Christmas decorations - beautiful baubles or menacing maimers?
Much as we love to see our clients at any time of the year, we also like to make sure they’re healthy and that they have a fabulous Christmas.
Here are FIVE ways to avoid injury and enjoy your Christmas:
- Decorate carefully: RoSPA says that around 1,000 a year are injured by their Christmas decorations. Nasty little things those baubles! Be sensible – use step ladders, rather than that spinning office chair, or get someone else to put the decs up and take the risk. Plug fairy lights in first to check they work, then you won’t be climbing up and down those ladders fifty times increasing the chance of falling off, trying to sort out the non-working lights. Don’t eat all those chocolate tree decorations yourself.
- Protect your loved ones: 59% of a&e cases at Christmas are the result of family members falling out and fighting*. Consider hiring sumo wrestling suits or turning your living room into a padded living room to at least reduce the seriousness of the injuries. It could be more interesting than watching the Queen’s speech. Or you could turn the lights out and hide behind the sofa when family members arrive.
- Avoid food poisoning and dishwasher’s elbow: There’s nothing worse than spending Boxing Day unable to leave the bathroom. Have your Christmas dinner at a local eatery, instead of at home. Still a tiny chance of food poisoning, but at least you won’t have to do the washing up. Food poisoning, however, could be the answer to the additional 2kg of weight that the average Brit puts on over Christmas, but it’s still not pleasant.
- Pull those crackers carefully: Christmas crackers can contain not only ridiculous hats and stupid jokes, but also small explosive charges and missiles. Don’t pull crackers close to someone’s ear, however much you dislike them and certainly don’t pull a cracker with so much vigour that the plastic toy/magnifying glass/miniature pack of cards flies out as such a speed as could cause blindness should they strike someone in the eye.
- Watch out for armchair neck and/or Wii related injuries: Nodding off in the arm chair in front of the TV after a huge Christmas dinner will only give you a nasty crick in your neck. Go out for a walk in the fresh air instead – it will aid your digestion and warm you up for the inevitable game of Twister or play with the new Wii later on. If you’re going to play on your brand new Wii, don’t forget to warm up properly beforehand, or you’ll risk straining muscles you never knew you had. Use the strap on the handset – your family, friends, TV and household fittings will thank you for this. Try not to be too competitive. Beating a seven year old at Just Dance 3 is nothing to shout about, or risk doing yourself a mystery for.
* Remember that 97% of statistics are made up by copy editors who have had a little too much Christmas cheer at lunch time.
Seriously though:
Freddie the Clinic skeleton in Christmas party mode
- Reduce the likelihood of food poisoning – don’t wash your raw turkey under the tap and do make sure it’s properly cooked.
- Switch off your fairy and Christmas lights and extinguish any lit candles before you go to bed or leave the house. Many, many house fires are caused by electrical faults in fairy lights or by unmonitored candles at Christmas.
- Obvious really: don’t drink and drive.
It just remains for me to say that the Working-Health team, including the clinic skeleton Freddie in all his Christmas finery, wishes you a stress- and injury-free Christmas and a very merry New Year!
Photos by Nicola Bathe and Katherine Lewis.
