Life and Death

It has been an odd sort of week...

Patrick McGoohan died on Tuesday 13th January at the age of 80. I'm sure most people will remember him for his role as 'Number Six' in the cult TV series, The Prisoner, but I will always remember him most fondly for his utterly Machiavellian performance in the Mel Gibson film 'Braveheart' as Edward Longshanks. What a shame my generation didn't get the chance to see more of him.

Ricardo Montalban died on Wednesday 14th January aged 88. A stunning actor with a velvet voice, he has and always will be KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAN! He was a superb and totally underrated and underused acting talent who completely stole the show from William Shatner in Star Trek II. I had always hoped that one day I might meet this acting Titan and sadly that is no longer possible.

Television and film has lost two of it's best sons. May they rest in peace and may their legacies continue long into the future.

On Thursday January 15th, I witnessed something I never believed possible: a large passenger jet made a perfect landing... on water... with every single passenger and crew member walking away! For anyone that doubts it, the skill involved in landing on water is beyond comprehension. The angle at which the aircraft makes contact with the water has to be just right... nose too high and the tail will be ripped off by the force of the impact, nose too low and the aircraft will plunge into the water and somersault tail over nose, tearing the fuselage to shreds. The aircraft has to be perfectly level too... if one of the engines or wings touches the water before the other, it will be sent spinning out of control, pulling it to pieces. Carrying out this kind of perfect landing under power is hard enough, but with the added difficulty of having no engines (which also means no power or hydraulic assistance!) achieving any kind of survivable landing is truly remarkable. The pilot, Chelsey Sullenberger, is a hero and deserves a medal for his skill.


And so, in a week that has taken two wonderful actors, it has given us 155 lives in return. I'd call that a fair deal.