Something dreadful happened yesterday.
While Mark was welding the taxi up, he got a bit of metal in his eye.
He asked me to get it out.
He would roll his eye lid back around a pencil, he explained, and I would scrape the metal out with the rounded end of a hair grip.
Readers, I can hardly describe how minimal my enthusiasm was for this procedure.
I demurred as much as I could without wishing to sound like an unloving wife.
I wondered if he had considered the doctor’s surgery.
I explained the difficulties of identifying minute metallic fragments with fifty four year old eyesight, but to no avail. Paddle your own canoe, he reminded me. We don’t need doctors.
This had turned out to be true when he cut his finger in half with the bench saw and we successfully knitted it back together with some antiseptic and some heavy duty plasters we had purchased in Boots. We all know that the NHS is overstretched, so I had to be brave.
I can hardly describe my massive relief when with a desk lamp in one hand and a hairgrip in the other, I investigated the source of the problem to find no chunks of rusty taxi anywhere at all.
I looked really thoroughly. His eyelid was red and sore, but undamaged.
We decided that it must have been a touch of arc-eye, which is a problem caused by accidentally seeing the light from a welder. It feels as if you have got sand in your eyes and is jolly unpleasant.
I was very relieved indeed, and indeed this morning it was a bit better, which it wouldn’t have been had it been full of taxi.
I got up to find my Facebook full of ranting about politics. As it happened we had listened to the House Of Commons as it was happening last night, by means of helping my sewing go with a swing.
I almost wrote ‘debate’ in there, but it wasn’t one. I know what a debate is, it involves discussion and the exchange of ideas.
We listened to it anyway, because we are interested in politics, and went to bed feeling sad and worried.
I was not in the least pleased to get up to find people going on and on about it on Facebook when I got up. I used to like Facebook, but since the referendum about Europe it has become more and more upsetting to read.
Once upon a time it was full of nice things. There were slightly embarrassing inspirational quotations pasted over pictures of horses galloping into the sunset. There were cats falling off wardrobes. There were pictures of unidentifiable and unappealing children shared by proud parents with details of some boring achievement. There were advertisements for brightly coloured patchwork coats that I really wanted but couldn’t afford. There were pictures of puddles on wet days. Every now and again the twerp who is our local MP used to contribute some tiresome drivel, which I skimmed past hastily, but it is his job to do that, so I didn’t mind really.
I liked it all very much.
There are hardly any of those things any more, and instead there are a lot of pictures of Union Jacks and European flags. There are pictures of teenagers bellowing at grown up Heads of State. There are pictures of teenagers who have tried to make the world a better place by becoming terrorists. There are lots of angry words, and reading them made me feel sad and worried all over again.
I decided this morning that I did not want to feel sad and worried any more. so I deleted the lot, and blocked the most persistent.
I considered closing my Facebook account, and I might still do that. Just at the moment it is staying open, so if you read these pages on Facebook you will still be able to get them, but it is quite possible that I will withdraw in the future, so you will have to find them on Google or something.
I felt much better once I had done it. If I want to read troubling rants I know where the BBC website is.
I took the taxi back for another MOT and of course this time it passed, which was a relief. I can now sit on the taxi rank with a clear conscience.
Have a picture of the autumn taken on our run this morning.
It should have been a walk really but I am hoping to be thinner by Christmas.
Ho ho ho.
