I have a confession to make and feel free to laugh. I cry at movies. That moment when Tom Hanks meets Meg Ryan for the first time on top of the Empire State Building? Get’s me every time. Bambi’s mother? Tears streaming down my face – and I don’t mean when I was a kid and saw it for the first time; I’m talking about when it came out on video in the 1980’s. The last scene in ‘While You Were Sleeping‘ when Bill Pullman drops the ring into the cash tray? Grab the Kleenex. This, I suppose, is my feminine side. I’m just a sucker for a sloppy romantic comedy.

On a more serious note – and this is one that I don’t fully understand at all – I am easily and completely overwhelmed when I come face to face with significant achievement. For example, back in 2000 I visited Cape Kennedy. As an awed child of the moon landings this was almost a pilgrimage but even though you know the Saturn V rocket is bloody big, nothing can prepare you for walking into that cavernous room for the first time and seeing the thing hanging above your head. The sheer immensity of the achievement hit me full on and – you guessed it – I burst into tears. Completely overwhelmed – much to the embarrassment of my youngest son!

Same thing happened last year when for the first time I found myself in the same room as the Wright Flyer. I have read so many books on Wilbur and Orville, seen the documentaries, marvelled at their achievement but put me next to the machine itself and I need to sit down for a while and recuperate.

And up to a point, I have a similar response to the beauty of the extremes of nature. I still remember a crisp, warm day in November 1973 when I got off a Greyhound bus in Niagara and walked the short distance to the side of the Falls. I was, and would be today, totally spellbound and emotionally captivated at the sheer horrific force of nature at work.

And all this is really just leading to the fact that I have to make my mind up soon about a vacation. My wife wants to visit Delaware again in early October and if I go with her I need to tack on something a little more exciting. And I’m thinking maybe the Grand Canyon. And I just know that when I first look down into that enormous pit, I better have a box of tissues handy.