1. Fear Of Heights

Fear of heights is a common phobia suffered by most people and goes usually in conjunction with a disaster mind.

I had a mate who was so nervous of heights that he charged danger money if he had to go more than five steps high.

I'll freely admit that I'm a fully paid up member of this club which has more members than Tommy Lipton has tea-leaves.

My first thoughts when viewing London from the top of the Monument were -

                  "This has stood here since God knows when to commemorate the

                    Great Fire Of London and millions of people have climbed the 202

                    steps to look out over the city. Now I've done the same thing, the damn

                    thing's going to collapse and I'm going to be a splattered mess

                    right on the spot in Pudding Lane where the fire started."

As I stood there with both hands gripping the protective iron railings in an effort to stop the building from swaying in the breeze, I noticed that quite  lot of people up there with me were doing exactly the same thing. And all wearing the same fixed expression which plainly said -

                   "If I ever get down to earth alive, the highest view of London I'll take

                     in the future will be on top of a kitchen chair."

This allergy is quite a drawback when it comes to flying. Travelling by plane is probably the safest and most comfortable form of transport in the world, but I'm willing to bet that half of the folk who are forced to fly because they ain't got time to travel by other means, wish that they could do so about six feet above the ground. And then only among the valleys.

I always have the feeling that had God meant us to fly He'd have put a few feathers here and there instead of the goosepimples which come up when we look down on everything lower than us.

My wife and I have now tallied up four crossings of the Atlantic by plane, visiting our children in Canada. The Lockheed Tri-Star 1011 we flew in this year was so big it looked like a mobile block of flats. Looking out of the windows gave me vertigo while it was still on the ground and how they ever got it off the ground was a mystery. Of course, they did, and also landed it as gently as a piece of fluff floating on to a baby's bum.

But I wouldn't say that either of us are easy in our minds about being 36,000 feet high and won't ever be, even if we had to commute there seven days a week. I always have to fight off the urge to rush to the flight deck to tell the driver that the wing on my side is waving about in the air and is about to drop off, and my wife if always horrified to see the fields and lakes, which in all sane reasoning should be directly beneath us, suddenly appear dead opposite the side windows as the plane banks to get on course after take-off.

It's not so bad when cruising height is reached and thoughts of being six miles up are lost as you look out on the vast field of snow way below. Only now and then, when a break in the clouds (which looks like snow) lets you see the minute world you wish you'd never left, do you get that old "Oh my Gawd" feeling and shrink back in your seat and try and read a book or shut your eyes in the hope that you'll go to sleep and wake up when you're back on earth again.

Sometimes being on the ground ain't no consolation either, as we discovered when motoring through New Hampshire in the USA.

We'd had a delightful ride through Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and across the American border in to Maine, where we stayed in a motel overnight. The next day through Maine into New Hampshire where we booked in to a motel in Gorham, in the White Mountains, in the afternoon. Tony, our son-in-law, proposed a trip on the scenic route round some of the mountains before supper and we said "great" and settled down to enjoy the beautiful scenery.

We gazed and raptured over fairy-book views and thought "this is the life" when suddenly there appeared the signpost. It read -

 "THE ROAD TO THE CLOUDS. AUTO ROUTE UP MOUNT WASHINGTON"

 

 

Now son-in-law is one of them blokes to whom life is a challenge and this was a must in his "Things I have done".

 

Before we could think of any reason why we shouldn't go up, like "I'll wait down here cos I always get nose bleed driving up mountains", we were on our way up eight miles of narrow, twisting road fit only for yaks or mountain goats. Going through the wooded lower slopes was fine and I'd been telling myself it wasn't so bad after all, when the car suddenly cleared the trees and came out in to the open. How the hell we'd got that high without getting out of breath I don't know, and we had six more miles to go to the peak!

 

Tony said something about the view being terrific and you could see for miles. Too right you could. Straight down. My side of the car was on the edge of what seemed like a bottomless pit. Alright for him, the driver's seat was on the other side.

 

I noticed that my wife had her eyes tightly shut and seemed to be trying to hold her breath until we reached the top, although her lips were moving as though she was confessing her sins and asking forgiveness.

 

The top was 6288 feet high which may seem like a pimple compared to Everest, but the temperature was just above freezing compared to 90F down below. The clouds seemed within reach of your raised hand and on reaching up, I found to my horror that they were. Apparently there is some kind of atmospheric condition there that causes cloud, when approaching the peak, to dip and roll down the other side. Delightful, I thought, after eight miles of brainwashing my ego and telling it if eagles don't care what the hell are you scared about, and forcing myself to admire a view only mountain climbers and Sherpas take for granted, the bloody clouds start doing victory rolls and blot it all out. And you have to cultivate a homing pigeon instinct to find your way back to the car.

