A Little Ocular Jocularity

Image from PictureSpider

I’ve had a busy few weeks, giving poetry readings and attending poetry events of one sort or another.  A lot of saliva flies around at poetry readings; have you noticed?  Sibilance by its very nature demands a level of spit not seen anywhere outside of a snake hissing contest.

The result of all that liberated discharge, however, is that at some point I contracted a cold.  I felt rough – really rough; rougher than a cold should make one feel; but I am of a delicate nature, of course, as I might have mentioned once or several hundred times.  I was useless for the first three days and then the mucus began its exodus and then it eased and then I started with a sore throat and then the sneezies came.

It was at that point, lying in bed feeling very sorry for myself, that I remembered that I had once read that you can’t sneeze with your eyes open, or your eyeballs will fall out.

Now this is one of those things that I believed I didn’t believe, so when I felt a sneeze coming on, I decided to try to keep my eyes open.  The things we invalids have to do to keep ourselves amused.

When it came to it, however, I chickened out. Apparently, I do believe that if I sneeze with my eyes open, my eyeballs will fall out. I was assailed with a terrible image of a huge sneeze and…plop…plop…stinging eyeballs caused by carpet fibres (apparently you can feel carpet fibres even though your retinas are literally detached.  In my world, anyway).   I could hear myself screaming at the Hub, My eyes!  My eyes!  Don’t stand on my eyes!  

There was I at three a.m., 52 years old and afraid to sneeze in case my baby blues fell out. (My baby blues are actually hazel, but ‘baby hazels’ doesn’t have the same ring to it).  I think may have overdosed on the cough medicine.

Tell me you’ve got a similarly ludicrous fear; please.  Eye don’t want to be alone.

The Kindness Of Stockport Strangers

Image from Wikipedia
What happened to Zemanta?  I’m away for one short month and WordPress has changed everything.
I feel a prompt post coming on…

Yo, readers!  I’m back!  Did you miss me?  I told you I’d be back.  Thank you for your patience.

I had a lovely blogging break and feel refreshed and ready to write again…or I did, until yesterday.

Back With A Bang…Literally

I had intended to write my first post-break post tomorrow, on the first (you will note that my break didn’t wash away my propensity for mangled sentences; there’s no break in the world long enough to make that happen), but I had such a day yesterday, I wanted to tell you all about it; and to boast about how kind the people of Stockport are.

The day began in the ordinary way: at 08:35, my Yorkshire Terriers Toby and Molly, my friend Pam and I left my house for our weekly walk along the river Mersey, on the Pennine Way.  It takes us into the heart of Stockport, under the M60 motorway, but away from roads, so it’s safe to let the dogs off the lead.

We’d been out about fifteen minutes and Toby was a little way off, investigating smells.  Have you ever walked Yorkshire Terriers? They were bred as ratters. Try throwing a ball – they’ll get halfway to where it lands and be distracted by a smell, à la Doug and squirrel in Up, and that will be that for the game of Fetch as far as a Yorkie is concerned.

Toby was nose-deep (probably in something disgusting), when his body language changed and he realised he was being stared at intensely by a large dog which had come up behind us, a husky-type dog.  The husky charged, scenting prey. Toby legged it.  He ran up the path, under the subway and followed the path until it turned left.

I acted instinctively, forgot I was fifty and charged after him, yelling his name in what was intended as a command but which came out as a whiny beg.  Fortunately, Pam had the presence of mind to grab Molly before she ran after me running after the husky running after Toby.  We must have been quite a sight, with the husky owner running after me running after the husky running after Toby…who ran into rush hour traffic.

I rounded the corner as he dashed across the far four lanes.  The traffic in the two lanes closest to me had stopped so I belted over to the other pavement and suddenly realised I was running downhill, faster than I’ve ever run before, and I would very shortly be crashing face-first to the ground.

And lo, it came to pass.  My left hand must have taken the impact because it hurt-hurt-hurts today, up my arm to my shoulder.  I thought at first I had sprained it and I’m lucky not to have broken it, such was my momentum.  It is worth the pain because my face merely bounced off the pavement, leaving no scratches or bumps, just temporary indentations where my glasses had tried to give me eyes in the back of my head.

A car pulled up, and another, I think.  Someone helped me stand, a cyclist chased off after Toby, who was running the wrong way through the cars on a busy intersection.

