I have become temporarily disabled.
I spent a very productive morning creating some order out of the horrible mess in the loft, which was, caused, of course, by the appalling shipwreck of the children’s luggage crashing down on the home shores at the end of the school term.
I have been looking at it, or perhaps more accurately described as determinedly not looking at it, for over a month, and the day of action arrived today, partly due to wishing to atone for a feeling of mild guilt about being a badly-behaved rascal at the weekend.
I dragged underwear and socks and tights out, then started creating order out of chaos by the uncomplicated method of stuffing things into bags, one bag for too-small uniform, another bag for uniform that needed new name tags sewing in, a bag for things to pass on to Number One Daughter’s niece, a sports bag each, a bedding bag each, their enormous hold-everything luggage bags, a rubbish bag, and of course, the inevitable largest of all, the Laundry Bag.
This last was an enormous net sack, and I filled it.
I have of course already been through their stuff for obvious washing, but when I started looking properly this morning there was an awful lot that I had missed, including a couple of sheets and a dressing gown and a lot of muddy sports kit, so when I came to haul it down three flights of stairs it was a bit like trying to carry a disabled hippopotamus.
In order for the next bit of the story to make sense I have got to go back in time a bit, in fact to early this year, when I got a revolting yellow fungus infection in my toenails.
I treated it myself very effectively by filling my socks with Bordeaux Mixture for a couple of days, which worked brilliantly, although turned my feet blue, which looked a bit odd at the swimming pool, but unfortunately did not mend the large crack which had developed across my toenail where my nail had tried to flake away from the alien slime which had pooled underneath before it was vaporised by the Bordeaux Mixture.
It was this crack which caused the problem today.
As I staggered down the stairs with my net sack of hippopotamus I caught the cracked toenail in the net and tore it in half and off my foot.
In the place where my admittedly unattractive yellow toenail had been, there remained only a ragged, bloody stump.
If I tell you that I was too upset even to swear you will understand the scale of the disaster. I went a bit white and sick and sat down suddenly on the stairs staring at it in a silent gasp of horror.
After that I hopped agonisingly down the stairs to the kitchen where I smothered the ruin of my toe in antiseptic and several plasters and then some masking tape just to be on the safe side. We didn’t have any general anaesthetic, apart from the last bottle of Eau de Vie, and I thought that was better avoided due to still feeling a bit fragile after the weekend.
There was nobody else in the house. Lucy was at work and Mark had gone for a job interview. I sat mournfully at the kitchen table and wallowed in lonely self-pity until I got bored with it and then had to limp around the kitchen to fill the washing machine.
Mark was very sympathetic, and hardly laughed at all when he got home. He very kindly lent me an arm to hobble across the road to take Oliver’s tweed jacket to the dry cleaners and get some more milk, and made me some coffee, and helpfully discouraged the dogs from jumping all over my feet.
Of course by now it is not nearly so bad, although I am still feeling very sorry for myself and yelping and wincing whenever anybody looks at it particularly hard. I suppose it may be some consolation for my offspring to know that it will serve as a deterrent to dancing for a week or two.
Mark got the job. It is not an ace job, just mechanical rather than engineering work, but it will be very useful to have an income over the winter.
Anyway, I will need somebody at home to look after me until my toenail grows back
