Life is never safe, is it? You can add burglar alarms, smoke alarms, five star crash ratings on your car, health and safety procedures, licensing, all manner of safeguards, and you still get mown down by a runaway hay bale.

Soldiers say that sometimes you a bullet has your name on it. I can't help laughing as remember Blackadder's faithful flunky Baldrick carving his name on one of his bullets so he'd never get hit by it. Quite how you'd carve your name on a hay bale to avoid it hitting you is beyond me.

Most of us have close calls one way or another. Some of mine have been potentially dramatic. A couple of times I've been close to mid-air collisions, or in one case, unexpectedly dozed at the wheel of a car one night and nearly propelled myself off the edge of a steep drop onto a motorway. Nothing to be proud of, there's no bravado involved, just errors of judgement that nearly got me killed.

Sometimes though you happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. I was never a fan of Electric Light orchestra, but hearing that their cellist and founder member Mike Edwards was hit by a giant hay bale is something I wouldn't wish on anyone. Still, let's look on the bright side, he went out with style.

On Parole

For some reason I've been let off daily signing. I'm back to fortnightly visits to the Job Centre, though I suspect this is a temporary relief from my daily grind. I have forms to fill though. That's never a good thing. If I see a big rotund hay bale in the dole office, I'll know what's coming next.

Cuts In Benefits

According to the unions, I could possibly lose