LARRY WALTERS FOUND FAME AT 16.000 feet. On July 2,1982, the 33-year-old truck driver rigged 42 helium-filled weather balloons to a Sears lawn chair in San Pedro, Calif., and, as
friends looked on in wondrous support, lifted off. The sight of Walters floating in the sky shocked pilots, who radioed perplexed local air-traffic controllers. Walters returned to
Earth by using a pellet gun to shoot out some of the balloons and landed safely about 10 miles away in Long Beach. The 45-minute stunt earned him an appearance on The Tonight Show as
well as a spot in a Timex watch ad, after which he quit his job to deliver motivational speeches. “People ask me if I had a death wish,” he said. “I tell them no, it was something I
had to do.”
But the attention didn’t bring enduring happiness. Walters and his girlfriend of 15 years, who had helped him pay for his adventure, ended their relationship. His speaking career
fizzled, and he worked only sporadically as a security guard. He sought solace by reading the Bible and walking in the San Gabriel Mountains, where he worked as a volunteer for the
U.S. Forest Service. “It seemed like Larry came to the mountains because he was disappointed with the way his life was going,” says his friend Joyce Rios, a fellow volunteer ranger.
On Oct. 6, unable to deal with the world he had briefly delighted, Walters, 44, hiked to a favorite spot in the Angeles National Forest and ended his life with a single bullet through
the heart. His mother, Hazel Dunham, did not disclose his death until Nov. 22. Although Walters did not write a suicide note, he had left a Bible with several passages marked at
Dunham’s house in Mission Viejo, just before his death. Among them was John 16:32: “Indeed the hour is coming…each to his own, and will leave me alone. And yet I am not alone because
the Father is with me.”
In my review of the tenth episode of Godzilla Huntley’s Family Vlog, I try to educate the family in the nature of acronyms and in US history. Who knew that vlog-reviews could be so
educational?
Those of you who’ve met my family will probably already have an understanding of… what they’re like. Those of you who haven’t are probably about to gain one.
Did you did you… did you know that: Becky can eat mango, all by herself?
It started on a weekend in April, when my mother and I went to a Pink concert. The support act were a really fun band called
Walk the Moon, who finished their energetic set with I Can Lift A Car, with its’ catchy chorus hook “Did you did you… did you know know: I can lift a car up, all by
myself?” Over the weeks that followed, perhaps because of its earworm qualities,
this song became sort-of an inside Rickroll between my mum and I.
For example, this Bel-Air-meme style text message used a shaggy dog story to deliver a play on words.
At one point, she sent me a link to this video (also visible below), in which she is seen to lift
a (toy) car. My sister Becky (also known as “Godzilla”) was behind the camera (and, according to the credits,
everything else), and wrote in the doobly doo: “I think I’m gonna start doing family vlogs.”
She’d experimented with vlogging before, with a short series of make-up tutorials and a “test video post” on her blog, but this represented something new: an effort to show off her family (and guest
appearances from her friends) as they really are; perhaps this was an effort to answer the inevitable question asked by people who’ve visited them – “are they always like
that?” Perhaps that’s why she chose the name she did for the Family Vlog – “IRL”.
The essential Family Vlog (“IRL”) scene is the car scene, with the camera facing backwards from the dashboard. See also my second review…
At the time of writing, Becky (on her YouTube channel) has produced eight such videos
(one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight), reliably rolling out one a week for the last two months. I thought they
were pretty good – I thought that was just because they were my family, but I was surprised to find that it’s slowly finding a wider reach, as I end up speaking to friends who mention
to me that they “saw the latest family vlog” (sometimes before I’ve had a chance to see it!).
As I was visiting Preston, I ended up featuring in “IRL – Week 6”. My review (click on the image for it), therefore, seemed to be equal in parts recursive and narcissistic.
Naturally, then, the only logical thing to do was to start producing my own YouTube series, on my channel,
providing reviews of each episode of my sister’s vlog. I’ve managed to get seven out so far (one, two, three, four, five, six, seven), and I’d like to think that they’re actually better than the
originals. They’re certainly more-concise, which counts for a lot, because they trim the original vlog down to just the highlights (interrupted only occasionally by my wittering
atop them).
The widget above (or this playlist) will let
you navigate your way through the entire body of vlogs, and their reviews (or lets you play them all back to back, if you’ve got two and a quarter hours to spare and a pile of brain
cells you want killing). But if you’re just looking for a taster, to see if it’s for you, then here are some starting-out points:
The best episode? My favourite is six, but number two has the most views, probably the keywords “lesbian foursome”
are popular search terms. Or possibly “girls peeing”. I’m not sure which scares me the most.
