It's been a while...

Valencia's own David Ferrer smashing his way to victory, against all the odds whilst defending several match points against him, in the 2008 ATP Open de Tenis Comunidad Valenciana, April 2008

Well, it appears that over a month has elapsed since the last post on this site. Sorry, for those of you who faithfully check-in on a regular basis. I have a list of excuses as long as my exceedingly long arms.

Would you like the one about the numerous guests we've had in the past couple of months that have kept me away from the keyboard? OK, if that excuse doesn't wash (though it is true, and it would be very rude to simply keep blogging rather than showing people the sights of Valencia or cooking them tapas and paella!).

Then there's the other technology-oriented excuse - another genuine one - whilst results from my now-dead Dell PC. The hard drive, which stored by complete life (yeah, yeah, yeah... I did have a full backup!) finally died early last week - a clicking sound of the hard drive gasping its last followed by lots of blue screens and white type (why can't Microsoft vary the bad news with a bit of colour?!). Sadly, despite buying a lovely new hard drive - three times the capacity of the last one at 750GB - it wouldn't let me load Windows properly and so after crashes too numerous to mention, I have now recruited a computer-savvy person to come and bash it until it gets some sense about how Windows XP Professional is meant to just work right out of the box...

All of which means that we are now down to just three computers - one desktop, one laptop and this MacBook Pro. Lovely new Mac, but unfortunately, my life still exists on the backup hard drives and not on this little blighter, so whilst I'm able to just about cast my fat fingers around this titchy keypad, I don't have access to any pretty photos or video at the moment, so it's gonna be a few days more before I can crank something up which will spit out the necessary graphic images (though I've managed to grab one or two for the time-being).

Quite a bit has happened here in not-so-sunny-all-of-the-time Valencia over the past seven weeks or so. Firstly I took delivery of this shiny new Apple Mac and am very slowly teaching myself all the various graphics packages to enable me to be more productive in my 'virtual life', though I am so used to all the Windows shortcuts, I'm not sure if it will be in this lifetime or the next that I'll finally conquer the Mac shortcuts too!

We have navigated ourselves from one set of guests to another. It has been great fun spending time with so many people over the past year and in particular showing off this beautiful city to our friends and work colleagues. It is also simply so rewarding to spend real quality time with people when so often we communicate by occasional email, phonecall or the odd dinner. To spend 2, 3, 4 or more days with our friends - especially when the climate has been favourable - has been a real joy here in Valencia, and something we'll always treasure. Still, there has to be some benefit in all these visits coming to an end... Chris finally gets the chance to move back into his own bedroom, leaving Jo to get on with life in her own bedroom! What a star he's been, camping out, off and on, for the past nine months or so, in his sister's bedroom!

So then to events and activities - we've seen and experienced plenty during April and May. From my old fave, Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo (last saw them about 15 years ago at the old Sadler's Wells Theatre in London) to the finals of the ATP Open de Tenis Comunidad Valenciana, and from The Night of the Proms concert (one of the most surreal and weird evenings of our life!) to a long weekend camping with friends in Santa Pola (just south of Alicante), we've had an action-packed couple of months.

Going back to The Night of the Proms - we were warned in the advanced publicity within the local 24/7 Valencia Guide that the event would be a little on the strange side, and it didn't disappoint. Where else could you find the following: a 72-piece orchestra performing Land of Hope and Glory and a variety of Strauss waltzes, the Spanish heart-throb Miguel Rios, a male German singer, Galileo, who could belt 'em out in a combination of soprano and baritone - all in the same ballad (astoundingly talented), OMD (Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark), Alan Parsons (yes, he of the original 'Project' fame - and a giant of a man), 1970's one-hit-wonder-but-stunning-pianist-and-vocalist, John Miles ('Music was my first love...') and the 1980's supergroup, Simple Minds... in a 10,000-seater echo-ey athletics velodrome? Musically, the evening was superb. With regard to the choice of musical programming - Strauss, Elgar, Simple Minds' 'Belfast Child', Alan Parsons' 'Psychobabble' and OMD's 'Enola Gay' - it all makes the strangest of bedfellows.


The island of Tabarca lies just off the coast of Santa Pola, and makes a great day trip, though it's best to go on a windless day!

