Safety First - But Then Again, Maybe Not!

At the back of our pad we look out towards the sea...but a large part of our beautiful view is obscured by the Savoy!  It’s a new hotel and casino that’s being built here in Kyrenia and we figure it’ll be lovely when it’s finished!

In the meantime it can be entertaining watching the building process.  And educational.  Who’d’ve thought they could build such an impressive structure (and it is) without the use of a crane for example? 

In Germany they used cranes for EVEYTHING, in Frankfurt the skyline was dominated by the bloomin’ things - I think they even used them for planting the squillion or so trees the Green Party insisted on as part (or all?) of their policy - sort of defeating the object really.

Anyway, yes, impressive structure, no cranes, just block and tackle type pulleys and lots and lots and lots of labourers.

Now, it seems that safety on the building site is not really an issue.  It’s like from one extreme - UK nanny state safety laws - to the other - here: where they wear flip flops instead of boots with steel toe caps, baseball hats instead of hard hats and so on and so forth.

So, part of the entertainment we have on a regular basis is watching the labourers clamber up the rickety scaffolding onto the roof to lean right out over the edge and heave up huge buckets of bricks and concrete. 

Actually, it’s not entertainment, it’s stressful. 

I have the numbers of the local hospital and the emergency services committed to memory and am trying to learn how to say “sh#t, quick, 50 labourers working on the roof of the Savoy have upended themselves and fallen head first into the empty swimming pool” in Turkish.

And I honestly think my time is running out, I’m gonna have to get the phrase off pat any day now.  Two incidents last week brought this home to me.

We had the back door open in the office and I was sitting at my desk from where I have a full-on view of the Savoy when I heard screams and shouts.  I looked up in time to see the pulley, the bucket and the contents of the bucket (about five thousand bricks) descending at speed from the roof into the car park below...no sirens ensued so we have to assume that everyone survived that incident.

Then a little while later when 10 men were working on reinstating the pulley thing two others were walking along the very, very edge of the roof, balancing using scaffolding poles...they got bored with this and then started sword fighting with said poles whilst still balancing on the edge of the roof - please let me point out that there are no safety rails or anything around the roof - their colleagues thought this looked like fun and so a full on battle took place with them jumping round the place knocking two shades of...whatever...out of each other with sticks and poles. 

When they’d finished that they started twirling them about - sort of like moustachioed hairy ars#d cheerleaders - which was nice?

So, yeah, safety first - not.

Very distracting when I’m trying to work - you’d think they could be a little more considerate!!!