Health and safety at work is an emotive topic. As I filled out a risk assessment form for that most dangerous of museum activities, colouring-in for toddlers, I could understand why some people feel that Things Have Gone Too Far. Shortly afterwards we were doing an education session on the revolt by the Bryant and May’s match  girls, who, if you remember, were all dying in Victorian times of phosphorus poisoning contracted at work. I am personally happy to waste five minutes filling in a ridiculous form if that is the price of a society that values workers’ safety.

There is nothing like working on an archaeological site for making you appreciate the value of health and safety legislation. Having slashed my hands many times making replicas of flint knives, I have never felt any temptation to wear shorts or sandals on a site where the soil is full of flint. And I have personally fallen into a trench when someone left a slippery piece of plastic on the edge of it. I was lucky it was only three feet deep. One director I worked for in Greece suffered a fracture when a stone that had been carelessly left on the side of a deep trench fell onto her shoulder during a minor earth tremor. It could have been her head. Another colleague was buried up to his waist in sand during a trench collapse. He told me that you do not have to be completely buried to suffocate. If the earth is above the level of your diaphragm, you can breathe out but it becomes impossible to breathe in.

Earth-moving is a potentially hazardous exercise for anyone. I particularly remember one site I worked on in the early 1980s. We were working around a firm of developers, who had dug out a deep hole in the hillside to put in an underground car park. There was a large chunk of concrete the size of a wardrobe in the bottom of the hole and they needed to get it out. They slung a chain around the middle and attached the other end to the bucket of a JCB, and start to pull it up the steep side of the hole. It hadn’t got very far when the digger with its driver started to tilt and slide towards the edge.

After some frantic shouting, they stopped to think, with the slab of concrete hanging on its chain halfway up the side. By this time the archaeological team was lined up on the other side of the hole, watching the problem with professional interest. And then, before our astonished eyes, a man climbed down the slope, carrying a pneumatic drill, stood on the slab and began to cut it in half. Have you guessed? He was making the cut between the place where his feet were and the chain that was holding it up. And when he finished cutting, the bit he was standing on fell down into the bottom. Fortunately he managed to leap clear and cling onto the side of the hole, dropping the pneumatic drill, which by great good luck didn’t fall back onto him. The rest of the concrete was then light enough to be pulled out of the hole.

I have never before or since seen such a piece of mind-blowing stupidity.