A stepladder, a pressure hose and my middle-aged balance. What could go wrong?

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When I was a child, my father climbed up a ladder into the roof cavity of our home, and promptly fell through the ceiling. I know this because I ran into the room to find his legs hanging from the ceiling, then spent an agonising minute screaming, unsure if his torso and head were still attached to them. Miraculously, he was completely unharmed.

Several years later, that same father fell off a ladder while attempting to clean the gutter. He wandered back into the house, dazed and confused, with a leaf in his hair, to tell my mum. Again, he was somehow unhurt, though rather more chastened this time.

My father is a man, and older men do, fairly regularly, fall from heights. A middle-aged male friend of mine fell off the roof of his house and sustained fairly serious injuries. Another man of my acquaintance fell off his ladder while doing repairs and badly hurt his back.

I’ve often wondered why older men are so foolish to take such silly risks with their lives and limbs. Do they think they’re immortal? Do they forget they have aged? Or do they not see any danger until they’ve actually toppled over, and are suddenly and dramatically on their way down?

Well, I may now have some answers to those questions.

Recently, I decided to wash my windows after noticing........

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