Sunday 3 August 2008

A cry for attention


I fell off a ladder.


Actually, the ladder slowly collapsed down the side of my house while I was cleaning a gutter - which meant I fell from about 20 feet onto concrete. My friends who have blogs find interesting things to do so they have things to write about. They visit air shows; they appear on Richard and Judy; they expose themselves (unwittingly) to National Express trains. Why did I have to fall off a ladder?


Actually, it was an interesting experience which has prompted me at last to re-energise my blog. It was a bit like a county council campaign: worth doing once for the experience but probably not worth doing again.


Top tips: don't clean gutters in the rain. Get a friend to hold a ladder if you climb one. Don't keep your hands on the ladder if it falls (I didn't). Hold ice to your head afterwards.


It was a strange feeling: all in slow motion. I felt the ladder give way, I felt it start to fall and thought. "Shit. This could be serious. What shall I do?" And then I hit the ground. I can still walk in a straight line, and I never could chew gum at the same time, so I guess I'm OK. But it was depressing. There's lots of things I could have done - slipped down the ladder quickly; tried to grap the drainpipe; jumped off just before the bottom. But my brain didn't think quickly enough.

I just fell, slowly, out of control.


I wonder if Gordon feels like that?

4 comments:

occasional northerner said...

I climbed on a chair to climb on a bin to reach my gutters recently. While I didn't go the length of falling I did reckon it wasn't very sensible.

wife in the north said...

you are supposed to go up ladders and down snakes you know

Troy said...

You were lucky you fell in slow motion!

Anonymous said...

If all else fails, don't take up window cleaning..

CJ xx