and, in fact, accurately reflects the actual arm lengths of the children.
How is it that the children in Jenny’s class appear to have significantly longer arms than the children in Margaret’s class?
The mystery
Tall buildings are nothing new. Blocks of high-rise flats were all the rage in Ancient Rome, where they rose to a height of ten or more storeys. Some Roman emperors took against them, though, getting their togas in a right tangle trying to set a height limit on the pesky things, but without much luck. If an emperor can’t get something like that done it makes you wonder about your own planning department down at the town hall.
It wasn’t just Rome, either. Twelfth-century Bologna had many high-rise apartment blocks too, something like 180 of them. It looked like an ancient New York. The tallest of these buildings – which hasn’t fallen down over the centuries – is the Asinelli Tower, one of the so-called Duo Torri (Two Towers) that together resemble the old World Trade Center. The Asinelli Tower is 319 feet high, and I can imagine the 12th-century Bolognese sitting down to eat their spaghetti at sunset, grumpily looking out over the red roofs of the city and writing endless letters to the council to complain about being overlooked.
But neither the Roman nor the Bolognese towers were really skyscrapers. This term was first used in the late 19th century to describe steel-frame buildings of ten storeys or more. Nowadays it can refer to any very tall multi-storey building, most often one covered in big windows.
The oldest iron-frame building in the world, and the grandfather of the skyscraper, is the Maltings in Shrewsbury, which went up in 1797. However, as with the Roman tower blocks, there were complaints. And it was the same in 19th-century London, when a British empress took a leaf out of the Roman emperors’ book.
Queen Victoria, Empress of India, had a really good moan about tall buildings going up near Buckingham Palace, and to mollify the monarch height limits were introduced, which continued to be enforced until the 1950s. Prince Charles carries on the good fight today in an effort to prevent the building of ugly high-rise buildings in London, and pushing to have The Gherkin thatched. I’ve noticed that, rather like the Romans, he’s not having much luck.
Many office employees today work in skyscrapers, and one of the benefits is the fun of watching the guys who clean the windows from special cradles trying to cope with the high winds, and being stared at.
It was in 2012 that Horace Morris, an experienced 60-year-old window cleaner who was working on a window on the 40th floor of the 94-storey Alto Tower, near London Bridge, had a spot of trouble. Horace was smoking a cigarette and whistling along to the radio. He had cleaned the windows many times before and was not really paying proper attention to what he was doing.
As he was reaching across to get to a particularly dirty patch in a tricky corner, Horace slipped off his support and fell.
The problem
Horace was not wearing any kind of safety harness or other device, just his workwear. His clothes were not padded, he had no safety hat – or any hat – and there was nothing to slow his fall. Yet when he hit the ground Horace merely shook his head, rubbed his sore hands together, and stood up. He had broken no bones, and had only a slight scratch to his palm, a sore knuckle, a bent thumb and two very achy knees. How come?
The mystery
Everybody who is old enough to remember the event recalls where he or she was when President Kennedy was shot, or when the World Trade Center was attacked. For those who witnessed its aftermath, the Great Storm of 1987 is another of those memorable events.
During the night of 15 October violent hurricane-force winds tore roofs off houses in London, demolished the seven oaks in Sevenoaks, and blew beach huts half a mile across the sea road in Hove. Roads and railways blocked by downed trees kept commuters at home, and fallen electricity lines left many without power. London, East Anglia and the Home Counties were particularly badly hit, being buffeted by winds the like of which will probably not be felt again for another 200 years. Gorleston in Norfolk chalked up a gust of 122 mph.
I remember this all as if it was yesterday. I was living in Muswell Hill, in North London. As I walked through the woods to the Tube station the next morning – I was meant to travel to Sussex – I had to step over branches and jump over whole trees. No trains were moving so I postponed my visit until the following week. When Monday arrived I set off on my journey.
I enjoy the countryside so I decided that I would walk the few miles from Brookbridge station to the home of my great friend Arthur Van Houghton, the famous opera tenor and popular siffleur, who I was going to see. I had never been to the area before but he’d told me it was a pleasant stroll from the station to Rotherborough High Street, where we were to meet.
This was in the days long before smartphones and digital maps, and Arthur had told me to get out at the station and walk past the Wheatsheaf pub and then along the bridleway that travels straight as an arrow through the pretty fields and woods towards Martinsbrook. I was to go as far as the fingerpost at the crossroads in the little village of Brookstead Heath. The signpost, he said, would point me in the direction of Rotherborough, once the hometown of the celebrated aviatrix Betty la Roche. Arthur was to meet me at the top of the high street, under the bronze sculpture of the famous airwoman.
The train journey was uneventful and I got out at the station, and set off as instructed. There were many indications of hurricane damage in the dappled autumn sunshine, but much of the fallen wood and bits of demolished fence had been tidied into piles.
It was indeed a lovely walk and I finally reached the crossroads where the signpost was. And that’s where the trouble started.
The sign was a charming black and white fingerpost of the old style, with four ‘fingers’ pointing from its central pillar. The problem was that the hurricane had blown the sign down and it was lying flat on the grass. I looked at it lying there uselessly for a moment, wondering what to do.
One of the signpost’s fingers pointed to Martinsbrook and Coppesfield, a second, at right angles to that one and stuck in the mud, pointed to High Woodhurst and Rotherborough (my destination), a third, pointing in the opposite direction to the one to Coppesfield, pointed to Brookbridge, and a fourth, opposite the Rotherborough one, pointed to Buxfield Cross, a place I’d never heard of.
And then a thought struck me. I realised that I could easily discover which way I needed to go by using the sign, even as it lay there on the ground.
The problem
How did I discover from the blown-down signpost the proper direction to take in order to reach my destination?