My Englishman has a penchant for extreme adventure.
Here’s Freddie!
Stretching his retinas via a bungy cord, getting fresh air by moutain biking down a mountain (a real one in NZ not a pommy pretender) and jumping out of helicopters is all part of his zest for life. He’s the kind of man who likes to deal with the fly pest problem by lighting spray deoderant and incinerating them with a blast of fire.
Obviously, I’ve learnt to cope with his daring ways and am rarely surprised by his latest crazy fixation.
“I’m off scuba diving with sharks”
“Super darling!”
“Oh hun I need the car tomorrow as I’m driving across the Gobi desert with only two days worth of water.”
“Lovely. I’ll just fix a survival pack.”
“Honey, where’s your tweezers? I need to remove some pellets from my thigh?”
Sorry? You got shot?
Naturally, living with such an adventure freak means that I am forever recalling the sage lessons I learnt back when I was a Girl Guide. Take last night for example…
Husband was off feeding his latest death-wish by clambering up and down hills looking for his lost Remote Controlled plane. I was delighted when he first took up RC plane flying because I figured; a)it’s difficult to kill yourself when your feet don’t leave the ground, and b) no-one’s shooting at him (always a bonus).
He did have a dawdle with danger when he was playing with the motor and the whizzy propellors sliced the top of his finger off, but he’s got nine more that are all good.
So he was off merrily looking for the lost plane at White Hill last night, (no souls were lost in this aviation disaster) and I was happily dealing to my blogging fixation when I was surprised by him calling me from downstairs. Off I trot.
Oh dear reader, the scene was beyond anything I could have dreamt. There was claret everywhere. In pools on the floor. On his hands, smudged on his cheek, and even on the handle of the exceedingly sharp carving knife he’d placed carefully (bit late for that care eh!) on the counter.
At this point I stammered more F bombs than Hugh Grant can muster in the opening scenes of Four Weddings and a Funeral.
“What happened?”
“The bandaids won’t stick!”
“No they don’t stick to streams of blood!”
” I was looking for my plane and I came a cropper.”
“You fell over Freedie Kruger? On White Hill?”
Obviously a more dangerous part of the country than I’d previously realised.
“I fell on the knife.”
I glanced down at the squidgey mess of his knee which was now pooling nicely in clumps of black blood. Despite my curiosity about the spongey looking matter which looked a little like tendon or sinew slipping out of the hole in his leg, I asked the obvious question.
“Why did you have the bloody knife?”
For clearing jungle? For subduing snakes? For fixing a nice country snack? (It was after all one of my best cooking knives sharpened to a lethal edge.)
“For. Clearing. The. Nettles.”
I glanced at him sadly and suggested I take him to the nearest A&E so that they could have a look at his leg (and quite possibly his head!) and put in a few stitches. It only took 5 hours to be seen and as I drove him home at 2am- all stitched up and ready to break his crown again - I thanked my lucky stars that I had listented intently to my first aid lessons when I was a teen.
Obviously, I had excelled in triage as I’d picked (correctly) that bandaids will not fix a gaping hole in a man’s leg.
Those Girl Guide badges? I own them. Just call me Florence Nightingale.
The lady with the (acetylene) lamp.
Lord give me strength!
How do you keep from killing your dare devil OH?
GG image Flickr CC-http://www.flickr.com/photos/lwr/
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