The Column of Nelson

Our hometown hero, he is (or, apparently, was).
Born in my county of birth, went to school in my city, then commanded the British Fleet that gave Napoleon a right good spanking at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805 (where, romantically, he died).





You could always tell the difference between Napoleon and Nelson, because Napoleon held his only arm like this, whereas Nelson held his like that.(*).

Now, apparently, enlivened by the Confederate monument debate, people want to remove his statue from Trafalgar Square because he supported the slave trade. But in that case should we not also be pulling down statues of Mandela, who was a terrorist, and Gandhi, who was an anti-African racist, and Churchill, who said that 'Ghandhi-ism and everything it stands for will have to be crushed'  and Reagan, who supported genocidal dictators, and for that matter, shouldn't we be destroying everything Roman and the Great Wall of China (which killed millions, including a million workers  who were forced to build it)?

Go ahead if you want. I don't care. Pull down Nelson's column. I never thought much of worshipping politicians or the military and I'm not a great fan of statues.  But if so, pull everything  down, please (**). Just like ISIS did in Palmyra...

* quote from 1066 and All That
** I'm not being serious, of course.

This sleepaway camp..

..in the Adirondacks costs $11400 a summer and is practically impossible to get into.  So goes the headline about Raquette Lake Summer Camp in upstate New York.  However, yours truly did get into that camp, and for free, in 1979, as a soccer coach thanks to the  British Universities North America Club (which has meanwhile itself expanded somewhat, it would appear).

What I found in the  summer camp didn't seem particularly exclusive: dangerous flints in the soccer fields, lavatories that didn't function until the day before Parent's Visiting Day and endless peanut butter sandwiches - yuk!  The only hint of exclusivity was John D. Avildsen, the Director of Rocky, who came to visit his son, landing in a helicopter and stepping out in a boiler suit. Still, shining flashlights at  the bears at night was fun (you could only see their eyes) and we won the World versus USA Soccer Game  8-0 - I still have the pennant!


That first hop across the pond to New York in 1979 was epic - 24 hours in an "Evergreen Airlines" DC 10 that took off from London, stopped at Paris, then refueled at both Shannon, Ireland and Bangor, Maine before limping into  JFK. I then  got in a yellow New York taxi cab and getting out forgot the direction traffic flowed on American streets and opened the door on the  wrong side.  A passing truck slowly bent the door back 180 degrees  - oops! 

Churchill did worse in 1931, though  - making the same mistake he stepped into Fifth Avenue and was run over. He later wrote, "There was one moment--I cannot measure it in time--of a world aglare, of a man aghast. I certainly thought quickly enough to achieve the idea 'I am going to be run down and probably killed.' Then came the blow." Fortunately, Churchill's injuries, while requiring three weeks in hospital, did not threaten his life. "I do not understand," Churchill wrote, "why I was not broken like an eggshell or squashed like a gooseberry . . . I certainly must be very tough or very lucky, or both."