Warwickshire, UK - Peter Hill Jones' article on the stroke he suffered while working in t'shop left me mindful of the perils of working alone in the Architectural Salvage trade.

Only a few weeks ago, working alone, I had a 12 inch square beam tumble off the pile, which, had my brain not given me instant recall in the art of skipping, would have reduced my shins to mincemeat and bonemeal from sock to knee.

While I slapped myself on the back for being so nimble for my age, I did not immediately sign up for the local Morris Men, but instead pondered on how long I might have lay there with only screaming agony & the unbearable company of a beam to pass the time. My mobile was in the cab of the truck, so I couldn't even have played Super-Mario, let alone call an ambulance or cancel my ballroom dancing lessons.

A couple of years ago, I dodged a left jab with the agility and speed of reaction as quick as Mohammed Ali in his heyday. Only the jab wasn't from any budding Amir Khan, but a three ton fork-lift truck. How many times have I told my lad that the handbrake is unreliable if the gearlever's in Forward? I wouldn't have told him many more times, not with my neck skewered into the pallet, I thought.

I remember a local trader delivering York flagstones to the back of a house in the shadow of Warwick Castle. John had over-loaded his Peugeot pick-up with a small order of 4 inch thick flags. He'd backed up to the drop area, and dragged 'em, one by one, off the tail-gate, and stacked them slab-style, upright, behind him, up against one laid long-ways.

Straining to get the last one off, he was suddenly hit from behind, across his arse, by a dozen-or-so neolithic dominoes that had made a unanimous decision to lean the other way. Trapped face down on his own pick-up, he had no chance of extracting himself. Luckily he had left the radio on in the cab, so he had Radio 2 to entertain him while he got up-close and personal in a bonding session with his pick-up's bed. Couldn't even get his fags from his arse-pocket, and couldn't use a mobile because they hadn't been invented yet. Alone, and nowt to do but scream for help … for a good forty minutes later, when his customer arrived, who called the fire-brigade, John was relieved to escape with a few bruises and a crushed packet of Embassy Filter.

Last summer a trader who I would deem to have all the required commonsense necessary to be left working alone, lost one-and-a-half fingers, crushed by the fat end of two lamp-posts clapping together as they slipped their strapping as he worked solo on a truck and crane. He took the finger-ends to Casualty in a margarine-tub, to no avail.

Alf 'n Safety might have a few words to say about the incidents which we make light of, and who can disagree that a Skid-lid, Hi-Viz or Safety Boots would assist any of the above? Or Peter Hill-Jones in the hallucinatory wilderness of his stroke? The fact remains, many of us work alone, and I've one hell of a hernia to prove it. At least it hasn't been diagnosed Post-Mortem by a Coroner's Court. I believe it would have read thus; "Death by hernia - aggravated by a half-ton millstone compress". All they would have to do is carve my name on it and leave me there. It was a big bugger.

Epilogue: Working alone, we all do daft things and take short-cuts, and no-one else takes the blame. But the unforeseen … a stroke, for instance, that has nothing to do with the price of a six-foot diameter millstone, or when God's Almighty Wrecking-Ball swings in the direction of your heart, and the sign on your chest simply says "Danger! Demolition in Progress!" then, the least we should do is take extra care, keep the mobile to hand … and wear clean pants, for your Mother will never forgive you.

Source 4 U Ltd

SalvoNEWS: Life and Death and Other Matters of Business (2011)

Story Type:  Columnist

ID: 63503

Date Modified: January 02, 2012, 06:05 PM