h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

were you drinking Diet Coke too?

About five years ago, when I'd just started studying architecture, I had a dream in which I had my first construction site to manage.

Nothing was getting done, and it turned out this was because my mother and her friend were sitting in a café across the street and whistling after my construction workers. This startled them so much they'd fall off the scaffolding.

We were pretty appalled to see that there were some men up there without safety lines- I mean, we're 20-odd floors up, and there they were. We didn't mind them shirtless () but sans safety line? That made my hair stand on end.

It's amazing how indestructible they think they are...

I worked for a carpenter one summer. He'd send the journeyman and the apprentice and me ahead in the truck and then follow sedately in his own car, after a good breakfast. He'd still get there faster than us, because the truck was slow.

It also had no seatbelts, slippery vinyl seats, and the dashboard was below knee level, so every time he had to brake suddenly, we'd have to hold on or risk being thrown through the windscreen.

I won't even describe the rooftop acrobatics involved

That sounds like my trip to St John, in the Virgin Islands. We had to take a ride from one side of the island to another to get to a specific snorkeling spot. The "tour vehicle" was an open-bed pickup truck with a roll bar across the top. I held on with both hands, my feet practically flapping in the wind, while the lady next to me sat placidly knitting.

Even worse was in Domenica, where the roads were only one lane wide, and any time another vehicle needed to pass, the tour truck would pull over and hang slightly off the edge of the cliff to let it by. Oof.

Construction workers do fall...

A granduncle of mine was one of them who built the Twin Towers in NYC. His buddy fell down. My granduncle left that kind of construction work shortly after since my grandaunt couldn't deal with the risk of him eventually going the same way, so to say.

Have you seen that famous photo of workers eating their lunch on a girder, way up? Always makes the soles of my feet tingle.

Yes, my great-granduncle (I think that's how he was related) died falling off a building he was working on - the first and last architect in the family until I took it up. Everyone keeps telling me to be careful.

It's amazing how they can balance around up there!

Or perhaps it's amazing how much more likely the average person is to fall over when walking along the edge of a cliff than a flat street, though there's no realy difference in what's below your feet.

I fall over on flat ground all the time. It's why I don't like heights, steep drops, etc. It's not that I'm afraid of the height- it's the inevitable drop that scares me.

I'm usually fine - I had no trouble climbing around in the beams over a concrete floor to knock out the panelling around the back porch at my mother's. But sometimes, I suddenly panic and heights totally get to me. Like when I was at the very top of three consecutive rickety wooden ladders in a church tower in Romania I consoled myself with the fact that because there were so many bats there, the landing would be in soft guano

Construction site safety is my job. I get to stare intently at construction workers, pretending I'm taking a purely professional interest...



I do try to be discreet, honest I do.

A few years ago, I reported some window cleaners to the HSE for their own good. They were working on a building opposite, and they were leaving through one window about five floors up, creeping along a ledge cleaning as they went and re-entering through another window. The HSE responded instantly. Within a couple of days, eye bolts had been fitted along the ledge.

The window cleaners in this building scare the crap out of me nearly every time they come around. Building management is supposed to send a memo out, but alas, I never get it. There's nothing quite like being seated at your desk at 6:30 AM and having something slam into the windows beside you. The last time it happened, it wasn't just the safety lines- it was one of the cleaners and his suction cups. I nearly had a heart attack.

I've worked at a National Health Service hospital for five years and my office windows haven't been cleaned once. Having read some of the posts above, I'm not sure if I should be indignant or grateful!

My office windows haven't been cleaned for years either, but that's because of the drought. There's no water to waste on purely cosmetic things like window-washing. After a while they don't get dirtier anyway.