This week my husband was going away for a couple of days of intensive birding (bird watching for those who know what they’re talking about) so I decided to take the opportunity to revel in some less refined dining – namely new potatoes, roasted in the oven…in dripping and eaten as chips with mayo and bread and butter…with a couple of San Miguels!
So, having already sampled my first San Miguel, I set about breaking up the dripping, in its thin plastic pot, holding it in one hand, twisting a sharp knife into the dripping with my other hand. Needless to say this is a very stupid thing to do but I was behaving a bit more gung ho than usual. Anyway, as you’ve probably already guessed, the dripping cracked suddenly, and the knife went straight through the dripping, straight through the thin plastic pot and straight into the palm of my hand!
Immediately the hole in my hand filled with dark coloured blood, lots of it, and I had visions of it squirting upward like in the Freddie Krueger movie (the one starring Johnny Depp). I was standing next to the sink so I stuck my hand under the running water – is this a good thing to do? Or is this actually the wrong thing to do? Anyway, the pain I then felt was excruciating and I couldn’t bear it so I had to stop.
Stood in the kitchen, applying as much pressure as I could bear to the wound, and really started to panic. I was on my own, I was bleeding, I didn’t know how bad the wound was or how to fix it, and I didn’t know where my phone was. Might this be how it would all end for me, in this ridiculous, pointless manner? A stupid accident brought about by my loutish, careless abandon? After a couple of minutes had passed and I hadn’t collapsed or lost an extraordinary amount of blood I pulled myself together and went upstairs in search of a bandage (in the absence of which, I settled for a bandana).
My husband then returned early and thus saw me with my greasy hair, bandana-hand and slightly shocked demeanour. By this point the bleeding had ceased so my cut looked reasonably insignificant – needless to say he felt I was making a bit of a fuss about nothing!
In addition to this mini-drama I have also, during the course of this week, managed to: put a dent in the door of the Clio, just by parking too close to the hedge on our drive and flinging the door open to hastily; lose the top to my main memory stick (I recall having it in the garden, tucking it inside some kind of pocket/ case to ‘keep it safe’ but have hunted high and low since and have been unable to find it); drop a bottle on my foot on the way to the recycling tray outside, causing yet another toenail-bruise-which-will-take-years-to-grow-out thus leaving me at the mercy of nail polish!
I can only hope that this week is less eventful in the accident stakes!
Meanwhile, I have fashioned a laptop sunshade, based on the proper ones on the internet, out of a cardboard box and, if I balance a brolly (umbrella) on one side, I am able to see the screen whilst sitting in the garden…sure this somewhat defeats the object of sitting in the garden (since I am also largely in the shade) but it’s a start and means I can work on my creative writing whilst idling in the sun…now maybe if I could just get my hands on one of those IPads…
Gadael Ymateb