Scarcely had we recovered our eardrums and reaffirmed that we were in fact still living within the early 21st century and not the previous one or two hundred years (music aside)... it was time for our first camping adventure. As it turned out, more by luck than by judgement, we picked the last few clear sunny days before an onslaught of April and May showers - nay, storms! Together with friends, we spent three days and two nights camping at Santa Pola, a few miles to the south of Alicante. Well, the good news is that the brand new Decathlon-special 6-berth tent worked fine. We even managed to set it up and put it away again in around 30 minutes on each occasion. However, the land mass required to fully erect the structure is equivalent to the area of Devon and Cornwall combined, so I am anticipating the need for multiple camping 'sites' on each occasion we plan to pitch it in the future. We are really looking forward to two or three weeks' camping up around the north west of Spain in the summer, and possibly some time in Portugal if we can organise things in time...


Chris, Jo and Liz show off that vast tent, and prove the fact that it did turn out just like the instructions said it would!

Of course, aside from all the concerts and camping, we have managed to pack in a number of great meals and parties with friends. A great night out celebrating Angel's 40th back in late April and Margaret's 50th earlier in May. Both events required visits to the best local bars and restaurants, and it strikes me that even if we stay here another decade, partying everyday, we won't have managed to visit every hostelry, though we might die trying!

Chris and Jo have also had their own busy and enterprising times. Both have had schoolfriends over to play; they continue to play football with other children from our apartment block; they've done well at their respective school sports days school concerts and Chris has managed not only to achieve his faith badge for cubs back in Cottenham whilst staying in Valencia, but he has just learned that he has achieved a 'Distinction' in his Royal Schools of Music recorder exam - something he chose to study for and put himself through. Jo was mentioned in dispatches at a school parents day last term for being a finalist in a competition to design a new logo for the parents association. We were subsequently invited to attend a meeting with the parents association but felt that keeping a meaningful conversation going in Valenciano was a step too far for all of us amateur Spanish speakers! Both children have had a great academic year at school and hopefully will continue to benefit from this Spanish experience long into the future. We are both in awe of their abilities to muck in with their Spanish friends, sharing communication between English, Spanish and... Valenciano, which they have both had to study this year. Term finishes later in June and then it's time for the great summer camping fest.

Meanwhile, technology permitting, we'll be back with further blogs from time-to-time throughout the summer. Oh... and I'm still promising those Fallas videos sometime!

Video: The last day of Fallas 2008

The end of Fallas 2008

As promised, a short (seven-minute) video of our last few hours of Fallas 2008. A trip into the city in the afternoon to let off fireworks and again in the evening - this time to take a final look around a handful of the 700-odd Fallas around the city before the entire collection was burned to a cinder.

Simply click below to watch the video.

There's more video to follow in due course when I get a chance to edit it, including the burning of our 'own' Falla in Avenida de Francia, and the Semana Santa procession from Easter Sunday...

Semana Santa... another day, another procession

Semana Santa Easter Day Procession in full swing

Easter is a big thing here in Spain. We have seen the set-up for various Easter week processions in Andalucia in the recent past, but I hadn't actually experienced Easter Sunday in Spain since my childhood. It is purely coincidental that Easter week should clash with the end of the Fallas festival this year - one religious celebration rolled into the back end of another.


Jo making use of some of the many thousands of carnations thrown to the waiting crowds


Chris patiently waits in the crowd for his own carnation!

It is as if this city needs no pause for recuperation because scarcely had the costumes of the Falleras been put back in the closet and the trumpets and drums of the Fallas marching bands stowed back in their cases than an entirely new set of immaculate costumes were dusted off and the instruments brought back out for the annual Semana Santa processions. Processions took place 'in three acts' on Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and culminating in the Resurrection Procession on Easter Sunday in the Marinera de Valencia - inland from the beach area a couple of blocks.




Marching band after marching band throughout the route

We only managed to attend the final parade on Sunday, but it was yet another show of true city-wide community proportions with thousands upon thousands of marching groups and bands.


All ages participating in the Easter Sunday Resurrection Procession

The costumes - every one of them immaculately detailed - looked stunning. Again, the questions ran through our minds as to who can possibly foot the bill for such sumptuous threads. The thousands of participants, carried hundreds of thousands - if not millions - of carnations in every colour - many of which were dispatched into the crowds lined up on both sides of the street for the 2 or 3 mile route. We also wonder where such vast quantities of carnations could have been harvested for this event.


