I don’t know if it was just the fact that we had a lot of children at the toddlers group today and the slide was turned out to be the item they all wanted to use but it built up a lot of static electricity. I spotted that to a limited extent a few week ago (one of the kids got a wonderful ‘Einstein’ look when he sat at the top of the slide with his fine and slightly wayward hair) but it seemed even more so today. Sometimes I could feel little shocks of static discharge as I reached out to steady the younger ones at the top, or to calm down the boisterous who hadn’t quite grasped the idea of waiting in turn.

I do have an antistatic bracelet in my computer repair kit but I don’t think I can safely ground myself without causing a trip hazard (lots of toddlers whizzing round the room). I’ll have to see if it happens again and, if necessary, come up with a plan before I accidentally zap a child and send them across the room in a flash of blue light! To be honest, I didn’t get a sense that any of them particularly noticed as they were more excited about climbing the steps and having another go but I would like to pin down what is going on and whether, as seems to be the case, it is becoming more a pronounced phenomenon.