Falling Over

For many years now, I’ve suffered from a mild form of vertigo — a feeling of dizziness felt especially in high places, but not necessarily just there either.

The first time I felt it was when I lived in Chicago. I had a bad cold, I’d just had a hot bath, and when I got out, I nearly fell over. I thought the feeling would pass, but the dizziness didn’t go away, and I started to feel really bad. I was alone in the apartment — The Mrs. had gone shopping with the kids — so in a panic, I called 911 for an ambulance. As luck would have it [sarcasm alert], The Mrs. arrived at the lobby to the apartment block precisely at the moment I was being wheeled out in a stretcher. You can no doubt imagine her reaction.

Anyway, I had all sorts of X-rays and such at the hospital, and they found nothing wrong with me, and to add to the irony, I felt much better — so much so that I checked myself out and went home.

The next time I had a similar experience was much later, in Texas. Same thing, except I didn’t have a cold and hadn’t just had a bath. I was getting out of bed and couldn’t stand up without falling back over onto the bed. By this time, The Mrs.’s health had deteriorated to the point of being essentially bedridden, I didn’t want to pay for the EMS guys to carry me the few miles to the hospital, so the Son&Heir took me.

(Some background: I have a family history of heart disease — it’s killed several on my mother’s side — so I’ve always been wary of anything untoward happening because I’m generally in very good health. Hence my excessive caution, and going to the hospital in both cases.)

Anyway, on this occasion, the same thing happened in Plano as had happened in Chicago: tests, X-rays, MRI etc., and nothing bad had happened; that, plus the fact that I was (once more) feeling fine by the end of it, meant that I checked myself out again and went home.

A couple of years ago, you may remember that during the U.S. Open golf tournament in Chambers Bay, Oz golfer Jason Day had a severe attack of vertigo which almost caused him to withdraw from the last round. Greg Norman, one of the TV commentators, did a little research on the ailment and described the symptoms — and to my astonishment, it was like reading a list of the things that had troubled me in the past. (I should point out that my G.P. has checked me out very thoroughly, and concurs with my self-diagnosis. I should also add that my annual check-up always ends with him telling me to bugger off and quit wasting his time because he has really sick people to attend to. Apparently, when I do die, he’ll have to beat my heart to death with a stick.)

Now, as I’m getting older, I’ve since had some more mild vertigo attacks, but nothing serious: an occasional wobble if I make too severe a turn while walking, or I might lose my balance momentarily on a staircase, and so on. In each case, I pause for a few seconds, my balance reasserts itself, and on I go.

As a condition, vertigo is suffered by 5-10% of the population, is mostly caused by a malfunction of the inner ear balance mechanism, and occurs more frequently as one ages. (For a fuller description, the Wikipedia entry is as good as any.)

And yes, I also have fairly severe tinnitus caused by a lifetime spent shooting guns without much hearing protection (until fairly recently) and by a youth spent playing loud music in a rock band. Cliff Notes: my ears are fucked.

Anyway, I thought I’d just mention this issue in case some of my Old Fart Readers get dizzy and can’t figure out why; this may be the reason, but in any event, get yerself checked out by a doctor just in case.

As I’ve often said, this getting old shit is not for young people: you need to be tough and cynical (as brought on by age) in order to get through it.

This post does require a pitchur to help get the idea across; so here’s another Kim, über-hottie Kim Novak, getting directed by Alfred Hitchcock in Vertigo:

Don’t Threaten; Shoot The Sumbitch

I was reading this article about a woman who drove off some would-be carjackers with a gun:

Kari Bird just started law school and continues to work full time. Bird got home at 11:30 p.m. Wednesday and when she got out of her car, a group of three or four young guys approached her.
“I really didn’t think too much about it, one of (them) was smiling,” Bird said.
He was smiling, but he quickly pulled out a gun.
“He told me to … give him my keys,” Bird said.
She did turn over her keys, but realizing all her law books and belongings were in the car, Bird made a quick decision. With the gun still pointed at her, she reached into her center console to pull out her own gun.
“(He said), ‘Oh s***’ and then ran,” Bird told Fox 59.

So far, so good. then I read this sentence:

She’s thankful it did turn out alright, but wants those boys to know that this is no way to treat anyone.
“They need to stop this. They’re not going down a good road,” Bird said.

I hate to break it to Ms. Bird, but it didn’t turn out all right. These little assholes know exactly what they’re doing: treating other people as victims, and prepared to kill said victims if they don’t get what they want. And they’re not going to stop what they’re doing, because you didn’t shoot the little prick pointing a gun at you.

So you frightened them off because you had a gun. What will happen next is that they’ll shoot their next victim just in case he or she has a gun, like you did.

