My idea of the holiday from hell would be a day in Orlando. Not a fortnight, or even a week: a day would be a day too many for me. The idea of a long flight in order to spend hours queuing to visit animal ‘attractions” like Sea World appeals to me about as much as going to watch cock-fighting or bull-fighting and, in my humble opinion, is only marginally less cruel. But it’s the rides that appall me. The mountainous, rising and tumbling, breakneck rides designed, it seems, for thrill-seekers and not for me.
It is not just the coasters of Orlando that send a shiver up my spine; it’s the ones at Alton Towers, Thorpe Park and Chessington World of Adventures that make me feel equally nauseous. And yesterday’s horrible accident at Alton Towers reminded me why.
It is too early to speculate what went wrong yesterday on the ‘Smiler’ ride, but we do know that four young people have serious, potentially “life-changing” leg injuries as a result of the accident. There is little point in speculating beyond what “life-changing” means without knowing the facts, but it can only mean that their lives will in future be very different and probably harder and worse than they were before yesterday.
It has not put me off theme parks for life because I was never interested in going to them in the first place. When my partner and my children went, I stayed at home or did something else. I would not pay hard-earned cash to scare myself half to death because I see no fun in that. I would rather seek my thrills on a golf course.
That is not to say that no one should ever go to an amusement park ever again because they are usually perfectly safe. If you followed that logic, you would never again get in an aeroplane because, once in a blue moon, one crashes and people die. It is not so much the risk that prevents me from the thrill rides; it’s simply that I would far rather do something else.
These incidents always shock, don’t they, and we feel terrible sadness for the young people whose lives have been changed forever and quite possibly ruined. Then, something else happens and we forget all about them. That’s the way life is, that why news is new. I suppose it’s the “what if?” scenario again. What if they had not gone to Alton Towers? What if the Germanwings passengers had missed their flight? What if employees at the World Trade Centre had gone sick on the day of 9/11? The truth about the “what if?” question is that we will never know. What if I stay in this morning instead of going out and avoid walking in front of a bus? Do I stay in tomorrow and the day after to ensure I don’t? This isn’t about fatalism, it’s about very bad luck. Wrong place, wrong time.
Some people die doing the things they love, some yesterday got severely injured doing something they love. Everything we do carries a risk and it’s terrible that sometimes events conspire to bring about tragedy. Following tragedy, we usually find that apart from bad luck, there are things that went wrong and we try to learn and introduce fail-safes so they don’t happen again. That’s the struggle of life, I’m afraid, and sometimes bad things happen.
Don’t stop doing the things you enjoy because there is little point in living if you don’t dare to dream and push the limits. There is always a chance things will go wrong and it’s awful when they do but normally it’s no one’s fault or even if it was, there was no intention to do harm.
