It is easy to dismiss such people as oddities  as indeed they are  to be relegated to the ranks of the truly eccentric hermits freefall divers or indeed writers That they exist cannot be denied but the strange uncomfortable world they occupy lies well outside our everyday experience and can be dismissed we tell ourselves as an irrelevancy We can shrug our shoulders and return thankfully to our world of microwave ovens and answerphones glad that the only risks to our own health are predictable ones such as making a suicidal dash across a city street