Having flattened the cardboard and feeling pretty good about my green start to the day, I forgot to look where I was going. The searing pain in my foot as I speared myself on a garden fork that had fallen – and I have no one to blame but myself for this – near the door, dealt with that quick smart.
Beneath the cardboard I couldn’t see my foot and I thought I’d just knocked it. I winced and carried on as you do. Except that after two steps it was obvious that my foot was sloshing about inside my shoe. I tend not to make a fuss and since it was seven in the morning there was no one about to rush to my aid even if I had. But the cardboard was abandoned while I squelched my way into the kitchen, grabbed a tea towel to catch the blood and applied pressure.
I grabbed a box of plasters and here’s a thing. Whenever I cut my finger I can only find plasters the size of my hand. Today, when I wanted something big, I could only find the kind you stick on fingers. But there’s something in the plaster pad that helps stop bleeding so I stuck away, replacing rapidly as necessary, then propped my foot up. I think it was the propping up that did it, to be honest.
I now have a garden fork tine shaped hole in my right foot, a small bruise and some swelling. Not much to show for the drama - or the pain..
The foot is sore and I have the joy of a tetanus booster to look forward to tomorrow - and I am reminded of an incident in the best beloved's distance past when he was hit on the chin with a shovel by an irate labourer on site he was managing. The doc insisted on giving him a tetanus jab. The bb resisted, explaining that it was a very clean shovel. The doctor, without batting an eyelid, merely inquired whether it had been sterilised.
So I'm writing this with my foot up on a dining chair, feeling a bit limp, but honestly I look around at what else is happening in the world and, on the scale of 1 – 10, I reckon my little accident doesn’t even register.
And the good news is that I’m excused gardening for the rest of the week.
