21-09-2010, 08:27 AM
1
My Guardian Angel is on Prozac!
My Guardian Angel could not have foreseen the arduous nature of the duty he was taking on when he was assigned to look after yours truly! The three months of loud infant screaming, which accompanied my arrival into this world on January 23rd 1950, should have alerted him to the fact that the task ahead was not likely to be a doddle!Throughout my life I have diced with death or disaster, sometimes inadvertently, but more usually through lunacy on my part, when something seemed a good idea at the time!
This is a list of my more spectacular brushes with eternity.
1952 I was two-years-old, smartly dressed in my Sunday best, and walking in the park in my Channel Island home with my aunt and a family friend. They were chatting and not taking too much notice of little me. I was fascinated by the large fishpond and bent over to have a better look at the fish. I lost my balance and fell in head first. I was fished out and taken to their park’s manor house, where my clothes were removed and I was wrapped in a prickly blanket! In order to warm me up I was required to drink hot milk with the skin on. YUCK!
1952 My father hired out one of our fields to an elderly local farmer in which to grow wheat. Modernity hadn’t yet caught up with him and he still used a horse and cart to get around. One afternoon in summer the horse and cart was on the long drive between my father’s greenhouses and our house. The farmer and his wife were sitting on the cart ready to go home. I wandered up the drive to take a closer look. A low flying aircraft frightened the horse and it bolted towards me! Hearing the commotion, a member of my father’s staff, Auntie Myra, who was grading tomatoes in our packing shed, bravely ran towards me and the bolting horse and cart; picked me up and ran back towards our house. We fell in through the open door just as the horse rushed passed us with inches to spare! What upset me most at the time was that I had wet my pants! Auntie Myra is nearly 92 and remembers the incident very well. Without the actions of this very brave lady, who is only 4’ 8” in height, I would not be around to tell the tale!
1955 My uncles, who were young, daft, and single at the time, made a kite more for their benefit than mine, I think! It was considerably bigger than myself, and constructed out of brown paper and bamboo. On a very windy day I accompanied them into one of our fields to watch it fly. Foolishly they asked me if I would like a go and watched in amazement as I went up with it! Luckily I held on; they managed to get hold of the string and hauled me down to earth. I was told not to inform my mother of this escapade for fear of the trouble they would be in for being so very irresponsible!
1958 My father and electricity didn’t go together! If he couldn’t find a plug he would shove the wires in the socket! The TV plug had broken and this was the method employed to get it working. Unfortunately when I was putting the wires into the socket, I touched a bare wire and the resulting electric shock threw me across the room! My mother gave my father plenty of earache after that incident (more because of what the neighbours would have siad if they heard about it!)
1958 I was playing in the water sprinkler on the lawn in the front garden, when suddenly I was routed to the spot with pins and needles going all through my body! My father tried to grab me but was thrown back. He got a wooden pole and told me to grab hold of it, which I managed to do, Dad pulled me to safety. It transpired that the Germans, who lived in our house when they occupied our Island during WW2, had run an electric cable under the lawn, from the generator in the garage to the house. It was only 6 inches below the surface; the casing had perished causing an electric current to run through me when I played on the wet grass!
1960 The boys next door and I discovered a tunnel under the local church in which the Germans had dumped ammunition before they left our Island ahead of its liberation. We discovered bullets will explode if you strike them hard enough on the road! On finding a small green pineapple shaped object, we used it as a football kicking it around the floor, WHOOPS!!!!! The look on the faces of our parents was something else when they saw what we were playing with; the grenade was live!
1960 My uncles owned a yacht and at weekends we used to sail around the smaller islands. I was walking along the narrow catwalk in a rough sea when a wave made the yacht heave to starboard; if my father hadn’t grabbed me as I slipped overboard, I would have sunk into a watery grave! He complained that his back was never right after that event!
During the late 50s and early sixties I fell 14 feet out of a tree I was forbidden to climb, not once, but twice! Some people never learn! I suspect my arthritis with which I have been suffering since my 30s might have something to do with that!
1961 Dad had some little motorized trucks, which he used in his horticultural business; we were permitted to drive them around the property. In order to reverse you had to turn the steering column around, I don’t quite know how I did it but I managed to run myself over with one of them! I had a badly bruised face and torso, fortunately no broken bones!
1967 I was in the UK, visiting my aunt; she kindly but possibly not wisely, let me borrow her car. I had never driven in the UK before, and was not familiar with the roads. I encountered a roundabout, something that our Island didn’t have in those days, and I drove around it the wrong way, WHOOPS!!! More by luck than judgement, I managed to avoid the oncoming cars!
1967 My husband, who was then my boyfriend, and I were messing around on a seesaw in a park. He jumped onto it and I flew up into the air and landed very painfully on my elbow. It took weeks of physiotherapy before I had full use of it again!
