Friday, June 13, 2008

Falling down stairs doesn’t only happen in the movies

There were Incredible Scenes™ today at work, where I was given essential Health and Safety training to prevent me from succumbing to the pitfalls of working in an office environment (however, as far as I can tell, my office is not located within a pit anyway so the pitfalls are hardly relevant). The session was replete with a fantastic educational video to literally drive home the Health and Safety message. And then get invited in for a coffee by it. Weehhyyy, AND THE REST, phwoar, she can bend my knees and straighten my back any day of the week, etc etc.

This video is sure to go down somewhere in my official Top 7 Educational Videos of Comedic Value, thus affording it the heady status of being grouped with such wild pleasures as a GCSE Biology video on sustainable crops in which a man said: “Peas; I could talk to you for hours about peas.” Today’s video was presented by a little-known BBC South West newsreader operating under some great misapprehension that viewers would automatically know who she was: “You’ll be more used to seeing me in the newsroom...” Actually, luv, I’m much more used to never seeing you at all.

In the video’s early stages came the marvellous line: “Falling down stairs doesn’t only happen in the movies”. This statement was astonishingly prophetic. Just moments later, the female actor on the screen took an agonising tumble down some steps in a manner which can only be described as ‘akin to when Helen Daniels fractured her hip by tripping over some loose carpet and falling down the stairs in Neighbours in 1996’. The guffaws in the room were stifled, however, when the narrator continued and informed us that “this lady’s fall ended fatally when her head’s impact on a step led to a brain haemorrhage”. Frika. I will never descend a flight of stairs in the same way again. And nor should you, if you’ve any sense about you.

A window will never be opened in the same way either: “This man fell to the ground after leaning too far while opening a jammed window on the third storey of his building.” Other things I learnt include the following: never use a swivel chair as a stool; never attempt to floss with a live electronic cable; don’t try to staple your eyelid to your chin. Clearly, public sector offices are very dangerous places, but nobody warned me of this fact. If I’d wanted an element of risk in my life I would’ve gone for a job as an extreme/'Xtreme'/'Xtrm' sports instructor (and then hated myself for eternity). I may have to move jobs. People moving jobs doesn’t only happen in the movies.

5 Comments:

Blogger Gez said...

How does one go about getting a job writing these things? It'd be a right laugh. I love the movies line. What other everyday occurrences can be glammed up with that technique?

"People eating yoghurt doesn't only happen inthe movies."

June 14, 2008 11:28 am  
Blogger Paddy said...

Changing underpants doesn't only happen in the movies.

June 15, 2008 7:38 pm  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

You know, just the other day I had to go on a training cause that sounds just like this one, the theme was "scientific integrity". I was shown a video of an American lying (presumably health and safety legislation prevents us from being exposed to any real-life lies) and then I had to join a discussion group on whether or not I thought it was wrong. My only contribution to the discussion was the word "yeah".

It was almost as bad as when I started - I was shown a video of a child licking some shoes that had been contaminated with a radioactive substance. Apparently that's wrong too. Though personally I think that if you've managed to bring up a child that frequently licks soiled shoes it's really better off out of the gene-pool.

June 16, 2008 4:30 pm  
Blogger Paddy said...

I'm with you. Let the kids lick away; that's what I say. They have it too easy these days. And being met by the end of a shoe never did me any ruddy harm.

June 16, 2008 4:54 pm  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I literally ate shit when I was younger and it never did me any harm.

June 18, 2008 10:09 am  

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