Within four customers gardens I know I need to duck.

Three of the gardens each have a tree with a ‘low’ branch connecting to the trunk of the tree. The fourth has one of those metal rotary washing contraptions for drying clothes and spin round merrily when it’s breezy chucking unpegged damp clothing to the ground! The contraption looks like a capital letter Y from a distance.

I know exactly where these above ground obstacles are every time I visit to maintain their gardens. They are static and strong in stature and inconveniently sit just above my sightline of the peak of my cap!

Simple process when mowing and strimming under said obstacles….’duck!’….It isn’t hard to do. Sometimes I’m blessed with remembering to duck yet even when I do ‘bump or ‘scrape’ in reality occurs as I just don’t duck low enough!

I blame the peak of my cap limiting my vertical view. I see that my cap does provide shade from the sun’s rays whilst working, yet it’s blindspot causes me great anguish!

It wouldn’t be so bad if it was my forehead that tried to snap these things off as I make contact with them. Oh no, it’s always that I just seem to catch the lower surface of these obstacles as I walk under them and just like peeling back the metal cover on a sardines tin, so my collision ends up with the upper skin surface of my head being peeled back, causing intense stinging ( no blood) just stinging pain.

I do it so many times on the same obstacles I guess I must look forward to it? I don’t!

So, sick and tired of this I’ve bought myself a bump cap! Why oh why didn’t I buy one ages ago? Light bulb moment maybe but as the bulb is so damaged through my head collisions, maybe it was my ‘Eureka’ moment.

Now, I confess, wearing my head protection bump cap doesn’t absolve me of my personal health and safety but hey, colliding with these obstacles will be bliss. Strangely enough though since wearing my bump cap I really haven’t collided with these obstacles since! Maybe it’s psychological that makes me duck a lot lower but hey my head is safe and secure and hopefully from now on intend to keep it that way!

now for a cup-of-tea