Health and Safety

Today as part of my being a manager I had to attend a one day Health and Safety Event. The location was great, The International Lawn Tennis Association in Eastbourne, you know the place, Devonshire Park, where they hold the tennis every year for the ladies, just before Wimbledon.

Anyway, having walked from home here, about 3/4 hrs walk, I arrived to find the car park entrance blocked, because there is a film crew here, what for, haven't got a clue, so I had to walk about another mile just to find the next available entrance. Seeing how the day has already started, this is already not looking good.

The coffee was luke warm, again another warning sign, but I find myself a nice seat towards the back and settle down. A nice looking lady squeezes past me with a smile, (are things beginning to look up?) and sits about half a dozen seats down (so the answer to that is no then), then this pleasant Asian gentleman squeezes past and sits a couple of seats down. The lady mayor opens the 'event' with a pre-written speech the organisers have arranged. I was fascinated, her hair was the same colour as her mayors chains, so she was colour co-ordinated, hadn't seen that in the last mayor he just seemed to be grey and a brassy sort of colour where the chain was.

This then started to get worse from here on in. The Asian chap decides to spread himself across two chairs just as the 'event' starts, but not being satisfied with this he starts to invade my small amount of personal space. He picks up the print out we have been given and starts to flick through it, everytime he turns a page, he elbows me, great, remember he already has his bum across two chairs.

The first speaker comes on, and the guy next to me instantly starts some sort of weird knee shuffle and then starts yawning very loudly. This goes on for the rest of the morning. I can understand his yawns as Health and Safety isn't the most riveting subject, especially as every speaker seems obsessed with the immortal words 'Risk Assessment'.

Lunch comes and I'm sure that the whole room has just breathed a collective sigh of relief, but the event organisers are looking very pleased with themselves, maybe because we are all still awake and a couple of people actually managed to come up with a couple of questions.

Lunch was for 3/4 hour and consisted of nice sandwiches, crisps, and some sort of pastry thingy with a couple of prawns in it. Well I thought I'd take the risk, as the event was being held by Environmental Health so at least the food should be safe.

I meet up with Dagmar, another manager who is also the owner of her home, (poor sod) and we spend a pleasant 15 minutes running down the inspection unit and chatting about our respective bad inspectors and trying to keep up with all their different little traits. Having totally assassinated the inspectors and the inspection unit we go to our various seats for part two.

The Asian gentleman has now added to his repertoire, he now yawns, shuffles knees and hands and as a final Pièce de résistance completes subdued belches flavoured with stale garlic. By now I have moved my chair almost out into the corridor to try and escape, and keep looking at my watch. Only two hours to go. What makes it worse is that I can see the downs from where we are and my house backs into the woods on the downs and I can almost see home.

The next couple of speakers were actually not too bad and I was actually interested in one, I could hear him clearly, suppose that made a difference, but at least I could watch the groundsmen who seemed fascinated by this piece of green, which they cut, churned up, cut again, and all it looked like they were doing was cutting mud. This was confirmed when I walked past this piece of 'green' it was the best presented piece of muddy soil I had ever seen, hardly a dent on it, and no green at all, where once there had been green, Oh well they are the experts in that, I just hope they had all their Risk Assessments in place!

By 3pm the last speaker came on and by 3.05pm I was looking towards Beachy Head thinking there has to be a quicker way to die, rather than by being bored to death, by someone who was laughing at his own unfunny jokes, and who couldn't project his voice. I think almost all of us had given up the will to live by now, and my Asian friend was shufflin' away to some imaginary beat and belching in rhythm, with the not so subtle garlic overtones.

Well finally it all came to an end, but there was a prise draw at the end five copies of Tony and Giorgio's cook book. I think it was supposed to be an incentive to stay, but much to my amazement I 'won' a copy (and I use that term very lightly, I think I earned it for endurance).

I was then free, so out came the trusty old MP3 selected Rory Gallagher Irish Tour '74 to bring me back to life and David left the building as quick as his long legs could move him. I walked past the carefully cultivated mud (remember the mud that fascinated me) walked through the film crews trucks, almost getting knocked over, still don't know what was being filmed, and got out to freedom. I instantly rang wifey, help come and pick me up or I shall walk to Beachy Head and throw myself off, OK she says, meet you at the library, how long till you get there. Two minutes I said breaking into a run, I couldn't wait to get home and have a reasonable cup of coffee and overcome this feeling of do Risk Assessments that had not stopped going round my head.

Well that was my very captivating day it was so bad that I thought that I shouldn't be the only one to suffer, so if your reading this you must be as much a masochist as me.