the sun’s rays onto a pile of laundry and start a fire, gutting three flats before his return. Alas, the laws of physics could have predicted that a spherical glass ball will concentrate the near-parallel rays from the sun to potentially incendiary effect. M. Vandrot, even now, apparently blames an electrical fault for the fire that destroyed his home. As Christine Keeler said in court, he would, wouldn’t he?
After the London bombs of July 7th I heard something I never expected from my parents. "We’re glad you were nice and safe on that motorbike". Statistical nonsense, of course. Though motorcycling gets safer every year, my mathematically-calculated chances of getting across London alive would probably still be higher on the tube, where no car driver can pull out of a side road without seeing me.
Then again, I didn’t get a motorbike because it was the least risky option, something road safety campaigners seem to forget. If we were all chasing the zero-risk option, we’d all be on the train. Or, better still (since walking to the station is more dangerous than being in a car) we’d stay in bed. But hang on – most people die in bed. You’re not safe anywhere, so you may as well live a little before you die, that’s my view.
Which is why I've decided to come out as a political smoker. I got this idea from a woman I was at college with who confided in us all that she was now a political lesbian. We were surprised, though not as surprised as we expected her boyfriend to be. No, she explained, her sexual preferences remained unchanged, but from now on she was going to put women first politically. We nodded earnestly, unwilling to seem politically incorrect, but inwardly thinking that didn't really count. To be a lesbian, surely you had to get down and dirty with an actual nekkid lady, to put your face in the place, to have some passion of the physical, not just ideological sort?
Anyway, that's the kind of smoker I'm going to be. I tried smoking for real, I was rubbish at it. Inhaling made me cough and not inhaling made me look silly. I don't even like the taste. But given the choice between the smokers and the New Puritans, I'll take the smokers every time. They may be a bit more smelly, but at least they're getting some pleasure out of life. And to the other lot, I say, "Would you mind not being a killjoy in here? Passive moralising is a danger to my joie de vivre."
After the London bombs of July 7th I heard something I never expected from my parents. "We’re glad you were nice and safe on that motorbike". Statistical nonsense, of course. Though motorcycling gets safer every year, my mathematically-calculated chances of getting across London alive would probably still be higher on the tube, where no car driver can pull out of a side road without seeing me.
Then again, I didn’t get a motorbike because it was the least risky option, something road safety campaigners seem to forget. If we were all chasing the zero-risk option, we’d all be on the train. Or, better still (since walking to the station is more dangerous than being in a car) we’d stay in bed. But hang on – most people die in bed. You’re not safe anywhere, so you may as well live a little before you die, that’s my view.
Which is why I've decided to come out as a political smoker. I got this idea from a woman I was at college with who confided in us all that she was now a political lesbian. We were surprised, though not as surprised as we expected her boyfriend to be. No, she explained, her sexual preferences remained unchanged, but from now on she was going to put women first politically. We nodded earnestly, unwilling to seem politically incorrect, but inwardly thinking that didn't really count. To be a lesbian, surely you had to get down and dirty with an actual nekkid lady, to put your face in the place, to have some passion of the physical, not just ideological sort?
Anyway, that's the kind of smoker I'm going to be. I tried smoking for real, I was rubbish at it. Inhaling made me cough and not inhaling made me look silly. I don't even like the taste. But given the choice between the smokers and the New Puritans, I'll take the smokers every time. They may be a bit more smelly, but at least they're getting some pleasure out of life. And to the other lot, I say, "Would you mind not being a killjoy in here? Passive moralising is a danger to my joie de vivre."