Babes in arms - not one detail of the costumes was missed out

We stood in one position for nearly ninety minutes and the procession still took around an hour of that time to completely pass us by, underlining the sheer scale of the day's event. Yet again, all ages were active participants - even babes were carried literally in arms - in the full regalia of their group. This will be yet one more video to add to the growing backlog of 'editing projects'!

The night the city burns...

The last view of our Falla before the ceremonial torching...

It was a most surreal experience right across the city. This yearly festival which, though only officially five days in actual duration, is in fact, a year-long labour of both love and money for many people. It ended abruptly in the very early hours of Thursday 20 March with the traditional burning of the Fallas across the city... a city which looked akin to the TV pictures of Beirut in my youth with burning pyres and thick black smoke rising across the skyline - accompanied by some of the most spectacular firework displays ever seen.

Wednesday evening, we headed for the city centre after dinner, to be accosted by young children throwing fireworks - a daily occurrence from 1 March onwards - arriving to view a number of the city's finest Fallas in their final hours of existence on this world...


Fallas in the city - the final few hours...

After a couple of hours of wandering throughout the streets, seeing the great works of art - each one caringly designed and built over the preceding twelve months - we ambled back to a side street near the market to see the some of the many marching bands returning from their own musical trips around the neighbourhoods - to set fire to the children's ninot - something which, every year begins at 10.30pm on the evening of the 19th.


The first lick of the flames for the childrens' Falla


Another Falla...


...another fire!

Returning back to the apartment in Avenida de Francia for the midnight burning of our 'own' Falla, we discovered that since the fire brigade (bomberos in Castilian Spanish; bombers in Valenciano) have to be present at every burning, the allotted time for Avenida de Francia was not in fact midnight, but 1.30am the next morning, so we managed to keep some very tired children up for another hour-and-a-half until the bombers finally arrived to assist the local association in the cremation of the Falla.


The biggest Falla this year - a €900,000 investment at Nou Campanar - and a great bonfire to boot!

None of the Brits present have ever experienced anything quite like the burning of a Falla. With hours of build-up, the final few minutes before 'lighting time' were conducted with a dousing of the structure in something highly flammable; fireworks kept going off all around us - many of them lit by myself and the children - totally legally, of course; the Falla Queens continued to meet and greet their followers; the bombers set up their firehoses; and the Valencian Anthem was playing steadily louder.


Outside our apartment, seconds after the Falla Queen lit the fuse... whoosh!

Finally, the TV cameras moved into position and the skies erupted with an amazing five-minute display of synchronised rockets before the Falla Queen was invited down to light the final 'fuse' - a string of exploding fire-crackers leading to the foot of the massive Falla. With an almighty bang and an instantaneous, searing whoosh of heat which left us and all the other spectators running backwards for shelter, the Falla exploded into a fireball of flames. As the fireball became an inferno, the bombers began hosing - not the fire - but the walls of our apartment (less than 3 metres from the edge of the flames) and the trees and shrubs surrounding the fire. This continued for much of the next thirty minutes or so until the final struts of the supporting frame of the Falla were reduced to a pile of burning embers and the bombers finally turned their hoses onto the fire itself, extinguishing the flames in a matter of a few minutes, turning the once-sweltering furnace into a giant pile of steaming charcoal and the Falla was no more.

As a footnote - the next morning, as promised - there was not a shred of evidence where the Falla had once stood, that anything had ever occurred. No scorch-marks. No burned embers. Just a simple road junction returned to its former state.


An amazing display of flowers at Plaza de la Virgen - creating a gigantic effigy of Our Lady every year as part of the Fallas celebrations. This year, the event coincided with Easter week


Yet more flowers at Plaza de la Virgen - their placement witnessed by tens of thousands of spectators - we could only get near nearly two days after the final flowers were laid

I now fully understand the explanations given of the Fallas festival in the tourist brochures. They talk about the history and tradition of Fallas and explain that Valencian people have learned to control fire. I have to admit, I was sceptical and thought this a bit of marketing bravado; however I now truly believe it really is the case. In many ways, 'our' Falla at Avenida de Francia was in one of the more 'open' locations - being plonked in the middle of a T-junction between a minor side street and the main avenue itself with only one apartment block on one side and pretty much open space on the other three sides. Many of the other 700 or so Fallas throughout the city and beyond, were packed into small crossroads and junctions with antiquated apartment buildings, shops and other ancient structures closely packed in on all sides. Every single one of those Fallas was burnt in the early hours of Thursday morning and I have yet to hear of any injury or 'mistake' which led to the accidental burning down of any of those buildings.

