7 of 24 - Safety Coordination meetings

 My odd-length pins could create stresses—subtle but persistent—in the pelvis and back. Leaning on things helped shift the weight and temper the ache. I wasn’t picky: door frames, bollards, machinery, even startled classmates if they stood still long enough. Anything that offered a moment’s relief would do.

At school, the craft workshop was a reliable sanctuary. It had lathes and drills, chisels and clamps, and—rather gloriously—a small gas forge. This forge relied on an electric blower fan to feed air to the flame. When both flame and fan were in full voice, conversation became an exercise in mime and shouting. A proper din.

My metalwork project was a garden gate. Nothing fancy—just functional blacksmithing—but I’d designed two wrought iron scrolls to grace the top. Scrolls, it turns out, require finesse. You heat flat iron strips until they glow red, then bend them on a jig while the metal is malleable. Heating takes time. Time enough to lean. On this occasion, I chose the door frame that opened to the adjacent workshop.

Unbeknownst to me, the schoolmaster in the adjoining room was mid-sermon to his pupils—perhaps a harangue about tool care. My forge’s roar had made his words moot. Frustrated, he poked his head through the open door and shouted, trying to reclaim some auditory turf. I didn’t hear a thing. He slammed the door in fury.

And there it was—my left thumb, carefree and lounging on the door jamb, became the casualty. It didn’t go quietly. It exploded. Pain and blood and something that looked suspiciously like my inner scaffolding. I grabbed the thumb in my other hand, walked past my scrollwork, and presented myself to my own master.

He asked to see the damage. When I showed him, he paled—visibly. Then he bundled me into his car and drove me to A&E, trying not to look at my hand and failing entirely. On the way, I left my lunch in his footwell by way of thanks. The thumb was mangled. For a while it became a celebrity on the school bus—its odd angle and mashed dignity a source of endless fascination.

Years later, I came to understand the accident with a kind of professional clarity. On construction sites, daily coordination meetings are standard. Every trade supervisor, planner, crane supervisor, site foremen—everyone gathers to map out the day’s activities. Nothing should be ad-hoc. A missed excavation near scaffolding or an unscheduled delivery through pedestrian zones can breed chaos. The right hand must know what the left hand is doing, preferably in advance.

On that school day, the right hand—the schoolmaster in the adjoining room—had no idea the left hand—my actual left hand—was resting on the door frame, unaware of the noise that swallowed his voice. No meeting, no coordination. Just forge, fury, and thumb.

The ruined digit now sports a permanent curvature. It’s a monument to miscommunication and the acoustics of learning.

Two notable Rogers attended my school, though not at the same time. Roger Moore passed through during World War II, around 1940–1941, when he was evacuated from London as part of Operation Pied Piper. The other Roger was Roger Spurrell—one of Cornwall’s rugby legends. One basked in the glow of stage lights and Bond glamour; the other in the mud of rugby pitches and the echo of changing-room banter.

As I remember him, Roger Spurrell was all noise and movement, commanding by sheer force of personality. We sometimes shared coach journeys to and from ATC or CCF events. On these occasions, Roger would press us all—and me in particular—to sing loud and usually vulgar songs. You may know the type: “Dinah, Show Us Yer Leg,” “If I Was the Marrying Kind,” and the infamous “Good Ship Venus.” He turned the school coach into a barrack-room or rugby club bar, with me conscripted as the lead singer.

There was bellowed laughter and the thumping of feet on the coach floor. The journeys became rites of passage: all of us wearing damp cadet uniforms crammed onto sun-faded seats, , the fabric scratchy and slightly greasy to the touch—not filthy, exactly, but worn by generations. From the upholstery you could inhale diesel, mildew, and pipe tobacco, mingled with the ghosts of raincoats past. The scent was familiar, spicy—a microbial tapestry of memory.

The windows were always steamed up, the aroma of boys and damp cadet battledress hanging thick in the air. And over it all, Roger Spurrell’s booming, bawdy commands.