Don’t expect criminals to see the error of their ways, because they don’t. The only way they’ll stop is if they’re arrested, or shot. And you’re not a cop.

The old rule applies: don’t ever pull your gun unless you absolutely have to; but when you do pull it, use the damn thing to the best of your ability. You’ll not only save yourself, you’ll probably save others like yourself in the future from a similar fate.

Manual Labor

I have often advised young men to get a trade before going off to college — and more especially so if they are unclear as to what career they choose to follow. There’s no point in getting into debt when a well-intentioned degree in, say, Languages does not result in decent job prospects, and even worse when you realize that your career preference is not really congruent with your degree — a youthful desire to become a recording engineer transforms into a real desire to become a doctor when maturity comes into play. (And note that I’m not even talking about worthless degrees in nonsense such as Post-Modernist Poetry or African-American Studies.)

In fact, I’d counsel young men to join the Armed Forces if they still haven’t made their mind up about their career by age 19. (My good friend Doc Russia is a case study in this scenario: shiftless yoot at 18, USMC for a few years, med school and now a respected doctor.) The military has a wonderful way of crystallizing one’s thought process and compelling maturity.

Now comes this little snippet from Over Here:

Electricians are earning as much as £3,000 a week as they cash in on a chronic shortage of skilled workers across the country.
That amounts to £156,000 a year – around six times the average wage and more than the £150,000 earned by the Prime Minister.
Plumbers and bricklayers are also benefiting, with wages rising by as much as 10 per cent in the past 12 months.
Plumbers can earn as much as £2,000 a week, while brickies can bring home £1,125 – more than £50,000 a year.

Of course, this should come as no surprise. I recall some years back when Reader Mark C., at that time an executive at a large corporation in the oil exploration / development business (think: Bechtel, Asea Brown Boveri, those kinds of companies) was bemoaning the fact that he was unable to find enough warm bodies to train as welders and oilfield technicians, even when after a two-year apprenticeship, newly-minted workers would have an internationally-portable skill set that could command a starting annual wage of over $75,000 — for a 21-year-old.

The same is true for carpenters (rough, finished or cabinet-makers), electricians (light- or heavy current) and many other such trades. All you need to do is look at the progress made by that Jason guy on the Holmes on Homes TV show — a raw, inexperienced kid with nothing but a strong back and willingness to learn; three years later a qualified construction project manager who could start his own business and make a small (or even large) fortune. Don’t even get me started on the pro electricians, plumbers and such who featured on the show: even for Canucks, they must each have made a fortune, and were worth every penny. (As I recall, Holmes used a young Polish plumber, an immigrant who could barely speak English, on his earlier shows; by the end of the third season, this same kid had his own business with lots of other kids now working for him, and spoke perfect English.)

Compared to that, a drama major or Womyn’s Studies professor look quite insignificant — which they should be.

I’ve said before that my late father always told me to work with my brain and not my hands. Considering that he started off as a welder / boilermaker and ended up as the owner of a civil engineering company, it was the worst advice I’d ever got. (He went to night school at the Tech while working his day job, and eventually graduated with a civil engineering degree. Not bad for a farm boy.) He always told me to get a degree — any degree — because I could always fall back on that if my chosen career as a professional musician didn’t work out. What he should have said was, “Do a trade apprenticeship — any trade — and you can always fall back on that if you decide that being a lawyer sucks.”

I often wonder what would have happened had I done a few years’ carpentry right after leaving school. Whatever I’d finally become, I’m pretty sure that there would have been far fewer periods of abject poverty in my life.

Shootingham, U.K. — Part 2

There are a couple of shotgun ranges at Royal Bisley; the first is all competition-Olympic style, with traps, skeet and sheltered shooting positions:

Long Siberia isn’t at all like that.

Essentially, it’s in the middle of a forest, with only a few open clearings to shoot from. There is no cover for the shooters, no doubt because the Brits need to practice standing in the chilly rain and trying to shoot fast-moving birds flying over the treetops while water is streaming into the eyes — you know, having fun. (An aside: Mr. Free Market has informed me that having fun at Bisley is very much frowned upon, because shooting is Serious Business, don’tcha know.)

I had more fun than a sex maniac in a brothel with a Gold Card.

Granted, it wasn’t raining, so we could leave the rain gear (wellies, Barbour coats etc.) in the Range Rover. But OMG what an experience.

Basically, one walks through the forest until a clearing opens up to a shooting position with clay activators and such. The positions are tailored to reflect the kind of birds one would be shooting: driven high birds, grouse, pheasant etc., all with the flight characteristics thereof: low skimmers, high fliers and everything in between. I’ll shut up now, and just let you take in the fun. (All pics taken by Mr. FM, with my eternal gratitude; I was having so much fun, I barely took any.)