It does seem the strangest series of rituals - and for a 'tourist', quite a sad end to what must have been a protracted year-long programme of planning work, designing, building, fundraising, meetings and rehearsals. Perhaps for the people who create, celebrate and then burn these amazing structures, it is a simple repetition of a ritual passed down through the years in the same way as any other cultural practice. The Fallas year begins on 20 March each year - right after the last of the embers are cleared away from the previous Cremà.

I have video of many aspects of Fallas. I mean... I HAVE hours and hours of video! I will try to get some edited back to 10-minute slots as soon as I can in order to show off some of the highlights on this blog. In the meantime, Fallas has taught me quite a lot about what is and what is not a genuine community event - one which appears not to require a flood of public subsidy and government targets to ensure it provides value for the public purse, or the correct level of engagement and 'access' amongst its population. The event continues year after year - paid for by voluntary public subscription and private sponsorship. It truly involves everyone in some way or another - whether through participating in one of the 300 or more marching bands across the city, competing in the numerous Fallas Queen competitions, involvement in the Flower Offering at Plaza de la Virgen - even buying and throwing fireworks, eating and drinking the festive refreshments or participating in the many street events.

Day Three of Fallas

Traditional Valencian Fallas costumes for the Fallera Queens and their courts

A relatively quiet day as far as we are concerned - probably due mainly to the fact that we have plenty of work to do this week and have therefore not spent too much time away from the apartment. [Indeed, the only time we ventured out this morning was when Liz walked over to the El Saler Shopping Centre at the other side of the riverbed to see if she could obtain tickets for the Valencia CF versus Barcelona match in the city this Thursday. After two hours of queuing, a déjà vu experience when it was discovered that the box office system wasn't working... then it would only issue tickets in 'ones'... then there were just a handful of single tickets left... no use to us - another wasted morning queuing in Valencia - just like the Three Days at the Opera last November!]

However, the sounds of Valencia and indeed the experience of walking through the streets must be something akin to walking through the streets of Beirut, although thankfully without the death and destruction - purely the ongoing noise and smell of explosives. We had a handful of mascletàs across the panoramic vista from our balcony at 2.00pm this afternoon. The despertà this morning was lively and as with the mascletà, it appears to get louder everyday. The sound of the marching bands mixed with the cracks and bangs of fireworks commenced at 8.00am. If anything, the fact that today was a Monday and nominally some people were apparently at work and not chucking fireworks, maybe the despertà fireworks weren't as loud as yesterday's, but this was more than compensated by the marching bands. Not being especially fond of brass brands or their music, there is something very appealing about Valencian marching bands. The music has a real appeal - possibly the repetitive nature of many of the traditional songs or possibly it's the beat of the drums. The children are now beginning to whistle some of the catchiest Valencian rhythms, and indeed both Chris and Jo are able to sing the Valencian anthem - in Valenciano. Must check out the copyright and see if I can use the music to accompany some of my many hours of video already 'in the can' for my Fallas record.

Later this afternoon , we ambled down to El Corté Inglés to buy some tickets for the ATP Tennis Open Finals in Valencia (incidentally, we managed to get front row seats for five people for less than the cost of a single ticket at Wimbledon - let's hope the final is between Andy Murray and Rafael Nadal! One successful ticketing story today at least!). The walk to El Corté Inglés is around 500 metres, but as we now know, during Fallas, it is a treacherous journey, safe only for non-combustible humans or the deaf and hard-of-hearing! The noise from the fireworks being lobbed, dropped and surreptitiously left in our path gave us whistling ears by the time we got home. Most of the combatants (!) were 5-6 year-olds and the effects of their parents' pyrotechnic budgets can be seen in the variety of new dances we are now all easily able to perform as we move gracefully up and down the streets avoiding the fizzing firecrackers.

Fallas: build-up to the biggest street festival in the world?

