Let’s get one thing straight before we begin . It’s not the bees’ fault. Right ? The reason I’m sitting here like Charles Laughton as Quasimodo with my eye expanded like a duck egg with a fine red line dividing it neatly in two.
I’m sitting here listening to the radio wondering if I’m in a fit state for public consumption on this beautiful sunny October morn.The air is crisp and clean. Jude is on the radio commenting on a few stories in the Sunday papers. “Sunday Sequence ” is on the radio .There was some guy on earlier who recently discovered that he could no longer find God.Fair play to him ,I thought. Apparently he’d been a real gung- ho religious fellow who preached his faith assiduously and with great fervour .Then by increments the story began to make less and less sense to him and his view of how the world works. That’s usually how these things happen .It just doesn’t work for everyone .That’s all.Interesting in that it’s a reverse on the road to Damascus.A reverse gear Damascene experience then.
Anyway..I’m as stupid and as smart as the next fellow. I contradict my own best advice , just like everyone else.Never mess with the little honeybees. . I know…I know …! It only takes one rash move and whammo.! You’ve been nailed. I thought…lovely day , yesterday .Every bit as good as today.Get that lawn cut quickly and give myself time to move that wee fuchsia bush back against the fence around the front of the house. Just a few quick sweeps past the honeybee hives .They’ll be too busy to notice me and a lawnmower on a busy sunny day like this….
Wrong!!! Remember how i told you of their aversion to anything vaguely modern, fumey, smokey or noisy …like lawnmowers?
I felt the tiniest little nip at the side of my eyebrow and then it was gone . No more than a pinprick, really . I could hear the little girl rattling her wings and buzzing but I’m damned if I could see her or find her.That’s probably more disquieting than anything else. Anyway, Michael saw me flapping and abandoning the lawnmower and came to the rescue deftly flicking the little pointy lady away from where she was resting and possibly dying , just out of my line of vision , under my chin. Crafty , eh? I thought I’d made a fairly clean getaway really. There was no pain or reaction at all so I was able to spend the next couple of hours digging out that fuchsia bush and extending the flower bed a little.That evening went all right too ; a couple of glasses of good old red after my day’s toil and I wouldn’t have been feeling much pain anyway .I took a couple of anti-histamine tablets ,just in case, and went to bed.
Morning….and who’s this One-Eyed Jack shuffling down the hall like the Cyclops in one of those old Ray Harryhausen stop-motion monster myths about Sinbad and the Golden Fleece or somesuch. Yes …it’s I. Or should i say , it is Eye….Old One -Eye . The ocular orb has swollen up and the tissue has converged in the night. i am half-blind.
it’s all right for Jude critiquing the Sunday papers on the radio but how is this one -eyed monster staring back at me in the mirror going to explain this deformity to the wee lassie down at the newsagents when I go to pick up my copies?. She’ll be thinking that the wife has swiped me a large one with the frying pan….
Yes, Jude, you’ll understand why it took all day to type this one up!! Hopefully, fully stereoscopic delivery will be resumed within a few days.
Ouch! Get well soon Harry! – Hope you’ll have your full ocular accoutrements back in working order soon. Nothing worse than not being able to have a good old read – (or looking like the missus has clanged you one with a frying pan to add insult to injury!).
All t’best (as they say in Lancashire – where my late Irish Parents de-camped to, many decades ago).
P.S. – The new film ’71 – was largely filmed in the very town i was brought up in (then left to ‘return’ to the Republic at the turn of the 00’s. Strange to see parts of the town that used to be a semi ‘war-zone’ – being used as a war-zone! – The trailers look good, and rave reviews too.
Raves – now there’s another story. First illegal one in the UK was held in the very same town. Ohh the good times!
Anyway.There’s me, meandering again!
Wishing you a speedy recovery Harry and Best Wishes also.
John.
Many thanks for the kind words and appreciative noises ! John.I’m almost back up to par now.The eye is about halfway open now. It does play merry hell with your balance for a while though…no mistake. I’ve read a few reviews of th film ’71 nut I’ve yet to see it. I lived and worked in Belfast at that time before I bailed out for Yorkshire the following year.Those were awful times.I hope never to see the like again…
Very glad to hear your on the mend, and your almost back up to par paddy – and mind that balance for goodness sake!
About 7 years ago, i slipped on some ice, shoulder popped out – and i shattered every bone between my shoulder and elbow. Worst still, a (supposedly eminent) surgeon made a mess of the plating and screws that were put in – he left metal scraping my shoulder-blade, and i had to wait 2 very painful years to get it sorted – which meant having half the shoulder removed – and an arm that i can just about raise to my eye-level. (Then i got turfed out of the hospital first thing in the morning – after an op that had taken 6 hours and concluded the evening before. Just before midnight it was when they ‘informed’ me.)
Re: Belfast – i knew things were awful back then (and for a good while after) – I didn’t know Yorkshire was that bad too! (Lancs v Yorks pun!) – It’s said that there’s a big animosity between the two Counties – but its all made up by soft shandy-drinking Londoners! – Had some wonderful times all over Yorkshire over the years – and between the two Counties and the Lake District – there’s an abundance of the best scenery in England. (And mighty friendly people too).
Once again, glad to hear your on the mend. As my Dad used to say – “Cudda bin worse”
Hi John…Sorry to mislead ..in my haste. No , I went to Leeds in Yorkshire to Art College in 1972 after a year in the Civil Service in Belfast . Yorkshire was a very pleasant change of scenery after all the paranoia , bombing and violence ..and I loved it.As you say , it is a very beautiful county and I had many friends there…. Hope your own war injuries don’t get you down too much. Keep watching the skies!!.
…..Ohh they do a bit – But those last four words you typed made me laugh so much i had a coughing fit! Thanks for that paddy! Best Wishes and a smile.