Playing with power tools on your lunch break can really lower stress levels

On my lunch break from work this Thursday I was driving out of my little unit in an industrial estate in Goole Yorkshire when I happened across a bit of a commotion. I had only popped out of the office to get lunch because I had managed to miss the sandwich van whilst I was in the toilet. I would normally have waited until I had bought my sandwich and packet of salt and vinegar crisps before I went to the bathroom but because the unit in front of us were off on some kind of training day, the van came early and I missed it. The thought of missing my daily ham salad in ciabatta bread made me tense.

Goole is a small place and it is not often that you see any kind of surprising activity, that is, activity that you are surprised by. The activity does not have to consist of anything ‘surprising’ as such; you are merely surprised that there is any activity at all.

Often referred to as “sleepy hollow” you can probably guess that Goole is not the most exciting of places. Some people may think that Goole is pretty interesting because it is said to be the most inland port in the whole of Britain…but most people don’t.

Anyway I thought that I would make the most of this rare event and stop my car to see what was going on. I could see a smattering of brightly coloured canopies dotted around the industrial estate and from what I could deduce from out of the window of my Fiesta it looked like there was some kind of power tools demonstration going on. Brilliant!

I headed over to an acid bright DeWalt stand.

Checking out the dazzling yellow building tools I listened with great interest as the guys on the stand explained to me about the uses of various construction tools and the dangers of too many body vibrations a day. I was so engrossed I didn’t make it to any of the other stalls, what with the Strong Arm competition and the Wheel Change Challenge I hardly noticed that I was already ten minutes past the end of my lunch break and had still not bought anything to eat.

Never mind, I was not as stressed about missing my ham salad sandwich after playing with the exciting looking hammer drill (when I say playing I mean holding it and saying “ohh, ahh” whilst being watched by a professional at all times).

After I had finished work that afternoon I went back to the car park to find that all the tents had packed up and gone home. There was no sign that the power tool demonstration day had ever happened and I almost had the strange feeling that the whole thing had been a hunger induced hallucination.

I knew however that it was not. The discounted hammer drill that sat on the back seat of my car reminded me that I would be paying rather more than I bargained for when I missed the lunchtime sandwich van.