I spent the morning risk-assessing a spooky Halloween party at the playground where I work. The children have been excitedly preparing a trail through the woods for weeks. I risk-assessed everything in detail: the trail, falls, trips, the bonfire, and scalds or burns from the food we’d be serving. My one omission was that I failed to risk-assess myself and, as it turned out, I was the only one to get scalded. This happened when I tried to serve myself some amazing homegrown and homemade asparagus soup.

I went to the party dressed as a wolf and that made my screeching and howling tics entirely appropriate.