From Cornwall to the Middle East, by accident

  The Spider and the Abyss I am enjoying my retirement and have more time now to look around me. One morning I stepped out into the garden and stood close to a spider’s web. On the fence is a jasmine, about six horizontal feet from the nearest twig of the crab apple tree that stands in the middle of the garden. Suspended five foot in the air between these two points was a spider’s web, sporting the familiar circular net at its centre, complete with an attentive spider. What was most remarkable were the anchor silks. One silk thread led from the jasmine to a twig in the apple tree, slightly higher than the central net. Midway along its length, a second thread branched off—forming another edge of the web’s frame and extending back across to the jasmine. A third anchor silk descended to a lower twig on the jasmine, completing the triangle. The structure was astonishing—not just in its geometry, but in its execution. How did the spider, so small and seemingly unequipped for surve...

Back to the national construction company After several years during which I worked in Qatar for a consultant and co-ran my own safety consultancy in the UK, Insight Safety, I re-joined the group and was offered the senior safety role in Dubai with dozens of officers, high-profile builds, and a safety culture still finding its footing. It was here, amid the dust and heat, that I realised just how far I’d come from those early mornings in Cheltenham. The work demanded not just technical oversight but cultural fluency, logistical coordination, and the ability to navigate layered hierarchies—contractors, consultants, and clients, each with their own expectations and interpretations of “safe practice.” It was a place where heat, haste, and hierarchy collided daily, and where the margin for error was often razor-thin. One of the projects I worked on involved very deep trenching—deeper than anything I’d seen in the UK. Unsupported, but properly and safely stepped, carved into compacted...

  The Flowering Bush Qatar is a desert country. In Doha, the city blooms—palms and bougainvillea tended by an army of gardeners, irrigation lines humming beneath the pavements. But out in the suburbs and beyond, bushes are rare and trees even rarer. The land reverts to dust and rock, broken only by pylons and the occasional discarded tyre. One day as I was driving between sites I spotted a large bush flowering beside the road. Delicate white blossoms were scattered like confetti across the sand. It was such a lovely sight—unexpected, magical. I pulled off the road and drove across the gravel to get a closer look. I wound down the window and leaned out, peering at the flowers, admiring their grace against the grit. Then I sensed movement—an energetic commotion from inside the bush. A moment later, an Indian gentleman emerged, adjusting his trousers with brisk efficiency. He had, presumably, been relieving himself in the privacy of this rare and handy bush. And now, from his ...

Empty nest syndrome doesn’t discriminate. Our children had long flown, and the settled routine of life had begun to grate—not unhappiness, just a slow itch of boredom. One day, driving down the motorway, we both felt it: a psychic click, a shifting of tectonic plates. We looked at each other and asked, “Did you feel that?” Soon after that in early 2013, out of the blue, an email arrived from an old friend and colleague. He asked if I knew any safety person who might want to join him working in Doha. We ummed and ahhed, and decided to set the fates a challenge. If we could complete a crossword in a long-owned puzzle book, we’d go. We chose a page number based on the salary I would earn in Doha. We worked through the clues, slowly, stubbornly. After an hour, we were stumped on the very last clue: gear item (anag) (8). Then, as if summoned, the solution revealed itself. Emigrate. It hit us like a lump hammer. The word hummed with intent and upheaval—unequivocal, scary, final. Like t...

As my experience deepened, I was invited to take on a senior management role within the group’s national construction company. This marked a shift in scale and complexity. In this capacity, I led a larger safety team comprising several officers and a dedicated safety manager, coordinating efforts across multiple sites and ensuring compliance with evolving national standards. On a small building site, safety begins long before the first helmet is donned. The footprint is tight—barely room to swing a wheelbarrow, let alone store a month’s worth of materials. If everything arrives at once, the site clogs. Movement stops. Risks multiply. Materials must be ordered on an as-needed basis. Delivered to a holding area that doesn’t block the workface. Distributed with care. The wrong-sized telehandler—a brute on a postage stamp—can turn a tidy site into a hazard. Logistics, not muscle, keeps things safe. As sites grow, so does the complexity. Multiple trades, overlapping schedules, and thi...

Before the age of composite panels, industrial roofing was a careful choreography. Each layer—liner, spacer, insulation, top sheet—was placed by hand, aligned to steel purlins that run like ribs across the skeleton of the warehouse. It was slower, riskier, and demanded a kind of spatial fluency that modern systems have all but erased. To remain relatively safe roofers walked the purlin line —heel to toe, fix to fix, this was the rhythm of roofing. On built-up systems, you didn’t step on the liner sheet because it flexed like a drumskin and held nothing but air beneath. You stepped where steel ran and adjusted your stride to fit the purlin spacing. An accident occurred on an apparently routine job. A twin-skin old style roof construction. The upper roof had just stepped down to a new level, with closer purlin spacing to account for possible snow drift loading. No one marked the changed spacing. No hazard triangle on the drawing. No mention of it in the induction. No note in the day’s ...