We woke up to unusually unpleasant weather this morning. Cold, grey and damp with the hills shrouded in mist, so Mrs H and I toddled off to Matlock for a stroll and a coffee. The roads were dirty too, with a fine spray of brownish gunk from passing lorries spattering the windscreen. Almost anything is better than staying in all day though.
The boating/duck pond in the park was about half covered in surprisingly thick ice and Mrs H wondered how long it would be before someone, somewhere managed to kill themselves falling through ice which turned out not to be thick enough. Not long apparently -
Solihull lake rescue: 'Number of people' in 'critical condition' after falling through ice as search continues
Reports from the scene and videos on social media indicate that people had been playing on the icy pond and had fallen through, the fire service said.
I hope they are okay, but it reminded me of a story I read only a few weeks ago. I was skimming through a book of stories for boys published in the nineteen thirties, mostly looking at the illustrations of the period. There was a typical story about a dramatic rescue of someone who had fallen through the ice on a frozen lake.*
We may ask why people do these things, well knowing that every year there are likely to be similar tragedies. Almost as if it's a numbers issue. Within a sufficiently large number of people, one or two will do something inexplicably foolish. It would be no great surprise if the people concerned cannot explain why they did it.
* The rescuer was initially thought to be a bit of an outsider and possibly a rotter, but he turned out to be made of sterner stuff. Gosh.
9 comments:
Worcester College Oxford used to keep a mob of wallabies in its grounds. Then a foolish one explored the ice on the college pond and drowned. The college then dispensed with its wallabies. I'd have kept them and just eaten the odd drowning victim.
dearieme - wallaby skin hats could have been another benefit.
I wonder whether the ice would have been safe for one or two people, but then others see them, the FOMO factor kicks in - "if it's safe for them, then why should I lose out by just watching?" - and then of course the more people there are, the greater the weight....
I vividly remember going for a walk at Beachy Head a couple of days after there had been a major collapse of a huge chunk into the sea. There were deep cracks in the turf about four inches across, about six feet back from the new cliff edge. Groups of people were standing on them, holding hands, and jumping up and down in unison. Teenagers, obviously. But what on earth did they think they were doing? Either nothing was going to happen, in which case it's a boring waste of time. Or something was going to happen, in which case their excitement would have been both extreme and brief.
Sam - you are probably right, people don't add their weights together before joining the first person on the ice. That Beachy Head caper sounds worse though - completely bonkers.
The events in Solihull were undoubtedly tragic, but why on earth did someone decide to close the primary school for the day? What snowflakes we have become!
Far-fetched, maybe, but I find myself wondering whether the selfie-obsessed social media generation effectively believe in a kind of bilocation, seeing themselves as both observer and observed.
Thus the cliff top jumpers may have been hoping to trigger a spectacular collapse but envisaged themselves simultaneously watching (and filming) it from a hypothetical neutral viewpoint.
Peter - I haven't followed it up and didn't know about the primary school having been closed for the day. Not good.
Macheath - that's an interesting possibility. As we know, it certainly happens in less dangerous situations, so why not?
I find it hard to believe no-one ever explained to these boys about the dangers of thin ice.
Of course it's very sad when youngsters die of misadventure. Condolences to the parents.
Ed - I find it hard to believe too, but when kids see others doing it, maybe warnings count for nothing. Very sad.
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