I was working in the Arts Theatre (Amateur) and had been working all weekend for the bumpin and set build (being one of the lighting crew, you only got to your fun bit after the damn set was built!) and was working on the hang and patch. Getting ready for some technical rehearsal stuff - "Clear the stage"

I went to fold up the 12 foot ladder to move it - then I folded up!

Ya see, this guy had left half a Besser Brick (about equivalent to 6 or 8 house bricks) on top of the ladder top step cause he was too short to reach the lighting bar with the fittings....

They said I went down like a pole-axed hobbit.

But the way I saw it was all in slow motion....

I felt a bit dizzy - I thought I have been working hard for days and now I feel a leeeetle bit tired, I'll sit down... I say down slowly and carefully - I feel more tired than that, I'll lie down .... :-)

They got me in a car, and we made it to the RBH - as the guy was stitching up my eyebrow he asked what day it was - I didn't know - he looked worried - so I explained that I had been working round the clock inside a darkened theatre and I didn't know exactly what day it was, but had seen a newspaper a bit earlier on and I thought I remembered what date it was...

They made me go home for a couple of days...
~~~~~

This was the same guy who on a later show got me to go up the steel ladder with a pair of pliars to get the broken socket out of the (hard wired) auditorum FOH light fitting (not one of the pluggable show lights).

"It's OK" he said, "I switched off the power."

ZAP! (obviously the wrong switch) - right thru the throat (affects my singing a bit even 30 years later!)

I reckon I did good pretty acrobatics to controll the fall so as to miss the stack of flourescent tubes, and the stairway. and the railing, and the concrete pot plants and the ladder which fell out from under me while I was hanging on a beam so as I could reach the light fitting ... :-)

Never trusted those who claimed they knew what they were doing aftre that...

Years later I studied to be a Workplace Safety Officer...

:-)

Robin