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When I relax, away from the personal injury solicitor's office in which I work, I can regularly be found at junior athletics matches all around the country as I have a very keen under-17 athlete who loves nothing more than spending his free time sprinting out over 400m hurdles in a bid to get to the national championships.
As a ‘finish line' mum you have to do more than supply sandwiches, suncream and be prepared to drive other athletes to obscure tracks with very bad parking facilities; you are also encouraged by your child's athletics club to help ‘officiate' at these meetings.
Officiating usually entails the holding of a tape measure and standing in a long jump pit or running to retrieve a discus thrown 35m into the distance and for me, this weekend, it was the under 20 women's javelin competition.
Now, the throwing events are quite dangerous when you think about them and none of our happy band of volunteers was highly qualified in this particular field event, so we enlisted the help of a qualified official to oversee the event. However, much to my better judgement, I was cajoled into "running the card".
The card holder effectively is in charge of the event; calling the competitors to their throw in the correct order, signalling via a natty little "toot" horn to the rest of the field that someone is about to throw, measuring and recording the distances thrown, adjudging whether or not the athlete has fouled by crossing the thick white line at the end of the javelin runway and generally keeping things in order. I had done this duty once before, but had been a jibbering wreck by the end of it having got names and distances a bit askew and generally not being very confident.
This time, however, it was a good competition. Things were going smoothly; I was convincingly in command and we were nearing the end of the competition with the top six competitors taking their last three throws, when suddenly a young lady, having launched her javelin, collapsed in front of me screaming in agony.
My first thought was, "No Throw" as she had landed in a heap way over the white line, but then it was, "Ooh, this could be serious." I went to the floored athlete and could tell it was something quite nasty.
Our helpful official sprinted to the announcer's booth and a medic was called for. Parents arrived and very quickly our plucky athlete was surrounded by concerned people as she disjointedly explained about dislocated kneecaps and torn ligaments that had occurred last season.
A first aider was quickly on the scene and an ambulance was called for. I felt vaguely voyeuristic and a touch queasy as my fellow field judges started talking about hearing the kneecap pop, etc, and so I wandered away to catch my son triple jumping as the situation seemed to be firmly under control. However, my mind quickly turned on me and I started to think about personal injury and compensation claims.
I started questioning myself; had I done everything to uphold the safety of the competitors, could I in any way be held accountable for the accident and if this poor girl was permanently injured would she be able to claim compensation. Of-course, the answers all came back favourably for me and I quickly quashed the notion in my head that I would or could be sued for personal injury compensation, but I was left with an uneasy feeling about the responsibility for so many young and active lives and, as an adult, how I ultimately did have responsibility to keep them safe.
And after all the javelins had been thrown and all hurdles jumped, as I drove home that evening with my three young athletic charges on board the family Astra, I travelled a little more slowly and safely, and with a knowledge of how precious my cargo was.
Back in the personal injury solicitor's office on Monday, my thoughts turned to how those with responsibility for other people's welfare can flaunt health and safety regulations and be actively culpable for death and severe injury. And I truly don't know how they live with themselves.