Of if you just want to drop-in and have a taster, start from the latest review.
The seventh of my reviews of Godzilla Huntley’s (CaptainAvAngel) weekly Family Vlog, “IRL”, which features a not-very-well-hidden link to a secret bonus review video. Keep an eye out for it!
This blog post is the sixth and final part in a series about buying our first house.
In the fifth post, we finally exchanged contracts with the sellers after a long-running disagreement about who was going to repair the
front door…
A series of days flew by in a cardboard-box-filled blur, and suddenly it was the last Friday in July – the day upon which our sale was completed. I’d run out of spare days of annual
leave, so I was only able to justify taking the afternoon off to pick up a van, scoop up Ruth and Matt, get the keys to the new house, and meet JTA
there.
The first mission was to collect a van from Europcar, so that we’d be able to spend the entire weekend going up and down the A34.
The estate agents were conveniently just two doors down from a locksmith, so we got some keys cut to what we believed
to be the new front door, while we were there. It’s also sandwiched between a funeral home and a florist, which makes it sort of a one-stop street when somebody dies and you want to put
their house on the market.
The great thing about getting champagne as a housewarming gift, from your estate agent, is that you don’t need to unpack the corkscrew to open it.
We soon discovered that the “fix” that had ultimately been applied to the broken front door was simply to swap it for a different exterior door, from the inner porch. A little cheeky,
and a little frustrating after all the fighting we’d done, but not the end of the world: we still had a perfectly good front door and – as we planned to use the annex as part of the
main house, anyway, we were happy to take the door down and leave an open doorway, anyway.
We gave JTA the honour of being the first to open the door to our new home. After some fiddling with what turned out to be the wrong key, the door turned out to be already unlocked.
A vacant house feels big and empty. Our new – large! – living room felt enormous. Meanwhile, packing up our old house – with its painted walls and wooden floors – was beginning to sound
echoey as it became emptier.
Lounging in the living room. (or is she living in the lounge?)
We spent a long time working out which of the many keys we had fit which of the locks, as there were quite so many: there’s the front door, the inner front door, the other
inner front door, the back door, the outer conservatory door, the inner conservatory door, the gate lock, the shed lock, the window locks, and a good handful of keys besides that we
still haven’t identified the purpose of. It’s was like the previous owners just bought a pile of additional keys, just as a prank.
Our old house – New Earth – became emptier and yet more-chaotic as the stacks of boxes were gradually loaded into the van.
We’d rented a van over a long weekend in which to do the majority of the move, and we’d hired some burly men with a bigger van to move some of the heaviest furniture, and to collect a
piano that we’d bought (yes, we have a piano now; booyah).
“Pack the living room into the van,” I said. “Okay,” said JTA, putting the kettle on.
Very helpfully, Alec came and joined us, and helped run an enormous amount of boxes and furniture down and out of the three-stories of our old house, and in and up the three-stories of
our new house. Why do we keep torturing ourselves with these tall buildings? At least our new staircases are a better shape for carrying mattresses up.
Now that I’ve discovered that I can hire muscular men on-demand, I’m not sure that I’ll ever do anything else.
The weather stayed good, with only occasional showers (and thankfully, never when we were carrying soft furnishings between a van and a building) and one brief but wild thunderstorm
(that we managed to avoid only with a quick re-arrangement of the van contents, slamming the doors, and sprinting for cover), and we worked hard, and we ended up a day ahead of schedule
before we were finished.
Alec helped out with lots of heavy lifting, but also with ‘testing’ the piano. Which, before it had been tuned, wasn’t the best of experiences for anybody involved.
In order to minimise the amount of the deposit that we might otherwise lose, from our old place, and because we rightly anticipated being too exhausted from the move to do all of the
requisite cleaning ourselves, we’d hired some professionals. By this point, we weren’t even able to think in terms of money like normal people – by the time you’re spending five figures
on tax and lawyers, you find it pretty easy to shrug off the cost of a team of cleaners!
I’m pretty sure that the local ice cream van driver was following us around, because on each day of the move, he’d arrive on the scene right after we’d finished unloading a van and
could really do with an ice cream break.
This did mean that Ruth and I had to each work from home, from the old house, for one last day while we let the cleaners, gardener etc. in. We left in the old house an absolute minimum
of furniture: a single desk, chair, laptop computer, cup (for water), router, and cables.
One desk, one chair, one laptop, one router… in a five bedroom house. It’s a lonely life.
