Just a very few words due to the complete uneventfulness of January.
Mark has been doing something to the camper van axle. He explained it in detail to me but perhaps I was not exactly giving him my undivided attention because now that it comes to telling you I can’t remember a single word, except that he has brought a bit of it home in the back of the car and is going to polish it in the yard tomorrow.
He might not have said polish it.
He is definitely going to do something to it in the yard tomorrow. He has brought it back because he needs to use the electricity. I know that I nodded and agreed that it would be lovely, but exactly what he is doing will be a surprise.
Probably it won’t be a surprise because it is most unlikely that I will pay much attention even when he is actually doing it.
Dreadfully, he came home with something in his eye. I do not at all like getting things out of eyes, but I am a loyal wife, and had a dutiful look.
To my massive relief I could not see anything. His eye was red and swollen and sore, and I looked very diligently, but no alien bits of axle were sticking out of it.
He explained that he had been cutting something and that it had been a hot spark.
We washed it out but it felt no better, so I belted across the road to ask the pharmacist for some medical advice. We do not have private health insurance and so the nice chap at the chemist is our first and last stop for healthcare these days, hurrah for the Government. I know somebody whose teenage daughter was suffering from depression who was told by the social services that the only way for her to get help would be for her to have cut herself so badly that she needed A&E. Personally I would rather go and see the pharmacist, he might not be allowed to hand out any useful medication but he is cheerful and sensible and always brightens my day a bit.
He was in agreement with me that Mark had very probably burned his eye a bit, which was why it was horribly sore.
He said that water did not help, and the lady who helps behind the counter wanted to know why, in that case, when you get something in your eye does it always tell you on the bottle to wash it out with lots of water. The pharmacist said that was because you should not always listen to tripe told to you on washing up liquid bottles and gave me a bottle of saline for further washing adventures, which he said probably wouldn’t help much either but would be sterile and much better for the eye than actual tap water.
He agreed with me that probably the absolute best thing for eyes was the stuff that the vet had given us for the dogs, but we had used all of that, and he is not allowed to hand it out without a prescription, which we both knew would take at least a fortnight, so he gave me some moisturising stuff which he said would ease the worst of it, and that if I told Mark it was a terrific painkiller it would probably work best.
When I got home I squirted it in his eye and gave him some drugs, which worked best after half a bottle of wine to wash them down. After that it wasn’t nearly so red, and he was sore but resigned.
In fact that was the exciting highlight of the day, I did mention that we were having an uneventful January. I can, however, warn you that some exciting times are coming up, because we have worn a hole in our bed-sheet. I will patch this tomorrow when I get round to it, but it is looking very much as though we will be looking on the mighty Internet for some new ones. I am already beginning to turn my attention to this, it is very absorbing indeed, I can tell you.
I would not wish to leave you out of such a thrilling adventure, and so over the next few days the Quest For New Bed Linen will be coming up.
Stay turned for the next thrilling instalment.
I do like to leave my readers with a cliff-hanger.
