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It is some years ago now, that I sat in a University theatre and, en masse with the Sports Studies, Humanities and Performing Arts students, had the altogether yawn-inducing safety talk that was given by the Head of Health and Safety. It was largely aimed at those first year kids who had never lived away from home, and was given in a bid to stop them from having an accident. It may have also been a long-shot attempt at staving off potential personal injury claims, because, at the end of the day, they would have been able to say, "Well, we did warn you!"
The health and safety officer stood as a tiny sentinel on the stage, looking vaguely ashamed of himself and a little bit scared, as he asked, "Now, what do you think is the most common accident in a university?"
And some bright young thing at the rear of the auditorium, probably a media student, yelled back, "Paper cut!"
Well, at least the poor old safety man was gifted something to lift the mood of the 600 or so freshers who didn't want to hear about the dangers of falling bookcases or queuing recklessly on stairs. Still, he gamely ploughed on.
"Slips, trips and falls!" he announced with authority.
His statistics were unchallengeable and his gory verbal imagery of a girl with a fractured tibia and fibula after an over-energetic lunge for Tolstoy's "War and Peace" in the library were enough to have the more delicate students gagging and the more athletic types saying to their neighbour, "That happened to me last week at the bottom of a ruck."
He went on to explain the dangers of fire in the halls of residence and that careless use of electrical appliances could cause serious personal injury and even death. And the Dance students, with their poker straight locks, tried to envisage death by hair-straightener.
Of course the University's level of liability in such a compensation claim would have been negligible, but if they had not warned of the dangers, they might have been in trouble if a canny personal injury solicitor found that the institution had not warned of the perils involved in living without a mum and/or dad who, with clockwork reliability, will come in to your room and turn off your Playstation after you've fallen to sleep.
Most of us English students were probably not aware of Repetitive Strain Injury (RSI) and the debilitating pain that can be caused by our very choice of career as one who spends the majority of their time seemingly attached to a PC keyboard. And the notions of the young sports and dance students of their indestructibility would have precluded them from thinking about dangerous jettés with the capability to affect injury not dissimilar to the Tolstoy girl or a collapsed scrum that could not only end a career due to spine injury, but more importantly end a life.
And so, we were duly warned of the importance of knowing escape routes and how to use a fire extinguisher, and where we could get help in the event of a paper cut. And I think that I'm probably right in saying that not many of us looked back.
We then embarked very quickly, and without a second thought for our safety, on one of life's great adventures; of learning, living and experiencing freedom; and in terms of personal injury claims, well, we had been warned!
