…and boy do I feel guilty!
At the weekend, Limpet and I were down at Braggers Wood, collecting a load of pioneering poles to bring back to the hut. On the way back, we stopped off at Lyndhurst.
There is this little shop that sells cheap toys and games, and in there, as well as finding a load of light footballs (which are an incredibly scarce commodity at present), I found these large soft frisbee type things. Eighteen inches diameter plastic ring, with a protective tube of foam rubber.
“Cool”, I thought. “We could heave these around all day at the hut and they won’t hurt anyone”. So I bought three of them.
Tonight (Monday) the expedition team have finished their meeting, so I decide to get them out for a chuck around. All is going fine for a few minutes, then I hear Chip comment “I haven’t had a throw yet!”.
So I aim one in his direction….
Now, I didn’t know this at the time, but there is a half inch gap, where the foam rubber doesn’t quite meet, and the plastic tube is exposed. Still, it’s quite a light plastic, so when I say that it caught Chip sweetly in the forehead, you may think “no harm done”.
…and that’s exactly what I thought, even when Chip slowly slid to the floor. It was only when I walked over to him and asked to take a look…..and the removed hand…and entire forehead were covered in blood….that I thought
“Ouch!”
I nearly had a funny moment, as I haven’t had to treat an injury in years (Gareth always took care of that, since he does it by profession - when are you coming back Gareth?), but then of course, the training kicks in. I was like, you know, ready to do CPR and cordon off the area and all that stuff…no sweat.
Chip nearly freaked out (I wonder if that should be ‘froke out’? wierd.) when he saw all the blood, but fair play to him - he manfully held on to his composure throughout the cleaning of the wound. And to be fair, there was a lot of blood - head wounds always look a lot worse than they actually are.
Once exposed, the cut was quite small, but quite deep, so he is going to have a nice battlescar to make me feel guilty whenever he feels like it in future!
Sorry Chip!
Back soon - Beginning of May
ouch! that must have stung. im never using one of them things again!