One small piece of one relatively small Falla... out of around 700 Fallas currently installed throughout Valencia

We're already at day two of the official Fallas festival here in Valencia. It runs annually (officially) from 14 to 19 March each year, culminating in the celebrations of St Joseph's Day on Wednesday 19 March.


The Falla outside our apartment on Avenida de Francia. It's closest point is less than five metres from the apartment block. What will happen on Wednesday during la cremà when the whole lot goes up in flames? Better check the insurance policy!

Whilst we may be at only the second day, it seems that the festival has been going on, at least in part, since 20 March 2007 - the formal end of last year's celebrations mean the immediate start to preparations for the following year's events.

This festival is so vast in every sense of the word - it encompasses the true community involvement of all the city's residents (the city claims a current population just below 800,000 but this figure is said to swell to more than three million during Fallas); the sheer sums of money involved (all private funding - not a penny of subsidy!); the scale of the event - as many as 700 Fallas statues across the city, ranging in budget from €6,000 to €900,000 (rumour has it) - some of them as high as 20 metres; the marching bands (official figures state that there are over 300 marching bands in the city alone); the daily mascletàs at the Ayuntamiento (town hall square); and now across the city every day, the nightly fireworks in the Turia riverbed; the hundreds if not thousands of marquees set-up alongside each Falla - adorned with banners and hoardings from the Fallas sponsors; the temporary refreshment stands everywhere stocked with buñuelos and hot chocolate, horchatas with fartons (cold drink made from tiger-nuts with dunking doughnuts!); the hundreds of thousands of children as young as three or four huddled in groups with their burning wicks, setting light to the petardos, bombetas and on occasion, huge firecrackers, rockets and other explosive devices (rumour has it the EU tried to ban children from buying and throwing fireworks in Valencia, but somehow the legislation failed - the region has to amend its own legislation each year to permit children to buy and throw fireworks from 1-20 March), the daily deafening wake-up call at 8.00am of la despertà - a cacophony of marching bands and petardos liberally blasted up and down each street, giving a formal welcome to the day's festivities (firework-throwing seems to run to an approximate timetable of 8.00am to 4.00am the following day, though not everyone abides by the four-hour ceasefire!); the endless parades of floats, bands, horses and more... much more besides...


The sheer scale of these structures is mind-boggling. Las Vegas would rank a poor second to some of these giants!

We have never seen anything like it, and there are another three full days to go before a series of concluding events.

The mascletàs have been going off every day at the Ayuntamiento - and elsewhere - since 1 March, and this is set to continue up until Wednesday 19 March, when at 2.00pm, the final mascletà promises to be the longest and loudest series of explosions we have ever heard. So far, the daily events have averaged around 7-8 minutes, getting progressively louder with each successive minute - indeed each successive day! This is perhaps the most audible evidence that Fallas is just around the corner. Indeed as I write this on Sunday afternoon, the siesta is interrupted every few seconds with an explosion - and every few minutes, the sounds of a marching band. From 2.00pm onwards we were able to no only hear but to see around half a dozen mascletàs being set off across the city over the tops of buildings across a panorama from our apartment.

There's still another 10 hours of Sunday to go but we can now understand why they say the city doesn't sleep whilst Fallas is in town...

It's getting louder...

Well, it's getting closer.

The Fallas season officially starts this Saturday, 15 March at midnight with Plantà, the erection of around 350 Fallas statues across the city, and ends with their torching at La Cremà at midnight on Wednesday 19 March - Saint Joseph's Day. The daily Mascletàs continue (after a brief cessation on Saturday as a mark of respect, following a terrorist murder in Northern Spain). Today's Mascletà appears below and they really are getting louder every day (though yesterday's may well have been an exception - admittedly we were standing much closer but the sound was absolutely deafening and the 'drum roll' effect continued for the best part of a minute - the buildings and the ground shook all around us). We cannot understand how any windows remain in their frames with explosions of such veracity continuing for around six or seven minutes daily. One thing though: having felt rather ambivalent towards Mascletàs before we saw our first one 'up front and personal', we now totally understand the excitement and the attraction as well as the artistry. God knows how much each session costs - or who pays - but fireworks seem to be the stock-in-trade of Valencia and it seems the pyrotechnic companies continue to outdo each other at every available opportunity. Even tonight another spectacular took place down in the riverbed - presumably another corporate junket.