As I left the house for the last time, as empty and quiet as it was the day we
first moved in, I felt a sense of serenity; a calm that came from a number of simultaneous realisations… that this was probably the last house move I’d have to do in a long while…
that I finally lived somewhere that I didn’t (theoretically, at least) have to ask for somebody’s permission before I put a picture hook up or painted a wall… and that at long last I
was paying off my own mortgage, rather than somebody else’s. It was the beginning of a new era.
The first box that we unpacked was the one containing Alec, of course.
Changing tack from the theme by which our houses have been named since 2010, our new home is called Greendale.
And yes, there’s a website (albeit a little sparse, for now). There’s always a
website.
Susan didn’t help much with the packing and moving, but I’m not sure I’ve put a photo of her and Matt online yet. So now I have.
There’ll be a housewarming party on 22nd September: if you’re a friend of one or more of us, you’ve probably received an invitation already. But if you haven’t – and
it’s not impossible, because we weren’t sure of everybody’s best email addresses these days – and you expect you should have, let me know. It’s not that we don’t love you: we just don’t
love you enough to remember to invite you to stuff, that’s all.
Imagine one house, with four people, but five couples. How does it work, asks Jo Fidgen.
Charlie is talking excitedly about a first date she went on the night before.
Next to her on the sofa is her husband of six years, Tom. And on the other side of him is Sarah, who’s been in a relationship with Tom for the last five years. Sarah’s fiance, Chris,
is in the kitchen making a cup of tea.
This morning, I was cycling to work along my usual route, National Cycle Network Route 51, on its final leg down Banbury Road to Parks Road. Here, the cycle route shares its path with
a bus lane, and – on a warm, bright morning like this one, having a broad, flat lane is a great opportunity for a strong cyclist to make great time in a safe environment.
Oxford’s multitudinous bus/cycle lanes are great for public transport and even better for cyclists: providing a safe, well-signposted space away from the majority of the main flow of
traffic.
As I approached the bus stop, a spotted a car in the lane to my right, just ahead, slow down and turn on it’s indicator to turn left: it was heading for one of the driveways. But when
the car began its maneuver, a split second later, I realised that the driver had not seen me. Perhaps she’d not checked her mirrors before turning? Or perhaps she’d only glanced (and
seen no buses in the bus lane – just me and the second cyclist behind me)? Or perhaps she’d underestimated my speed, or dramatically overestimated her ability to get into the driveway
before I reached her? In any case, she turned out to be wrong. I hit my brakes as sharply as I safely could, but it wasn’t enough to stop me from ploughing right into the side of her
bonnet.
I’m not entirely sure what happened next. At the time, it felt like everything went into slow motion: a gentle flight through the air followed by a gradual landing on the other side,
and that I’d be able to recall every single moment. But, probably as a result of the blow to my head (which as I’ve discovered before can have
profound and confusing effects on memory), my memory of everything from a few seconds before the collision onwards is fuzzy and fragmented. But I spoke to the driver (a woman with dark
hair), to the cyclist behind me (who was wearing a white t-shirt), and to a man who came out of a nearby building (who spoke with an accent – these details are the only things I can
reliably remember about any of them), and based upon their descriptions – any my injuries – I’ve managed to piece together broadly what happened.
There never was a graceful bicycle crash. Some, however, are less painful than others.
I hit the side of the car and flipped forward, throwing myself, some of the contents of my pannier bag, and my D-lock into the air. My handlebars knocked a dent into the bonnet of the
car, and the lock landed elsewhere on it, but I flew clear over the car and flipped around in the air. I’m not sure how I landed, but it was probably on my back, because I struck the
backs of my head, right shoulder, and elbow… but I must have rolled, because I also managed to scrape and graze the front of my legs.
I initially thought that I was fine (though I was clearly in shock), but I discovered about a quarter of an hour (or thereabouts: I’ve only been able to piece together a timeline in
hindsight) that I was in more pain than I’d first thought, was feeling intermittently dizzy, and was unable to remember the details of the accident or even what day of the week it was.
I asked for a taxi to be called for me and rode to the hospital, where they cleared me of anything seriously wrong (spinal injuries, serious concussion, broken bones, etc.) and sent me
home for a day of lying down and mainlining NSAIDs.
A heavy D-lock like mine makes quite an impact when it’s catapulted into sheet metal.
Now it’s the early evening. I’m still far from entirely “with it”: I feel like my brain’s been rebooted into safe mode – I seem to be incapable of decent multi-tasking (for example: I can have a conversation with you, or can
listen for my name being called by the doctor, but not both). I’ve got aching shoulders and arms and a bit of a limp. And I’ve been pretty much exhausted the whole day.
But here’s something: if I’m right about the angle I landed at, based on where I hurt the most, then it’s possible that my cycle helmet saved my life, today.
