From Cornwall to the Middle East, by accident

When our son was about 7 years old we went for a family holiday to Dorset. The whole family went, three generations, and we all stayed in chalets by the seaside. One day some of us went by car to visit the Cerne Abbas Giant.   This is a huge 55-metre erect male figure carved into the chalk of a green hillside, dating between 700 and 1100 AD, whose origins and purpose—from fertility symbol to pagan survival—remain a mystery My brother and I parked our cars in the car park at the foot of the hill and we all trekked our way upwards to see the figure up close. When we returned to our cars they had both been broken into. In addition to the damage, our sons holiday money had been stolen, and my sister-in-law’s handbag had vanished. After reporting the loss to the police and making our cars as safe as possible we returned to the family and resumed our seaside holiday. Several weeks went by before one weekend during the regular phone catch-up, my mother told us in a worried voice tha...

  I met David Penhaligon in Holman’s R and D department. David Penhaligon — the Liberal MP with the trademark grin, the motorbike, and the ability to talk to absolutely anyone without a hint of pretension. Holman’s was where the clever tinkerers, the practical inventors, and the quietly brilliant engineers lived. David always had a soft spot for that world — the real Cornish economy, not the postcard version. He worked there before his parliamentary existence and I did a stint in R and D during my apprenticeship Holman’s R&D in those days was a proper crucible: bright young apprentices, old‑hand engineers who could machine a part to a tenth by feel alone, and the odd future parliamentarian quietly absorbing how real industry worked. Penhaligon having been one of the lads there before politics explains so much about why he resonated with people — he’d actually lived the graft, not just toured it. Me doing a stint in R&D during my apprenticeship helped I think with the...

My father worked as a fisherman out of Osmington Mills for the Miller family and met the love of his life in the Picnic Inn. This is for him. The seagull swoops, banks, dives and disappears into a misty haze cast by the sea. He watches, lids low, the bird a slipping stitch in the fleeting morning, until its cry fades and memory drifts He sits where the cliff crumbles, the familiar bay before him, fisherman’s knot fingers play the old pot rope like prayer beads of salt and hemp. The wind is a whisper of old skippers' tales, and in the hush between waves, he counts the catches of time the ones of renown, the ones that got away, the one that kissed his cheek in Osmington then danced with him through life.

We called it the Oasis. A few miles out from Dubai, past the glass and the graft. The road was good—quiet enough to talk, smooth enough to think. We’d head out with a flask and a sandwich, no rush, just a trip away from the city.   Al Marmoom never disappointed. There was always something to see. Fish made nests in the lake sand—accurately fluted, like decorative dishes. Beetles chased the car, combative and absurd. Like Don Quixote. Flamingos moved off in a honking crowd when we got too close. Dragonflies often swarmed the car—sometimes a dozen, sometimes a hundred. A raptor took a pigeon for its lunch, then rested in the reeds. Deer slept beneath low bushes enjoying the shade. Tall African birds leaned around the scrub to watch us go past.   We never visited without a natural treat. Sometimes it was sound. Sometimes movement. Sometimes stillness. It wasn’t a spectacle. It was a system. And we were allowed to witness it. We took a few photogr...

  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 ...

I joined a company that was one of a Group of firms, part of a wider network of regional and international contractors. Together, they delivered both small and large-scale projects across the UK and overseas. From 1995, the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations reshaped the UK construction landscape. For us, it meant formalising what had long been instinctive: clear lines of safety responsibility, coordinated oversight, and a renewed emphasis on site welfare. The introduction of the Principal Contractor role brought legal clarity to what we’d already been navigating in practice. On most projects we operated as Management Contractor—hiring and choreographing trade specialists. On small local jobs our own workforce brought a rhythm and familiarity that no subcontractor could replicate. I began as a company safety manager based in Cheltenham, overseeing site compliance and risk management with the support of a single safety officer. I was one of several dozen company safe...

After Falmouth I nursed a vague notion that I’d drift into computer graphics—join the ranks of those producing animated films in sleek studios lit by enthusiasm and energy drinks. I suspected that kind of future might favour a London postcode, so we moved in with the in-laws in Essex and waited for destiny to send an embossed invitation. It never came. In the meantime, I turned back to my trade. I secured a job as an odd-job man in a construction company’s yard. The company  was a prominent figure in British civil engineering and construction, and undertook lots of work in the Dagenham Ford factory. The yard was typical enough: a squat tower crane for shunting cabins and containers, a repair workshop with creaking stores, and a small office block that smelled of photocopiers and lukewarm tea. The work was menial, physical, varied—and to my surprise, I didn’t mind. When the site cabins returned from jobs the floors were mosaics of trampled newspapers, chip packets, bent drawin...

School had been a bit of a washout for me—mostly my own fault, if I’m honest—but I don’t recall much encouragement either. The place seemed more interested in controlling us than cultivating anything. I left with a handful of CSEs, none of them equivalent to a GCSE pass, and no sense that I could advance myself through education. It wasn’t until I started my apprenticeship and attended Pool Technical College that something shifted. One of the tutors—sharp-eyed, probably bored of seeing lads undersold—suggested I take an O Level in English. I did, and to my surprise, passed. That single nudge opened the door to Blackpool, where I took a Higher National Certificate in Technical Writing. From there, improbably, I found myself at Falmouth School of Art, enrolled in a BA(Hons) in Scientific and Technical Graphics. Art School was a different world. I was surrounded by students who could conjure elegance from a Rotring pen, or sketch with the kind of flair that made tutors nod approvingly...