Errant Fire Hose

Well, y'know Saturday's post? - On Sunday my wife went to a Top Team event, which is where some keen work colleague pressurizes everyone to enter a carnival and hop about in four-in-a-sack-race and carry-water-in-your-welly-boots-while-wearing-them games.

About halfway through a fire hose blew a nozzle thingy out of the end and the hose started lashing about like a wild thing, knocking over a pushchair, a nurse, and slicing my wife's foot open to the tendons. She needed seven stitches. The gash was two and a half inches long. It bled through the pressure bandage afterwards and she had to have it dressed again. My finger didn't hurt nearly as much when I saw the wound. She fondly imagines she won't be playing tennis until Thursday. When she cancelled tomorrow's lesson her coach sent her a text:

Sorry to hear that. You never know when you're going to be hit by a fireman's hose.

I consulted a former fireman who chances to be a mathematics graduate. I learnt that fire hoses operate at 130 psi and a 25 metre hose weighs 25 kg. The mathematician calculated that when a hose nozzle thingy breaks and whacks your foot open, the force delivered = Enormous.

Meanwhile my son has found the following two advertisements in the school magazine, whose juxtaposition is not entirely irrelevant in the circumstances.