…and let me tell you, those lil’ thangs were moving, Bubba.

got ‘im:

All in all, I think we shot from over half a dozen shooting positions. Best of all, towards the end, I was hardly missing — and when I did, I knew immediately why and where — but as Mr. FM dryly commented, “Nothing like trigger time, dear heart.”

All good things must come to an end, and eventually Mr. FM dragged me kicking and screaming away from this wondrous place.

So massive was my pout that my friend and host had to calm my raging spirit at this fine establishment on the world-famous River Test trout-fishing stream:

A perfect ending to a perfect day…

 

9/11 Reminder

We are taught the Christian virtue of forgiveness — well, some of us are, anyway. But when you’re faced with some of the most ghastly acts of wanton wickedness, I’m afraid that Christianity needs to take a temporary vacation while we root out pure evil. Here’s a brief reminder, lest we have forgotten:

Kill them. Kill them all, whether they’re Al-Qa’eda, ISIL, Muslim Brotherhood, Boko Haram, whatever they want to call themselves — kill them all.

Then, when these barbarians have been removed, we can get back to building civilization.

 

Shootingham, U.K. — Part 1

So last night I spent the evening with The Englishman and Reader John M., doing pints of 6X, plates of fish & chips and in general doing what I’ve become accustomed to doing of a Friday night, with the usual consequences.

However, my trip back to Free Market Towers was by a different route because of road construction on the normal one. That I got back at all was a miracle, because The Englishman’s sole directions were:
“When you get out of the village, turn right till you get to the main road; then turn right, and keep turning right until you get back to Devizes.”
Reader John’s suggestion was equally helpful: “Watch out for some of the corners.”

Okay: a trip in pitch darkness along unfamiliar, narrow country roads, no map/GPS, half-inebriated. As it happened, both sets of instructions were brilliant, because I drove straight home without getting lost once. (That might be the first time ever, along a strange country road in Hardy Country.)

At Free Market Towers I encountered Mr. FM, back from a few days’ hard work of evicting widows from their ancestral homes followed by demolition of the latter and construction of glass-walled skyscrapers in their place. (I think that’s what he does for a living, but there’s also some terrorizing of subordinates and glad-handing of Chinese tycoons in there, so I can’t be exactly sure.)

Anyway, I was greeted with a glass of whisky and the words: “We leave at 10 tomorrow. Okay?”

I had forgotten, in my evening’s carousing, that he’d scheduled a day’s shooting for today. Oy.

So this morning I woke up, only mildly hung over, and off we set off in the Range Rover, along the standard leafy lanes of outstanding beauty and vistas of… oh hell, you know the rest.

On and on we went, through various counties, villages and towns until we finally arrived at our destination:

I’ve never been to Bisley before, and I didn’t really know what to expect. What I never expected was to find myself in a massive area (several thousand acres, Mr. FM estimates) devoted entirely to shooting. In other words, Kim’s idea of heaven. To give you an idea of the extent of the place, here’s a map which shows most (but not all) of the ranges and buildings (open in a new window to get the full-sized pic):

The problem, of course, is that Bisley isn’t open to just anyone — you can’t just stroll in there and ask to be given a slot on any of the ranges: oh no, that wouldn’t be British. Instead, you have to belong to a shooting club (approved by the Home Office, don’t get me started), and they will then schedule you a day, time and slot where you can shoot with other members of your club. Being British, of course, each club has an exclusive club house of varying degrees of grandeur, starting from 1930s-era Kenya-style mansions:

…and Shanghai-type establishments of the same vintage:

…all the way down to modest cottages:

…and there are even rental trailer-homes where one can spend the night if doing more than a day’s shooting:

Bisley is almost, in fact, a self-contained town — hence the title of this post. There are restaurants, parks and, of course, gunsmiths/shops such as Fulton & Son and William Evans:

…which contain the usual items of gunny exquisiteness:

But on to the ranges.

There are lots of long-distance ranges (one out to 1,300 yards), and I’m not going to list them all; but here’s one, just to give you an idea. A club was shooting at the 1,000-yard mark:

There are .22 ranges, medium-distance ranges, Olympic-distance ranges, shotgun ranges, and so on — all over the place, and all of which made a certain visitor’s trigger finger itch. Which is why after a quick lunch of bacon-and-egg sandwiches, Mr. Free Market took us off to where we would be doing our shooting — clay pigeons, as it turned out. Here’s the road we drove down:

…and tomorrow I’ll give you part 2 of this adventure, at Long Siberia.