Injury

I had an awful misfortune today.

I was trotting peacefully down the stairs when I had the most dreadful mishap. 

I trod on an upturned drawing pin.

This was a terrible moment. 

Mark had gone to saw logs up at the farm, so I could not faint or retire to bed. I had to hop over to the table all by myself and pull it out.

It was quite stuck and I had to tug very hard. I was very upset, I can tell you.

There is a moment in A Game Of Thrones when somebody shoots Jon Snow in the leg with an arrow, and he has to pull it out, after he has ridden all night to save the kingdom, obviously.

It was just like that.

Well, it was a bit like that. There wasn’t quite so much blood, and I wasn’t riding a horse, and Jon Snow did not have to root about under the sink for Germolene ointment.

I could not have ridden all night with a drawing pin in my foot. It was far too traumatic. My admiration for the brave Men Of The Night’s Watch has increased all over again. 

I know it is only a story, but we watched it last night and so it was all very real and important today. The thing about not watching very many films is that when you do they carry on flickering about in your head for ages. 

I do not know how the drawing pin got there. It might be related to the Christmas decorations.

We have started to get these out, and this afternoon, when Mark came home from the farm, we put the reindeer poo Christmas tree up.

A spell in the garden seemed to have improved its contribution to the atmosphere. 

We did not decorate it, of course, because that is something that we do with the children. It would be dreadfully rubbish to do it by ourselves, like buying candy floss or playing on the skateboard park. Some things require the presence of youth.

However, we thought that if it was already standing there it could get all of its humming over and done with. Also we would already have done the dull bit where you spend ages propping bricks in the bucket and arguing about whether or not it is up straight, and tying it to picture hooks with bits of string. It will be nicely upright and ready for its new adventure when the children eventually do turn up. 

There is not going to be much time when we are all together.

You might remember that Lucy was going on a course in Manchester to learn about different methods of getting into fights outside nightclubs. Well that course was cancelled, fortunately before we booked her hotel stay, and she has been transferred on to another one, in Blackpool, starting next week.

We are not sorry about that. Hotels in Blackpool are not nearly so expensive. All the same, it means that she will be departing for Blackpool on the very day that Oliver comes home.

We are going to take her to Blackpool after Oliver’s carol service.

We are all going to go, probably in the camper van. 

We are going to go to the cinema, by way of a start-of-holiday adventure. After that we are going to leave her in Blackpool and dash home to carry on trying to raise the cash for December’s school fees, because these things do not stop just because it is Christmas. 

Lucy is not even going to come home afterwards.

She is going to get on the train and join us in Manchester for the pantomime.

It is all so close now that I feel a bit dizzy with it. There is no time left at all now, and I am not nearly organised.

I spent some time this morning buying Christmas presents online with Mark’s credit card, at least until it stopped working.

Somebody  rang up from Barclaycard an hour later to say that they had put a stop on it because they thought it might have been stolen. This was frustrating at the time, but probably for the best in the long run. 

They switched it back on again once they realised that it was me, and that I was allowed to use it.

It might have been better if they hadn’t.