Riotous Retirement (7 page)

Helga was well aware that health and safety was an increasingly important aspect of retirement village living. Just recently she had attended a meeting organised by the village operator for managers from all the retirement villages in the state.

The meeting had opened with a talk about how health and safety was more important than ever these days—in schools, public transport and shopping centres for example. In fact as the lecturer had joked “you can’t wheel your trolley down a Woolworths’ aisle without bumping into one of these big yellow signs telling you that if you slip and hurt your back they will pay you thousands of dollars.” His audience laughed but Helga couldn’t help thinking about Mrs. Oliver from Burnside Retirement Village who had done just that only last week. The case was pending.

The lecturer summed up.  “Most villages should have a Health and Safety Committee. This should be three or four residents reporting to the Body Corporate. A bit like a parliamentary committee reporting to the Parliament—only more polite—and these people wouldn’t get paid anything except for an extra biscuit at morning tea!” The lecturer then paused for the laugh but he had overdone it a bit and all he got was an embarrassing hush.

A week later Helga put the suggestion about the requirement to a residents’ meeting. She used the word ‘requirement’ although this was not strictly the case. Less chance for debate she thought!

She also gave a few examples of why a safety committee was necessary. “They should be checking for loose rails on walkways, low tree branches that anyone might walk into and tree roots pushing up pavements, trip hazards and so on. So if anyone wants to be involved, come along to my office for a chat.”

The first to approach Helga was Gabriel Bovary. “Perhaps I’m over qualified for such a post but I’m your man if you want someone to lead the team,” Gabriel explained confidently. “You will need full, well written reports clearly specifying the problem and its exact location together with details of the best method of how to fix the problem.” 

“If we could perhaps leave it at specifying the problem and location, that might be enough,” Helga responded.

Gabriel ignored that comment and went on to ask about the team. Helga explained that he was the only member so far and immediately she knew that if anyone else was interested, finding out that Gabriel was ‘team leader’ would be enough to squash any enthusiasm.

“Look Gabriel,” Helga bravely went on to explain “I was not thinking so much of a team with a leader as just a few residents working co-operatively together.”

“Yes, yes, we all know about democracy and all that bullshit. Just you leave it to me Helga. We’ll call it the Safety Sub-Committee and no mention of team or leader but I’ll write your reports and keep them in order. Don’t you worry.”

After Gabriel left the office Helga considered the situation. She was doubtful if this was going to work but at this point she thought it wise to lock in Gabriel’s obvious enthusiasm for the task and persuade another two or three residents to work with him. This might be just the thing to keep Gabriel out of any more bother. She just hoped that he didn’t turn out to be the bully he so obviously had the potential to be. She had to get this group up and running before the next visit from the village operator’s Environmental Health and Safety Director, Mr. Cedric Colliston, and his team who were to audit and rate the village with regard to health and safety.

Helga was worried. Managing Gabriel and keeping his ego in check as the leading light in the safety committee was one thing, but controlling him in a group that included the Environmental Health and Safety Director on a village inspection was something completely different. How the hell was she going to manage this?

D-day arrived and Helga had still not come up with a plan to exclude Gabriel from the village EH&S inspection. She had not even been able to exclude him from sitting at the table in front of the residents at the meeting where Cedric Colliston was informing the assembled group about the village operator’s new EH&S policy.

“Our health and welfare aspirations, ambitions and desires for this village as with all our villages is an overarching core value of our company’s strategic policy that we have coined as a leading element of our mission statement in retirement village operation and as village operators we bring this to all our villages.” Cedric paused here and gazed out at the completely blank faces of his attentive, but so far completely baffled, audience. He continued.

“We must never compromise on endeavouring to seek out all courses of action pertinent to garnering environmental health and safety action plans and paths to avoid safety hazards that are likely to bring risk to the health and welfare of any village resident.”

“Hear, hear,” interrupted Gabriel and started to clap.

Helga knew Gabriel had been listening carefully and, like her, had probably recognised the phrase ‘avoid safety hazards.’ It was the sum total of her understanding of the speech so far.

“We are implementing and embedding world class processes and practice to support our vision,” Cedric continued. “Our environment, health and safety management system is frameworked for implementation and development of EH&S at all levels of our organisation and identifies this village operator company and regional governance procedures and responsibilities for environmental health and safety at all levels including residential entities.”

Suddenly a loud voice from the back of the room could be heard by all. “Hear that Bill? You’re just a bloody residential entity!” It was Mac. Mac made every serious meeting into a comic turn if the opportunity arose and particularly if the speaker was up himself to the degree that this bloke seemed to be. The audience burst into laughter.

Cedric continued on as though that minor interruption had never happened. “In summation, we have a view that is well premised and we will, in the fullness of time, ventilate that view…”

“Yes,” shouted Mac again, “it’s sure as hell time to let some hot air out!” But his natural cloak of superiority protected Cedric from such ignorant remarks and he carried on again regardless. “Compliance reports on EH&S will be implemented, recorded, filed, sent to company HQ, acknowledged and returned on a quarterly basis and then published as a part of the annual village Environmental Health and Safety report. This will contribute to the company safety metrics compliance and performance data,” and here Cedric paused for the briefest period.

As he paused Helga leapt to her feet, capitalising on the opportunity to head off any other sneering comment from the back of the room and to avoid any embarrassing questions. She could think of many herself but she just thanked Cedric for his most enlightening talk.

“I am sure that all the residents appreciate the trouble you have taken to explain the company’s EH&S policy so clearly.” Polite clapping followed from the few residents who had just been able to return to consciousness at that moment.

