An Irishman's Diary

I SEE IT’S 10 years today since the Leaning Tower of Pisa reopened after more than a decade of stabilisation work. And so far so good. At the time, engineers promised it was safe for another three centuries. So with 290 years of the warranty still to go, there should be no worries yet.

Mind you, I climbed it – queasily – a year after the reopening, and nothing could convince me then that today was not the day it would finally choose to topple. The 800 years it had already stood were no comfort, nor were scientists’ assurances about its future. After all, the structure had defied logic before: I recall reading that in computer simulations of the data, pre-stabilisation, it had fallen already.

The year I climbed it, my wife and I were staying in a charmingly ramshackle hotel nearby: so near it had a view of the tower from our bedroom window. And not having much of a head for heights, even in non-leaning towers, I took the precaution of rising early on the morning in question, while the children – about four and three then – were still asleep.

No way was I bringing them with me on the mission: there’s only so much stress a man (or a tower) can take. In fact, as I learned, they don’t let small children climb it, which is sensible. So being alone, I was able to concentrate on a calm-climbing technique which involved staring at my feet a lot and convincing myself that the thing was hardly leaning at all.

This was easy enough at the bottom. But it became progressively less tenable with each of the 293 steps. The worst part was the constant shifting of perspective as you spiralled from the high side to the low side and back, an effect made somehow even more destablising by the hollows worn into the middle of every step.

Also, even as I mentally minimised the lean, I had the misfortune of being followed up by a group of Americans who were doing the opposite. “Hey – this thing is REALLY leaning!” one of them shrieked with delight, near the top, while herself leaning – recklessly – against the low-side wall.

Of course I made it up and down in one piece. Truth to tell, I was probably more at risk from my creaky hotel lift. By the last day of our stay, we had no running water in our room, so not even the toilet worked. Charming as it was, we weren’t sorry to leave. Even so, I’m glad I took picture of the tower, as seen from our window, before we checked out. I’d say the hotel has fallen since.

OTHER ANNIVERSARIESthis week include the bicentenary of the first of two massive earthquakes that hit the eastern United States in late 1811 and early 1812. Centred in Missouri, they cracked footpaths in Washington, made church-bells ring in Boston, and caused parts of the Mississippi to flow backwards. Inter alia, they also added to the problems of a famous religious community in Indiana, whose troubles were documented in the diary of a member, one Samuel Swan McClelland.

The group were known as the “Shakers”, because of the feverish rapture in which they worshipped. And yes, it was a cruel joke the earth played on them. It didn’t help that they were also near the fault line of the Indian war of 1812. But in any case they were forced to abandon their settlement for a time, until shaking could safely resume. Is that ironic? I think it probably is.

A MEMBERof the Argus-eyed Irish Timesreadership, which misses nothing, informs me that the following sentence appeared in these pages recently: ". . . he was renowned for meeting out extreme punishment, including hanging . . ." Well, yes it did, reader. And we're very upset about it. But on behalf of the newspaper, I must plead mitigation in that many self-respecting journalists now refuse to have any dealings with the verb "mete", which was what should have been used here.

The word has been discredited for decades. As long ago as 1942, Myles na gCopaleen was already including it his celebrated catechism of cliché, as follows: "Is treatment, particularly bad treatment, ever given to a person? No. It is always meted out. Is anything else ever meted out? No. The only thing that is ever meted out is treatment." He might, while he was at it, have added a note about the compulsory direction in which meting happens. In all the history books, I have never read of punishment being meted into a prisoner: not even in solitary confinement. I doubt if Amnesty International has heard of such a thing either.

So I put it to you that “mete” is wasting space in dictionaries and that, if not abolished, it should be merged with its more useful soundalike, as in the aforementioned example. Such a move would have a certain logic on its side. As anyone whose job involves attending meetings will know, there is often an element of punishment involved. And I can’t help noticing that after every Cabinet meting – sorry, meeting – lately, we all suffer eventually.

If saving dictionary space is the aim, I suppose, the shorter “meting” should become the all-purpose word. The pronunciation is already well established. So henceforth, as well as having such things as meter-readings, you could also have reader-metings. On which note, I think you’ve all suffered enough for one day. You can go now.