Thought for the Day

Having written and recorded this yesterday I almost forgot that it was delivered this morning on BBC Radio Bristol's Breakfast Show with James Hanson:

The Bible has a very here-today-gone-tomorrow approach to life. We're fragile, vulnerable and like grass in a puff of wind.

One job of a church leader is to have an understanding of risk. In fact that's true in any organisation. People get stewed up about insignificant things and fail to get alarmed by significant ones.

'Yeah, Joan took her mask off for a while but you left chairs blocking the fire escape to tell me.'

If you have had to do a risk assessment you know that you can accept very common minor matters with small consequences but should be ready for uncommon events with serious consequences.

It reminds me of the risk assessment we took of a young people's caving trip. The version that did not go to press said 'If you are unlucky you will get very cold and wet. Normally, everyone is unlucky.' That was the fun bit. We could live with that but were much more careful not to drop young people into fast-moving streams or deep potholes.

These thoughts go through my head when I imagine what it must be like to be a head-teacher in an age of COVID. My prayers are with you. Have a safe term.

Thought for the Day

As delivered to BBC Radio Bristol this morning:

Many hymns include a line such as 'Come down O love divine'. The desire that God would visit his people in person. Tongues of fire optional.

In my short career in insurance ages ago I ended up in a claims department where one of the tasks was to put a value on human suffering. How much for a broken arm? A lost tooth? A scar on the face? The death of a child?

Complex questions - careful calculations.

People are pretty hopeless at assessing risk. It is several times less risky for your child to walk to school alone as it is to take them in a car. In fact the biggest danger to children walking to school alone is people in cars. Pedestrians are still in a less risky position than passengers.

Recently I have had to work with colleagues on risk assessments. As have teachers and school admin staff. Many of you will have done that in the places where you work.

We ask questions such as:

How likely is the risk to happen?

How serious would the consequences be?

We all embrace a certain amount of risk in our lives. The trick is to avoid any possibility of risks with serious consequences and to minimise risks with minor consequences.

So my heart goes out to those supervising students in the new mask-wearing, socially distanced world we inhabit. Respect.

But singing a song inviting God to visit his people in person? Are you sure you want to take that risk?

Risk

Although I have no recollection of ever meeting anyone who actually had somebody's eye out with that, I recall being warned about the possibility on several occasions. Raspberry canes, in the wrong hands, must be the world's deadliest anti-ocular device.

Lectures about risk were regular. Walk downstairs properly not on the outside of the bannisters. Don't run with a drink in your hand. Don't hit your sister with that whatever was to hand.

In fact I paid little attention to those rules and the only occasion in my childhood I can recall attending Selly Oak Accident Hospital was preceded by the statement 'Mum I dug up an old light bulb.' I still have the scar in the palm of my left hand. Don't run excitedly to your mother with an old light bulb in your hand. Good advice that but I had never been given it.

In fact my parents had a strange attitude to risk. Living in a massive old Victorian house, much of which had fallen into disrepair, was a permanent adventure and we were allowed to play with things we found. Hide and seek could include an oily inspection pit in the garage. Building games took place with old bits of rough wood leading to splinters. Many of the planks we found had nails sticking out of them but nobody seemed to mind as long as we had a tetanus jab from time to time and always cleaned any wounds with Dettol.

The one thing that was an absolute no was playing in the front. In the street. This was not, as far as I could tell, because of the risk of abduction. Such things were not heard of in the early sixties and even the Moors murders failed to make a mark since the moors were in the north and it was well known that northern murderers never came south of Derby.

Neither was it a risk of car accident. Oakfield Road is a long straight suburban road where you could see and hear a car approaching easily and if you couldn't the gene pool would surely find other ways of removing you. In fact Oakfield Road was used by a local garage as a brake-testing strip in the days when that was done by mechanics not computers. It was a long, straight road with a thirty mile an hour limit where many drivers were expecting to jam on their brakes at some point. I doubt if there was a safer street in Brum.

No. The problem with playing out was that it was common. The sort of thing the people in Croydon and Luton Road did. And my mother required me, if going down to the shops, not to walk down Croydon Road for fear that I might catch working-classness.

I thought about this afresh today having observed a couple of builders place their ladder in the road on a busy blind corner. Then they proceeded to remove a piece of rotten wood and replace it with a stone lintel. Gloves to protect from splinters? Pah. Eye protection and face masks from the brick dust and chips? No way. Protective footwear? One had bare feet and the other wore flip-flops.

Discussing Gozitans' maniacal approach to risk - apprentice builders have to walk round the top of an uncompleted house wall before the roof is in place to show they are made of the right stuff - I recall the words of a travel rep some years back, 'Last week a priest fell down a hole; what can you do?'

Thought for the Day

As delivered at BBC Radio Bristol this morning:

An elderly woman, according to a story last Friday, got a knock on the door from two police officers asking if she was intending to supply a dangerous cheese. No, really.

Bank Holiday Monday. Everyone's thoughts turn to cheese-chasing. What do you mean, not yours?

Presumably you're going to wait for the opportunity to run with the bulls, have a town-wide, ruleless football match, a massive tomato fight or, if you're really alarming, pop along to Ottery St Mary in the autumn and get chased through the streets by people wearing flaming barrels of tar.

Risk? How come there are no knocks on the doors of people who make knives, motor-bikes, beer or cigarettes. Those are just as much a matter of choice as pursuing a 26lb Double Gloucester down a hill. Aren't they?