But the highlight of the day came towards the end of the safety audit that same afternoon. Gabriel—despite Helga’s insistence that this was a private company activity—just could not be shaken. The bloody man has a skin like a rhinoceros, Helga thought, he just can’t take a hint. So Gabriel dominated the tour and Helga eventually figured that it would be more profitable, in terms of gaining a good EH&S grading for the village if she just let Gabriel continue. At the very least the auditors could not say that she had failed to interest the residents in taking part in the health and safety process.

They had paused on the pavement by the tree-lined leafy entrance to the village centre to listen carefully to what Cedric was emphasising, for at least the third time, about how health and safety could benefit the individual resident.

Suddenly they were alerted by a loud car horn. It was Mrs. Liz Waverly’s mobility scooter approaching down the pavement towards them at great speed. Mrs. Waverly, who was not incapacitated to any great degree, had given in to her desire to have a scooter, partly through laziness, partly to quench her desire to drive a scooter fast—as she always did her car—and for what she referred to as her breathlessness. This was really no more than being grossly overweight. The lady was large. She was leaning forward on the scooter presumably to afford less wind resistance. She wore a bright blue coat with her long white hair flying behind her as she drove her red V8 equivalent mobility scooter towards the safety audit group. As Helga turned, all she saw was this large red and blue object barrelling towards them at supersonic speed.

Liz Waverly had delayed sounding her horn presuming that the group on the pavement would immediately turn in to the village centre; but because they had stopped she was on top of them, literally, in an instant. Three of the party jumped into the vegetation on the inside of the pavement. Gabriel, being overweight himself and not quite so agile as he used to be, tripped and fell onto Cedric bringing them both down sprawling in the vegetation at Helga’s feet.

Meanwhile Liz, in her effort to avoid running anyone down, had held as hard as she possibly could to the outside of the footpath but the leriopes planted under the trees, next to the roadway, were spilling over the edge of the pavement and hiding one of the few hazards that Gabriel and his team had missed.

Liz’s rear off side wheel clipped a piece of raised pavement. This, combined with the speed, was enough to topple Liz and the scooter arse over kettle, leaving the scooter on its side, wheels still spinning and Liz’s large blue frame comfortably deposited into a huge patch of soft fern about five metres further down the path from where the group had been standing.

Fortunately it was egos that suffered the greatest damage, especially Gabriel’s since the committee had obviously missed that particular raised pavement; but neither had it been a pleasant experience for Cedric, his assistant or Helga and it had been particularly unpleasant for Liz Waverly. She had been coming down to the village centre after a convivial lunch with a few friends whose company she always enjoyed and was in a very happy mood prior to the accident. Helga wasn’t sure who started the rumour but within a day she heard that Gabriel had been referred to as an egotistical plonker—or perhaps she had just thought of that herself—and Liz Waverly had been called a fat lush who wasn’t fit to drive on the road, never mind on the pavement. Helga knew well that there would be accusation and counter accusation flying for the next few weeks and she could not help but feel that if bloody Gabriel had not been there things might have turned out differently. What she was sure of was that there would be no triple A rating for the village in the area of health and safety.

Gabriel on the other hand was fast becoming disillusioned with his new position as health and safety committee team leader and no matter how Brenda, his wife, had tried to comfort him that evening and assure him that it was not his fault, he had a very bad premonition about the whole affair. He didn’t know at the time just how bad it was really going to get.

The next day was carpet bowls morning. Gabriel was a player in the village team. He tried to dominate here as he did with the health and safety committee but there were several equally strong characters in the bowling group who were well able to hold their own. That morning they all had tentative searching and teasing type questions to put to Gabriel because, as expected, the village was abuzz about the events of the previous day. Was Gabriel going to sue his own health and safety committee? Was Liz going to sue him and more importantly, when will we see the report of the village EH&S audit and did he expect a mention in dispatches—good or bad? Everyone on the team enjoyed the morning banter even more than they enjoyed the bowls, and all at Gabriel’s expense. Gabriel, who usually enjoyed being the centre of attention, just smiled as though it bothered him not one bit.

The game proceeded as normal until at the end of one end, nature called Gabriel to the toilet. He excused himself. The teams waited patiently.

After ten minutes or so, during which time some of the players had taken the opportunity to make a cup of tea, they were becoming a little anxious to start the game again.

“Come on Gabriel,” someone called out loudly, “Liz has gone home and we made her promise not to sue you. You can come out now.” But there was still no Gabriel so two others on Gabriel’s team went into the toilet just to ensure that Gabriel was alright. Those patiently waiting were astounded to hear a very loud “Oh my God!” quickly followed by uproarious laughter.

Now, during the previous two weeks Gabriel had inspected and discussed with the health and safety committee the width between the left and right support rails at either side of all the toilet seats in both women’s and men’s toilets. The other two of the three-member committee had suggested that the space between the rails be widened on all the toilet seats in both women’s and men’s toilets. Gabriel had agreed to recommend that the women’s rails be widened because he had seen how wide Liz Waverly was but was not aware of any men in the village who would require the gent’s toilet seat rails to be at a wider setting. Neither of the other two Health and Safety Committee members were brave enough to mention to Gabriel that there’s none so blind as those who will not see or in this case—cannot see their own backside! And the truth of the matter was that Gabriel had gradually been getting wider of late, courtesy of one of the lady bowlers who always supplied delicious chocolate cake for morning tea after each bowling session. Gabriel regularly ate two portions.

Well, Gabriel was successfully extricated from between the jaws of the toilet seat rails and in due course the carpet bowls continued but this was the most expensive morning in terms of reputation that Gabriel had ever had to suffer.