I hope to find time to cover some of the history of Fallas in one of my subsequent blogs, but meanwhile there are a number of worthwhile online resources available including Fallas from Valencia, Wikipedia and the official Fallas.com website.

Fallas and the mascletàs are on their way...

Apologies for the lack of posts recently. Something of a work and visitors glut which means time has been scarce online. However, we did finally manage to co-ordinate a trip to our Spanish lessons at Hispania Escuela with a visit to the daily 2.00pm Mascletà in the Plaza Ayuntamiento (town hall). I have also managed to edit the video down to around 6.5 minutes. Let's see if it works:

Castles (and smoke!) in the air

Xativa Castle

Recovering from the mid-life crisis of my birthday the previous day, might best be described as 'out of the frying pan and into the fire'! Sunday last, we decided to pay a visit to 'Titanic - the Exhibition' - a more-or-less year-long audio-described tour of photographs and 'memorabilia' from one of the world's most notable human catastrophes of the last century. Situated underneath l'Umbracle - yet another Santiago Calatrava architectural masterpiece in the City of Arts and Sciences - the Titanic tour was a triumph of presentation and fascinating for people of all ages, as the whole event was seen through the stories of those who survived and perished on that ship. A great way to spend a couple of hours. In the evening, we returned to the nearby Hemisferic, Calatrava's IMAX cinema-cum-planetarium to see the documentary film about the rediscovery of the Titanic wreck and the first few submarine trips down to the bottom of the ocean to recover some of the many artefacts. All in all, a thoroughly worthwhile event and the exhibition remains in Valencia until March 2008, so any of our guests visiting us before Spring next year will be offered this treat!

It's been an interesting week for several reasons. Firstly, unlike the UK, Spain seems to plonk its Festivals (Bank Holidays) wherever they fall in the calendar and in this case, we celebrated Valencia Day (Día de la Comunidad Valenciana) on Tuesday and Spain Day (Día de la Hispanidad) on Friday, so with two non-contiguous holidays, the children have had a disjointed school week. On top of this, it is 50 years this week since the great River Turia Flood (13 and 14 October 1957), and as if to mark the event (we did, but more of that later), Thursday night saw the heavens open and torrential rain, thunder and lightning storms over many hours on Thursday night to Friday morning, with the resultant flash floods and on-going blustery weather. I should hasten to add that, having watched archive footage of the '57 flood, the squalls of this week bore no comparison.


Chris, Sandra, Jo and Susana at Xativa Castle

So, Valencia Day: With our friends Manoli, Angel, Susana and Sandra, we made our way inland to the city of Xativa, around 40 kilometres from Valencia, to walk around the castle which provides both a beautiful vista of the city below, and is itself, a stunning, restored and well-maintained gem reflecting Xativa's past importance as a major city from the Valenciana region.

Now, we drove to the castle after deciding that the festivities of the day would not be overly grand in the city of Valencia itself. We heard later that, well, "they sort of blew up the city centre at lunchtime!" which seems to be code for the local practice of igniting fireworks whatever the time of day or night. Mascletàs (as the daytime fireworks are known) are let off around 1pm or 2pm at various times of year, notably Fallas in March as well as Valencia Day, and, it seems, almost any other day when there are a few spares kicking around. They are loud - deafeningly loud - and we didn't miss out by being 40 kilometres away in Xativa - they've heard of them there too!


Marching bands celebrating Día de la Comunidad Valenciana

However, if disappointed not to have been "blown up" in Valencia at lunchtime, we ambled our way down to the Turia riverbed by the Palau de la Musica at dusk for the finale celebrations of the day, to see local dancing, marches and music. We did wonder why we appeared to be going in the opposite direction to the children and young families who appeared to be leaving the festivities. "It's over", said Liz. "Let's just go there for the walk then", said I.


We saw the knights on horseback

A colourful and eventful evening was obviously on the cards, and pretty soon we discovered why the young children and families had beaten a path home not twenty minutes before we arrived...


Human sparklers like you've never seen before

Quite who had been employed to walk around as human incendiary devices, I am not sure but it made the most spectacular sight, though the acrid smoke was more than many could take after a couple of minutes and I found myself diving for fresh air after every few camera shots. I kept thinking, "I wonder what the Health and Safety Reps back in the UK would make of all this. Has anyone done a risk assessment?!"