Snakes and ladders.

You have bought back to mind the time I entered a cupboard under the stairs, opened a trap door and descended a fixed vertical wooden ladder to a cellar in a house in Eastbourne. Every rung broke as I went down with increasing speed. Down to earth (or actually a muddy puddle) with a bump.
I had to throw up my van keys to the house owner and get them to throw down every bit of timber in the van and , a saw, screws and an impact driver to make some rungs to get out again.

You've not lived a full life if you've never fallen off a ladder. I did it a while ago painting at home, armed with a cheap B&Q set of aluminium steps on a slippy laminate floor, the steps snapped on the bar that goes under the platform and the ladders ended up on the floor looking like a new born deer with me on top of them. That was bad enough but my nose hit the tin of paint I was still holding as we hit the floor, cue copious amounts of paint up my nose which I had to then get out with a rag doused in turps, no easy feat due to the big cut on my nose as well.

I've also had a few close calls where you reach out and grab a piece of stud work to balance yourself with only to find that its not nailed in yet. I've had to do a couple of ninja style jumps off the steps with the said piece of wood still in my hand.

Reminds me of trying to get out of a loft in a new build. Plastic hatch was screwed to bits of wood that weren't attached to anything else, stood on wood frame which fell though, caught bottom chord as I fell through the hole, legs swung kicking the stepladder I'd used to get in down the stairs and through the stud wall into the downstairs wc.

I've had a few incidents with steps and ladders over the years, on one occasion I was on a set of tripple 4m ladders onto a flat cladding sheet putting up 250w sodium lights, bracket was up and securely fixed, as I reached the bracket light fitting in one hand I felt the dreaded sideways feeling. Luckily I managed to grab the window surround as I descended down the cladding, light fitting and ladder hit the deck, I hung on for dear life probably only about 3m from the floor until one of the site lads got the ladders under me!
I was so glad to get my feet back on the ground!

I did manage to fall forward on a set of aluminium 2 tread steps once, I forgot it wasn't a trestle and stepped forward, the handle hoop had me, fully over, just missed an antique dressing table luckily.
Those steps were skipped the same day!

Another one, It was raining, working on wet uneven cobbles, I was on some 2m theatre steps with metal brackets where the 3rd section slides up.
I hadn't slid the last section up as wasn't all that high just above the top of the A frame part with one foot on either side of the A.
Of course the feet slipped on the Cobbles and off balance, I fell backwards and my feet went through the rungs. As I hit the deck the bracket tore a huge gash out of my right buttock. Man did that hurt! Luckily a trip to boots and several sterri strips and it was holding back together, couldn't sit down for about 10 days the bruise was huge and very dark!
I tend to always go for the MEWP these days I feel much safer in one of those!!

Also seen some much worse incidents involving ladders and some nasty injuries.
Thankfully not mine!

Be safe out there peeps!!
Sy

The most embarrassing incident which was totally my fault was when using one of those combination ladders that can be an A frame or extension ladder, and they have stickers on every rung on the back saying "WARNING, DO NOT CLIMB THIS SIDE OF THE LADDER".
Let's just say it's worth heeding the warning, especially if it's a tiled floor and the only thing to grab when the ladder does the splits is the frame of a suspended ceiling. Putting that right afterwards cost a packet.

Some spectacular ladder incidents from teleshopping channels. Think I may have posted a few before, but this is a particular favourite.