1 of 24 - Introduction to "From Camborne to Doha by Accident"

 

This blog was not supposed to happen, stitched together as it is from memory, mistake, and the occasional mechanical epiphany. By Accident is a record of things that went wrong, and some that nearly did, and the lessons learnt, both legal and life.

I have charted a course through technical lore, atmospheric travel, and the semiotics of everyday objects. There are linen rounds and archaeological interludes, Doha site visits and Falmouth echoes. Some chapters are precise as a lathe cut; others meander like a seaside walk with no destination but plenty of weather.

The first construction company I worked for sent me to the Brooklands Weybridge campus to begin learning the formalities of health and safety. I already knew some of the practical side, thanks to my Holman apprenticeship in 1972. After fifty years of work—including thirty-four as a construction safety professional—I retired as a Chartered Member of IOSH.  

Over the decades, I’ve had the privilege of collaborating with hundreds of excellent people—and a small handful of halfwits—and together I believe we’ve made the world safer. I’ve worked on castles, prisons, palaces, power stations, and countless schools, hospitals, offices, warehouses, and supermarkets. I’ve worked on laboratories, depositories, and dry docks. I’ve worked in four Middle Eastern countries, in the Philippines, Saint Kitts and Nevis, and across the UK.

I’ve worked in offices and boardrooms and in the places where things are made, repaired, inspected, or buried. From the bottle dump near King’s Cross to the dry hush of Buckingham Palace, the work was varied and I suppose that I changed with it.

At Milton Keynes I saw Anglo Saxon skeletons. Curled in the soil, ribs like broken combs. Lifted slow, tagged, and laid out in a nearby building. The future pressed in, but for a moment, the past held its ground.

In Bristol, near the bus station, medieval bones surfaced. A Priory, they said. I saw the skeletons placed in a strip-lit office, quiet and clinical.

At Chatham, we unearthed a brick domed chamber built when England feared Napoleonic invasion. It would have been filled with explosives designed to blow up the ground itself if the French came near.

In London, beneath old stone foundations, I wiped mud away from a stone and a mason’s mark emerged. Two crossed sticks with triangular flags. Not for show, but for record. A signature in stone, cut where no one was meant to look.

Near King’s Cross, a bottle dump—blue, green, amber. Names etched in the glass: chemists, brewers, warnings. London’s old breath, bottled and buried. I spent a lunch hour pulling forgotten items out of the dirt.

At Dartmoor Prison, drilling granite floors. Core samples lifted clean, dust fine as flour. Plumbing for the cells. The stone didn’t give easily. It never had. To get to and from the work area we had to pass through a gauntlet of thrown items raining down onto overhead chicken wire, parcels of human detritus from the inmates.

I’ve spent a working life in places most people never see. Castles, prisons, palaces, power stations. Dry docks and depositories. From Saint Kitts to Sizewell, Doha to Dartmoor. Some sites were historic, some were hostile, some just humdrum.

What I’ve learned is simple: When everyone collaborates—from senior management to operatives—real improvements in safety culture can and do occur. It takes investment: time for training, thoughtful preparation, and the best equipment. Without that, all you get is the outward appearance of compliance. Not the deep-rooted dedication to human health and safety that we all need.

This isn’t a manual. It’s a memoir. A collection of accidents, near misses, and hard-won lessons. It’s about dumb chance, miscommunication and, sometimes, serendipity.