Playing with Dragons

According to The Times, a rural hamlet in Monmouthshire has lost its Royal Mail deliveries following a Health and Safety assessment of the route. As somebody who is not affected by the application of the report, it is hilarious reading. It seems that every road and uneven surface threatens grazes, broken limbs or death. If you didn’t know this was someone’s job to think in that way, you might suspect that the author of the report harboured a deeply distressing personal pathology, seeing disaster lurking behind every sunbeam and pebble.

The logical extension of almost anything seemed to be a potential risk of death. This was precisely why I felt unable to complete the Health and Safety assessment that I was instructed to fill out if I wanted to run a Laughter in the Park event. I could contrive to see the potential for disaster everywhere, but I had not idea at all about how to quantify or characterise the risk. I knew it was possible that someone might fall into the rill, or fall down the bandstand steps, but I have no idea how likely either or those events would be. Almost inevitable or as plausible as death rays from Mars?

I was thinking of this today when I was watching the celebrations of the Chinese New Year. Local groups staged an exhibition of drumming and dancing dragons. The dragons leapt about, clambered on walls and chased delighted children up and down steps and through the Water Gardens. The young men inside the dragons played with the children and members of the crowds. They stood on shoulders to rear up and take down red envelopes and to hang lucky scrolls.