Patriot Realm

Some years ago I worked in a large private organisation that was engaged in facility management. It was a very happy workplace and we still have an annual get together like a bunch of old schoolboys.

There were about 40 of us in the management echelon and we did many trips into the Outback, then when Australia had been fully covered we did a trip down Route 66 in America and another one to Cuba.

We formed ourselves into a little organisation called The Drinking Man’s Travel Company.

When I was a kid, one of the first things we were taught was how to ride a bike and how to swim. The two seemed to travel in tandem. I can't remember who it was (probably Einstein or similar ) who said that the secret to riding a bicycle was to keep moving forward. 

In the case of swimming, it is often about keeping your head above water and treading water when you are tired or feeling sunk.

Who among us has heard of a man named Edgar Harrell? Until a while ago, his name meant nothing to me - I had never heard of this extraordinary human being. But I was sent a link to a youtube clip where Edgar told his story of a time back in 1945 when he and his fellow shipmates spent 5 days in shark infested water in the South Pacific. 

Edgar Harrell was a young Marine assigned to the US Navy ship, the USS Indianapolis. After delivering components for the atomic bombs, the ship was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine. Hundreds of his mates were killed by sharks. Listen to his harrowing experience.

I remember the days before computers changed our lives. When I was a lad, I first trained as a civil engineer in the late 1950s to early 1960s. There were no electronic calculators, and all calculations were performed either manually, by trigonometric tables, or by using a slide rule.

We used to analyse the stresses and bending moments in structural elements using advanced mathematics based upon first principles, knowledge of which has long faded from my aged brain. The Sydney Harbour Bridge is a classic two-pinned arch design which we studied. If you drive past both abutments, you will see the huge supporting pins which take the entire load of the bridge.

What is the luck of the Irish?  Many people think it is a good thing to have.

I asked one of our commenters ( Paddy ) what it meant and he said to me " Well, my old Gran used to say that if it was raining soup, we'd be carrying forks. "

And that sounds like a pretty good definition to me.