The God of the Bible spoke from a burning bush, asked a prophet to cook his food on dung and called another one to marry a woman of ill repute. Then Jesus invited his followers to walk on water, approach the demonic and eventually lay down their lives. Shouldn't they be brought in for questioning?

That lad who shared his loaves and fish with 5,000. No regard for food hygiene.

Last time I sang 'Come Down O Love Divine' I should have done a risk assessment first.

So I don't think I mind terribly much if some people want to risk their limbs by chasing cheese. Life is about risk.

I may go home and eat an organic natural yoghurt and some unwashed fruit now. I'll open the yoghurt with my penknife. Living dangerously eh?

Risky Stuff

I wonder if anyone is looking?

In all sorts of places around the world there comes a time, usually in an otherwise little known town or village, where people decide to say 'Sod off' to risk. And whether they then chase a fully grown cheese down a hill, play ruleless football, have a massive tomato fight or decide to let a few bulls loose in the main street the result is the same - fun and injury.

I thought about this afresh as a few friends told me they were planning to go to Ottery St Mary for the tar barrels festival this week.

As nutters go these are brazils. A bunch of people will set alight to barrels of tar and carry them quickly through the town. The job of the spectator is best summarised as get-the-hell-out-of-the-way.

I think we accept the need to be molly-coddled by legislation a lot of the time. Without speed limits we probably would misjudge a safe velocity.

We also make very bad communal judgements about the inherent risks in things such as letting our kids walk to school. In fact the chance of a child being picked up by a stranger at my local schools is considerably less than that of being mowed down by a badly-driven people carrier which is shepherding children to their lessons.

And it is well known that the chance of winning the lottery jackpot is less than the chance of being killed on the way to buying a ticket (so play online or don't waste your £1).

But every now and again we just want to gob in the face of statistical analysis and do something inherently risky, daft and, blimey, fun and survive.

I don't think the jumping over the bonfire competition was incredibly wise when our then curate suggested it, and went first, back in 1971. But I understand the desire to do it. The question is almost 'Can I taunt the gods?'

And so we need to balance all the celebrities caught doing inappropriate things with the, presumably greater, number who got away with it. They wanted to risk it. Had an affair with a Prime Minister? Run naked in the woods? Gone in hard for a 40/60 tackle? Eaten food well past its best-before date? I think you are all part of the same spectrum. Playing with risk is human.

I'm banking my whole life on a person who used to be dead. I sometimes sing, 'Send your fire Lord.'

What do you do? I'm eating an old yogurt, naked.

Statistics

Dave Allen used to say that since one third of accidents were caused by drunk drivers this led to the conclusion that two thirds of accidents were caused by the sober who should get off the road and leave the drunks in peace. The clampdown on drunk drivers has led to a greater and greater proportion of accidents being caused by the sober.

As health and safety got its teeth into the residential holidays for teenagers programme I used to assist with, the analysis one year proved that more dangerous than mountains, rivers, caves and contact sports were cupboard doors.

Nationally this trend produced the rarely mentioned statistic one year that accident and emergency admissions were prompted by, in this order:

1. Slippers
2. Tea cosies
3. Stairs

If you see someone in slippers coming down the stairs with a pot of tea don't dial 999, call the undertaker.

Zoe Williams in the Guardian yesterday ranted about a government recommendation concerning alcohol and blue cheese restrictions for pregnant women. Read her whole piece here. She concluded:

'...factoring in the midwifery crisis in the NHS, the 21% rise in maternal deaths over the past three years, and the 17,000 women who have suffered harm on labour wards, the most dangerous thing you can do for yourself or your foetus before, during and after its delivery, is to take it anywhere near a hospital.'

This madness is coming at us from all angles at present. As a piece on the radio said yesterday, Sainsburys have banned Turkey Twizzlers but still sell cigarettes.

It seems to me that for every scare story there is an expert who will refute it or, at minimum say, 'Hang on a minute.' The skill of living today is the ability to pick the most likely expert or assess where the majority of experts concur and then to make your own decision as to whether that glass of Stilton wine is really an unjustifiable risk to your unborn child.

I smoked during my wife's first pregnancy. She drank. Last night we had dinner with the resultant 27 year old, six foot two, thirteen and a half stone statistical anomaly and his girlfriend. We just got lucky? I had given up smoking by the second pregnancy and my wife consumed less alcohol but my younger son ended up four inches shorter than his brother. What should I say to him?

Life. It's all about decisions. What's yours?

Risk

What risks do you take? Driving? Dodgy. Crossing the road? Hazardous. Opening cupboard doors? The leading cause of accidents in one CYFA Venture Holiday season a few years back.

What causes accidents in the home? Slippers and tea-cosies. They're the killers according to the accident and emergency unit of a hospital in the Midlands.

A vehicle screamed round the bend on Sunday at far too high a speed for a quiet residential area and as I moved back from the edge of the pavement was barely reassured by the 'baby on board' notice in the rear window. Is that why some people don't let their children walk to school but take them surfing/climbing/river walking.

You are, in fact, more likely to be knocked over on the way to buying your lottery ticket than to win the jackpot.

Fishing leads to more drownings than swimming, most years.

What necessary and unnecessary risks do we take on board? Caving or parachuting, as I asked a few days back. I am carefully taking up mushrooming, using reference books, advice and common sense. At the same time, when decorating, I am a little careless leaning over the edge of ladders, trusting my own agility perhaps more than I should.

Getting up in the morning is a risky business.