I was once more privileged to find myself deputising for the one and only Michelle Ward.
Today I was joined by local authoress, Shirley Baker who together with her husband Paul, spends a fair amount of her leisure time sailing around the Essex coast.
Shirley has been persuaded to put her experiences down in print and her book, AEOLUS RULER OF THE WINDS is the result.
You can listen again to what Shirley told me today by clicking on the link below: –
As we did last week, when I was on this show, we had a look at some more Darwin award winners.
Both our winners this week involved people falling by the wayside.
Because of the tiresome problem of tourists courting disaster, the more treacherous overlooks in the Grand Canyon are protected by fences and signs.
All of these overlooks are spectacular.
Some have towering columns, some have small plateaus that tourists toss coins onto, like dry wishing wells.
Make a wish!
One entrepreneur wished for financial success. And there in front of him was a means to an end.
He had a brilliant, obvious, idea. No stranger to danger, the man climbed over the fence with a bag, leapt to one of the precarious, coin-covered perches, and filled the bag with booty.
Harvest time!
But. When he tried to leap back to the safe side, he went head to head with physics.
Our entrepreneur had increased his mass, and the force required to lift himself against the pull of gravity was now greater.
The heavy bag of coins arrested his jump, and the birds were treated to a view of his long plunge to the valley floor below, followed by a shower of coins. Brilliant idea with a fatal flaw in the execution.
The second award today went to an unfortunate mountaineer.
In the late fall and early winter months, snow-covered mountains become infested with hunters.
One ambitious pair climbed high up a mountain in search of their quarry. The trail crossed a small glacier that had crusted over. The lead hunter had to stomp a foot-hold in the snow, one step at a time, in order to cross the glacier.
Somewhere near the middle of the glacier, his next stomp hit not snow but a rock. The lead hunter lost his footing and fell. Down the crusty glacier he zipped, off the edge and out of sight.
Unable to help, his companion watched him slide away. After a while, he shouted out, “Are you OK?”
“Yes!” came the answer.
Reasoning that it was a quick way off the glacier, the second hunter plopped down and accelerated down the ice, following his friend. There, just over the edge of the glacier, was his friend…holding onto the top of a tree that barely protruded from the snow.
There were no other treetops nearby, nothing to grab, nothing but a hundred-foot drop onto the rocks below. As the second hunter shot past the first, he uttered his final epitaph: a single word, which we may not utter lest our mothers soap our mouths.
On that note I shall take my leave of you.
See you again soon,
Scott
