Arctic Mark in Stanley Park

The Mother of All Self-Help Books

This book was given to me as a going-away present by Janet Powell, a colleague at Oxford Learning Centre in Pickering, where I worked as a part-time tutor. I was touched and delighted by the gift, and I enjoyed browsing through this truly comprehensive illustrated survival guide. This book really does have detailed instructions on how to survive in any climate or environment on earth (or elsewhere), including advice on how to deal with attacks from various fauna and flora. My favourite part, though, is without a doubt the section on how to survive urban terrorism, which will come in very handy indeed should we ever move to the Elmo Terror Alert Level. The first thing I looked up, though, was how to survive in quicksand, which obviously won't be much use up here, but it's a scenario which I've been fascinated with ever since I was a kid. (In a nutshell, you need to relax, try to float your limbs up, and then gently swim to solid land. I'm betting it's easier said than done.)