YOU CANT BEAT A GOOD DISASTER, BUT ITS GOT TO BE A REAL BLOODY GOOD ONE !

Tim Leatherbarrow

As i dragged myself out of bed this morning and set about consuming the first of my 5 litres of tea over the following half hour , i turned on the telly to see what the world had in store for me on this fine wet windy ,freeze the bollocks of ya Warrington morn. I was stunned and amazed to see all this footage of the JAPANESE EARTHQUAKE and the resultant TSUNAMI. All of it absolutly amazing ,'gob dropping stuff'. As the day drew on i was transfixed watching the events unfold. The last time i spent the day just watching the news was the day of the TRADE TOWERS. This was amazing stuff, it had the lot; The country getting hammered by a major world record earthquake, and hundreds of nearly as bad aftershocks; A resultant Tsunami which slammed a mere 10metres high wall of water moving at nearly 90 miles an hour in to the nearby populated coastline, blasting ,everything out of the way , boats, ships ,lorries, cars ,buildings ,just everything; Petro-chemical plants exploding into raging infernos hundreds of feet into the blackened smoke filled sky; Nuclear reactors shutting down ,and one whose coolant pumps malfunctioned and nearly caused a nuclear catastrophe; A Tsunami that, as time passed swept across the PACIFIC OCEAN to swamp everywhere around the biggest ocean in the world. This was incredible stuff and it wasnt done with CGI with BRUCE WILLIS and SLY STALLONE to pull our little oriental friends out of the SUSHI. This was all tragically real.

On a personal level i noticed something slightly disturbing about myself. This doesnt come as any grea suprise as theres a lot about me that disturbs me and people who know me. As all the disaster footage was being shown i was sitting there comparing bits of footage with other bits of footage . I sat there watching a country getting destroyed and comparing bits with other bits and preffering some scenes of disaster with other bits of disaster as if it was special effects on a film. As the TSUNAMI swept across the PACIFIC, i got quite excited as they counted down the time until the wave would hit HAWAII. As the time drew near , a reporter said that small waves had come up the beach and i 'tutted 'with disgust. He followed that with a comment about how ominous it was that the tide had withdrawn rapidly, this is a sign of an approaching 'big wave'. This rekindled my waning excitment. When eventually a 1 metre wave hit and basically 'splashed the beach' i was dissapointed. Theres a side that doesnt want any harm to fall on anyone ,but theres a dark side that just wants to be amazed and stunned by the forces of OL' MA NATURE when she gets her knickers in a twist. I was in Malaysia when 'THE BIG 'UN' went off in 2004, KUALA LUMPUR was spared the Tsunami but we felt the shocks, i was like a little boy ,totally amazed. I looked down MOUNT ETNA, and i could see the steam ,feel the heat and hear the silt moving, again i was 'gobsmacked. I told THE LOVELY LYNNE(actually it was our honeymoon,aaahh!)....I told her i was going to travel the world looking at volcanoes.

Its still a disaster even if it was amazing telly , so all the best to JAPAN and to the JAPANESE, i've never been to the country ,but met plenty of people through the years and they've been brilliant and dont deserve any of this.