Construction accidents in the world of the simulator junkie

As someone whose experience of working within construction is limited to a bit of gap year unskilled labouring, I've often wondered what working life is like for many of the construction accident workers who make no win, no fee claims with us.

Fortuitously, it seemed, a piece of research finally gave me an opportunity to discover for myself the joys of driving a crane, operating a forklift and using a JCB digger. I was looking into what kind of forklift training simulators were available to employers and operators were out there when I stumbled on what at first seemed to me a dull piece of virtual reality software for the forklift anorak.

Far from leaving me to decry anoraks, Forklift Simulator 2009 has changed my life (well, it did for a few days anyway).

I've always been something of a workaholic, even my wife is constantly badgering me, tellingly me to "lighten up", enjoy myself, "live a little", stop trying so hard to "live my life to the min"; so it was with trepidation I took the simulator home, ashamed that I might be caught out yet again bringing the office into the home.

Once my wife was in bed, like a thief in the night I tiptoed with my laptop and a sneakily purchased copy of the simulator into the workshop; I did not emerge until seven hours later.

You see, not only had I got into the seemingly fatuous exercise of virtual forklifting, I'd enjoyed it so much that I had felt compelled to buy a crane simulator, an agricultural machinery simulator and a dumper and digger simulator.

With these purchases, I kissed goodbye to the week's worth of sleep, all my leisure time, the memory of my two daughters and, very nearly, my relationship with my wife.

At first, playing the games was like a kind of meditation, a time out of mind, if you know what I mean. I was able to zone out of my middle class world of middling middle class miseries and hone into something other, a place where I could simultaneously exist and not exist. I would not be lying if I said that it even brought me a feeling a rarefied peace.

What it ultimately did though, aside from depriving me of sleep and causing me to neglect my family, was transfix me in a state akin to an induced autism. It was as if I had eyes, desires and faculties only for the simulators. My social skills nosedived and my retina could not adjust from the focus of virtual reality to that of actual reality.

I noticed that my performance in the simulators nosedived also. Exhaustion started causing me to have construction accidents left, right and centre.

Despite a little voice in my head telling me that it was fine and that I could continue because it was all in the name of "construction accident research" for my job at the no win, no fee claims company, things got so bad that I had to make a pact with myself that I would never play another simulator again. And I've kept it, so far...

Can I claim?