The Domino Effect

The domino effect must be familiar to even only vaguely involved parents. You know the sort of thing: you are urgently trying to find child's shoes, whilst same-said child, in what could pass for some sort of misapprehension as to the exact nature of what is going on, is off equally urgently hiding yours.

It is, for someone like myself, who occasionally despairs of the uncontainable, unpredictable nature of home life and yearns for the apparently more controlled environment of the workplace, rather satisfying to see that people at work experience the exact same syndrome.

A friend of ours had cause to hire two roofers to repair a hole in her flat roof. The unfortunate one of the two started his working day by falling from the top of his ladder, in the process of which he nearly did something particularly nasty to his left femur and very narrowly missed a six year old child.

As a result of his adventure with the ladder, he then drove his van very hard into the side of a car belonging to an elderly lady.

He was still obviously a little distracted by his two previous near-death enterprises since, following an event free lunch, he then set fire to the other part of the roof. Ten firemen and two policemen later, he went home safely.

Friend now has two reasonably large holes in both parts of her roof, and an issue with regard to knowing where to store her belongings.