 

 

 

 

Where, incidentally, my wife and grand-daughter are still sitting, having refused point blank to get out. They had sense.

 

There was a notice at the top which stated that no hitch-hiking was allowed. As the only hitch hikers liable to be up there would have been angels, I felt that St Gabriel had put it there to stop 'em trying to get back home.



 

 

We got a certificate from the toll house as the bottom stating that our car had climbed Mt Washington. I thought a good health certificate stating that all passengers were not suffering from constipation would have been more appropriate.




Note:
The postcard I have of the ride up Mt Washington, pictured, dates the visit to Mount Washington to 1978, with the story being published in 1979. 

 

 

 

 



Ruth

Ruth

I will grant you one wish, to use as you please

God said to me in a dream.

And I thought of a life of comfort and ease,

I could have, without having to scheme.

Then I pondered on that, and thought maybe not,

Money is not everything.

To be happy comes first, Good health means a lot,

Or free as a bird on the wing.

So just how should I use this gift that he gave,

How could I benefit most?

Should I ask for talent, or riches to save

Me from want, when youth was a ghost?

I thought and I thought, till my mind fairly spun,

I couldn't make up my mind.

When suddenly light dawned, as bright as the sun.

I knew what I wanted to find.

The wish I would ask, where I had most to gain,

Was simply just an encore.

My life with my true love all over again,

Exactly as it was before.

I realize that it could be but a dream,

But nevertheless it's true.

If I could choose once again for joy supreme,

I'd choose it to be with you.

Ed.

1936/1937

Note: Jennie's Introduction says some question remains as to whether this is an original piece or whether it is copied. If it is original there is a suggestion it was written sometime in the thirties.

All I'm saying, is that after a bit of an internet trawl I couldn't turn up anything the same, or that looked like it could be a source. So, who knows?

Jennie's Introduction

Introduction

By

Jennie (Pottinger) Wharton

I thought this compilation of stories that my Dad (Ed Pottinger) wrote should be put together in his memory. After all, he always tried to find the positive in people even if it was the funny side. Maybe that’s why he called them People Are Funny. 

When he wrote them, he didn’t put a name to each one because he wrote them (some or all, I’m not sure) for the local Post Office newsletter, well, his was called “People Are Funny”. I put a name to them for the purposes of this compilation. 

They are not in any particular order as they had no dates on them, except for the last one in which he says ‘so long’. I tried not to correct any of the grammar or spellings as they were published in this Post Office newsletter so you would read the real thing. 

In this compilation you will also find some miscellaneous items of his including a couple of rejection letters when he tried to get stories published and some jokes that he named “yeuk”. 

The very first piece is a piece that my sister Ann and I found when Mum passed away and we were going through her things. As there was no date on it I have no idea when Dad wrote it and gave it to Mum, or if it is an original or a copy – I like to think it was his work.  

I hope whoever reads these stories gets a smile from them as I did when I was typing them, after all “People Are Funny”.

I love you, Dad.

Jennie.

Eddie Pottinger's People Are Funny

I was reminded recently that my Grandad, Eddie Pottinger, was a lifelong frustrated writer. This stirred memories of reading a few of his stories years ago.

I hadn’t fully realised the long period of time over which he’d tried, and failed, to get published......

 



10 June 1974

5 September 1957



 



 



 .....and when he did find an outlet (a regular column, "People Are Funny", in his local Post Office Newsletter, "Harrow Post" – editor: Ed Pottinger) the amount of words, over a dozen-or-so years from about 1970, that he committed to paper.

 

His jottings had been collected in a compilation for the family put together in his memory by his daughter, my aunt, Jennie, in the late 1980s, after both he and Nanny had passed away.

 

It mainly comprises observations or anecdotes with a few short stories, some made up or loosely based on real events. Family will recognise themselves in one or two. I did.  I said to my brother it kind of felt like a blog before blogs were a thing. 
 

Which got me thinking – if it feels like a blog, why not turn it in to one?

I reckon the frustrated author would like the idea that its 'out there'. 

So this is Eddie Pottinger’s "People Are Funny", with a few photo's added, kicking off shortly with Jennie’s introduction to her compilation.

I haven’t read through all the stories yet, so I’m looking forward to (re)discovering what is there as I go.

Thanks go to David for OCR scans of a number of the original publications which will save some hours of laptop time, the alternate titles for some of the pieces, and for date suggestions.  Also to Lynn for offering to help with the typing.

 

For Grandad, Nanny & Jennie

JH
March 2018.