Image from webaviation.co.uk 

See the triangle of grass above the .co.uk?  I had crossed the diagonal red path above it and was now prostrate on the path to its left.  Toby was running down the slip road in front of the Pyramid, which has a large white truck going one way and a yellow van going the other.

And I will stop there for today, for two reasons:

1. Always leave them wanting more and

2. My arm hurts. Which leads to three:

3. Always leave them feeling sorry for you: it may result in chocolate.

Pill-Advised

Cover of Speed (Widescreen Edition)

If given the choice, are you the kind of person who takes the red pill, or the blue pill? Why? When do you willfully do the opposite?

“You take the blue pill – the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill – you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes.” – Morpheus (from the film The Matrix)

This question doesn’t apply to me; I don’t do drugs.  Or The Matrix.  I liked Keanu Reeves in Speed, though.  I’d take the red pill to be cuddled by him when the thing comes sliding out of the bus while the CCTV has been doctored. 

Only I wouldn’t.  I don’t do scared.  Anxious, yes.  Is there a pill for that?

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Snow: The Dirty Underbelly

The snow fun is starting to fade: the central heating is on all day, waiting to infect us with its germs; neighbours’ bones are being broken on ice traps; dog poo lurks beneath each virgin crunch.  Yesterday we took the boys to a new park so they could use their sled – fantastic bargain: I bought it in 1996 for £6.99; it’s made of cheap plastic (blue, naturally) but it has lasted the boys 13 winters.  They were having great fun coming down a hill and we were having great fun watching them, when we were suddenly under a hail of snowballs.  A bunch of lads thought we were a perfect target.  Fortunately, we were just behind a young tree and it gave us some protection; I moved Toby between us.   It wasn’t a normal, fun snowball fight, like my neighbour’s three daughters ganging up on him in the car park this morning;  it was a malicious targeting.  The Hub saw something similar the day before, when a gang of boys aimed a volley at two little girls – walking with their parents! – across the road.  He was in the car and reacted quickly enough to put it between the lads and their victims, so the snowballs (some with stones inside) were intercepted before they could do any damage.

The Hub had terse words with the lads firing at us (along the lines of ‘this stick’ and ‘shove it where the sun don’t shine’), but he was wasting his breath.  We moved away and the lads followed us.  It was horrible.  The question is, what do you do in such a situation?  In his younger, healthier and angrier days it wouldn’t have been a question at all, but the Hub is a little older, a lot less healthy, and very much wiser than he once was, and he knew it wasn’t worth fighting back: if they don’t bring out sticks, knives, stones, whatever, they know the law is on their side.  Any fightback on the Hub’s part and he’s the one facing jail for defending us.  Britain is a mess.  An Englishman’s home is no longer his castle, but the Council’s, who can walk in any time to check that you are recycling or illegally hypnotising your husband or for a thousand other reasons (see this link: http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/2785678/Shock-figures-reveal-high-numbers-of-council-staff-can-break-into-our-homes.html).  If his castle can no longer be defended then it follows he’s got no chance out on the street.  We did the sensible thing and walked away, but it stuck in the craw.  British citizens’ rights are being lost, one snowball at a time.

If you are wondering what our boys were doing while this was happening, Spud was oblivious to it, being too busy freewheeling down wet hillsides on an abandoned road sign.  Three slides in and the sled died, I’m sorry to report: the boys came down the hill together on it and hit the ramp they had been aiming for; the sled snapped in two and Tory Boy flew off on his piece to the left; Spud flew off right on the other.  Thank goodness for sign-stealing vandals, I say, or how would our children be able to play?

As soon as TB realised something was going on he went on alert.  He encouraged his brother to carry on sledding while he stood and watched carefully in case it all kicked off.  He is very much like his father and not afraid of a fight, but he has at least listened to Dad and doesn’t now just throw himself in there.  We have taught the boys not to be afraid of a fight, but to walk away from it if at all possible.  I would have liked to be able to teach them to turn the other cheek but, in the world in which we live, that could easily mean a bottle in the face.  I don’t want them turning a literal blind eye to trouble.

TB did not leave his post until we had walked away from the bother.  I was scared for him but proud of him.  But how I wish I wasn’t.  I would love to live in a place where there are no thugs roaming the streets; no vandals ripping down road signs; no viciousness.  I know it doesn’t exist, but I’d like to think it’s possible.  Perhaps I was Sir Thomas More in a previous life.