Man overboard

 

We had a report that the cruise ship Sun Princess, en route Auckland to Sydney, arrived one passenger short.  An 84-year-old man had fallen overboard.  I don’t know how you search one of those immense ships for a missing passenger – but this seems to have become academic anyway because they found CTV footage showing him falling into the sea.  Four hours earlier, at 3 am, his fellow travellers had reported him missing.

At this point we could have some black jokes about the increasing intrusiveness of spy cameras in our lives at every point.  Presumably there are cameras aimed along the sides of the ship, as well as along all the decks and companionways, restaurants, swimming pools, casinos, atriums, lifts…  Presumably someone on board is monitoring these things.   That’s a job I could apply for.

No one will ever know for sure whether he fell, or jumped.  The captain turned the ship to do a search, without result.  Heaven knows what that cost Princess Cruises.  Maybe he fell… and there has been some discussion about the height of rails on the many decks of these ships.  My wife and I recently spent two weeks cruising on Emerald Princess, around the Baltic.  The rails seemed fine to me. 

But it did occur to me that a depressed and lonely octogenarian might well decide to save everyone a lot of bother and expense, if he felt his life was substantially over, by getting a leg over the rail late at night.  It makes sense.  From one of those upper decks the fall to the water would be probably lethal. 

This is not something I would do.  It is something I could understand. 

But it would have been considerate to leave a note in his stateroom:

I’ve gone over the side.  It seemed best.  Love to all.  (PS:  Port side… although, as Lady Bracknell might have said, the side is immaterial.)

That should do it.  Then it’s tidy and considerate.  And it’s a lot less messy than all the conspiracy and drama accompanying elected suicide these days, expensive clinics and expensive drugs and excruciating goodbyes. 

Maybe this 84-year-old got plastered in one of the many bars, and simply fell off the deck.  But I doubt it.  I suspect he had a plan… and perhaps being rocked in the cradle of the deep seemed OK.


Later (2.12.2014)...  This morning early, in clear and still air, from our lounge, I watched a huge cruise ship steaming past the Tawharanui - Kawau gap, en route to Auckand.  On the web, on my iPad, I found it was the Dawn Princess, sister ship of the Emerald Princess on which we cruised the Baltic.  Dawn Princess was due to berth in Auckland two hours later at 0915.  I could even access her ship's web-cam, and see the way ahead.  There seemed to be no one falling off the decks...


I wondered whether, as we had steamed into Stockholm or Tallinn, Oslo or Gothenburg, some elderly gent had watched from afar and had similar thoughts. 

 

 

 

 

Hi, Honey…!

I hope every bloke who works in an office, store, military unit, factory, transport, walked in this morning and greeted each female cheerfully, perhaps even with a hug:

“Good morning, Sweetie / Honey…!”

Of course it would be over the top, unnecessary, in many cases inappropriate because the mood was otherwise.  But it would make the point – the complaint against Roger Sutton, CEO of the Christchurch Earthquake Recovery Authority, and the solemn silly sanctimonious response to it, are plain bloody humbug. 

Most people who have a life know that Roger Sutton, who came to this job at a pretty desperate moment in the life of Christchurch City, has been a light and a leader.  He was already deeply involved as CEO of Orion, tending all the electricity reticulation.  To take over the Cera job he accepted a substantial drop in salary.  He brought style and efficiency, and manifest care for people.

I don’t know Roger Sutton.  I know his parents.  We were fellow parishioners for a while at St Luke’s Church, Remuera.  St Luke’s is Presbyterian, but the Suttons were Anglican.  We all got on fine, we never thought we wouldn’t… and it indicates that the Suttons are not easily pigeonholed or categorised.  Roger’s mother was at university with me and our lot, long ago.  We were devout, and we assumed that liberal attitudes were the intelligent way ahead. 

Neither do I know his complainant.  Let me see… Is she perhaps about 50… divorced, maybe, no longer with some bloke who decided he couldn’t face the rest of his life this way…?  Does she wear a black suit to work, relieved slightly by a chiffon scarf in mute tones to hide her increasingly elderly neck?   Yes, I am being rancid and petty here, but I am confident Dante would reserve a place in one of the circles of hell for some (by no means all) of these complainants.  I imagine Roger’s complainant as a section leader in the organisation, and she quite enjoys being formidable.  Her nightmares are her own regular performance reviews, when she is vulnerable, but which so far she has managed to survive. 

She has an issue with any man who is in authority over her, who perhaps turned down her recommendations, or who treated her flirtations lightly, or who seems to be happy with his own life and love and family.   Any of this is neurotic, and dangerous for males. 

It was wonderful to see Roger Sutton’s wife, Jo Malcolm, step up in high indignation to point out the obvious about her man.  She loves him.  He is OK. 

It's been hideous. He is a really good man. Why his hugs and jokes have been misinterpreted, I have no idea. He's a touchy-feely person.

Sutton could be silly, she said.

That's what I love about him and he forgot he is the leader of the public service and he's too informal, he's too relaxed. That's who he is, and that what makes him who is and why the Cera staff love him – the majority of them do – and I think it's really sad for Christchurch.

The disastrous still-developing complaints culture needs urgently to review itself.  It is now increasingly ruled by juvenilism and humbug.  This is sad, partly because there are still serious instances where women and men are bullied, vilified and oppressed, in the workplace and elsewhere.   Our ability to respond to these things should not be hampered by the manifest time-wasting triviality of the pursuance of Roger Sutton by some sad woman.