No, not the film, being stranded halfway up a ladder, clasped to the metal struts like a limpet in crampons. I'll admit it, I'm not great with heights, but history has shown I'm also not a knock-kneed idiot. Not till today anyway.
Here's a memory. Commercial Union – an Outward Bounds management course. God knows when. When I was younger. If not fitter. Teams of 6 pitched against each other. Corporate crap. Our team was made up of four, mainly cynical, older middle-management never-has-beens sent there due to their failure at the latest round of leadership potential assessments, (two of them brilliant), and a couple of young, graduate trainees keen to seize the moment, squeeze it and own it.
So we sent one of them up a rock-face to confront her fears. It didn't seem cruel. After all, the rest of us had just shimmied up to the summit in about 2 minutes flat but, in hindsight, maybe it was. The little bit of wee may have been a clue. Still, we stood beneath and shouted up encouragement, and made eyes at each other, and clapped when she reached the summit without crapping herself. In fact, she's probably CEO of some dreary institution whilst I type. I should bill her. For my laundry bill if nothing else. Just saying.
Anyway. Today at Anne's parents, I made a slight mistake with the secateurs, an innocent snip, that caused something of an electricity black-out. Still, all was not lost. All that was needed was for me to climb a ladder to the top of the house and rectify. This seemed a good idea halfway up. And then a very, very bad one...
Here's a memory. Commercial Union – an Outward Bounds management course. God knows when. When I was younger. If not fitter. Teams of 6 pitched against each other. Corporate crap. Our team was made up of four, mainly cynical, older middle-management never-has-beens sent there due to their failure at the latest round of leadership potential assessments, (two of them brilliant), and a couple of young, graduate trainees keen to seize the moment, squeeze it and own it.
So we sent one of them up a rock-face to confront her fears. It didn't seem cruel. After all, the rest of us had just shimmied up to the summit in about 2 minutes flat but, in hindsight, maybe it was. The little bit of wee may have been a clue. Still, we stood beneath and shouted up encouragement, and made eyes at each other, and clapped when she reached the summit without crapping herself. In fact, she's probably CEO of some dreary institution whilst I type. I should bill her. For my laundry bill if nothing else. Just saying.
Anyway. Today at Anne's parents, I made a slight mistake with the secateurs, an innocent snip, that caused something of an electricity black-out. Still, all was not lost. All that was needed was for me to climb a ladder to the top of the house and rectify. This seemed a good idea halfway up. And then a very, very bad one...
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