1968 Not having learned our lesson from the previous year, we were indulging in a bit of horseplay when I hit my head against the wall, and ended up with a hairline fracture of the skull!
The 70s seemed to have passed without any major disasters, no doubt I was too busy being a housewife and rearing our three daughters!
Circa 1984 St Neots, Cambridgeshire. I was shopping in the town when I came across the local bag lady being cruelly harassed by some yobs! Incensed I pulled myself up to my full 5’ 2.5’’ I waded in and demanded they left her alone. For a long minute there was a menacing silence, and I thought they were going to attack me, fortunately they thought better of it, and using a few unpleasant expletives they went on their way!
When we moved to North Wales in 1990 the property in which we were then living was next to an untamed stretch of the original Offa’s Dyke, which was approximately 30ft deep. To this day I have no idea what possessed me, but I decided to walk up the middle of the Dyke, which was like a narrow gorge and quite steep. I was only wearing shorts and T shirt, and had stupidly told no one of my intentions. I managed to get to the middle and found I could get no further, but was unable to get back the way I had come either. All the brambles and briars had closed in on me! The only way was up! After an hour of slipping and sliding I arrived at the top in a sorry state. I was cut to ribbons by the brambles, branches and stones, which was no less than I deserved for my stupidity!
2002 is a year I won’t forget in a hurry! I was taking a walk in the river meadow next to our Welsh farmhouse, it is undulating and I didn’t notice the 50 bullocks grazing there until too late. A low flying plane startled them and they all stampeded in my direction! I reckon I must have run the first 10 second mile in history as I outran the bullocks and vaulted over a convenient stile. The cattle were hard on my heels and deprived of the object of their pursuit, they pawed the ground in front of the stile. My left arthritic ankle has never fully recovered from that bit of athletic prowess!
About a month later, on a visit to our middle daughter and family in Milton Keynes, I was taken ill with appendicitis. I insisted that my husband drove me through the night the 100 miles to our local hospital in Wrexham, in which I had confidence. My appendix was removed on the point of bursting, according to the surgeon!
In 2006 we were again visiting our middle daughter, who lives on a canal boat, when I hit my head on the hatch cover. A few days later with a fearsome headache and seeing not a few stars, I found myself in A&E with delayed concussion!
2007 I was not concentrating when pouring some boiling hot fat out of the baking pan; I managed to pour it over my right hand and sustained some very nasty burns, which necessitated a trip to A&E! My hand is now scarred for life!
2008 In the October of that year I was once more walking the river meadow when I missed my footing. I tumbled three feet down the bank and face down into a bramble and briar patch, which actually broke my fall; another three feet and I would have been in the river, which has some unpleasant looking rocks, which break the surface at that point! I am not sure how I got back up the bank as I was so tangled up! Somehow I managed it, but my face was badly scratched, I was picking thorns out of my anatomy for months. The fall hasn’t done my arthritic joints many favours either!
2009 January. The year hasn’t got off to a very good start; I fell asleep in my armchair whilst watching TV. I awoke with a start, and jumped out of my chair not realising my right leg had gone to sleep! I went over on my ankle and sprained it quite badly.
No wonder my Guardian Angel is a mental wreck and on Prozac!
RJG
Feb 2009
21-09-2010, 09:21 AM
4
Re: My Guardian Angel is on Prozac!
I am beginning to wonder if I could get into the Guinness Book of Records for the number of times my life has been in genuine peril!The above account was written before the latest incident which occurred in 2009.
I was on holiday in my home island and stupid enough to allow my elderly mother to drive me to the local garden centre for lunch. No sane person gets into a car if Mother is behind the wheel, but she was insistent and as I didn't want yet another row, I gave in against my better judgement! To cut a long story short I couldn't really fault the way she drove there as I insisted she wore her specs, normally she drives on RADAR!
Anyway when she was parking the car she threw the specs into my lap, and reversed into the parking space, which was really too small, she took out the first parked car, and before I could stop her took out the second ending up at right angles to the two parked cars. She would have carried on going if I hadn't grabbed the steering when and removed the keys! Then the daft old bat told the huge crowd who had gathered the accident was all my fault, because I had grabbed the wheel!
Fortunately there were enough witnesses who knew that wasn't true! An ambulance was called in case mother was injured, she was fine, but my ankle which I had hurt in a previous incident, was throbbing painfully! My youngest sister and brother-in-law who live on the Island came to sort the mess out. "Why did you allow her to drive?" was the greeting I got when they stared incredulous as the carnage Mother had caused just parking her damned car! Mother couldn't get out of the car as the driver's door was against a fence! No doubt the old girl would have been prosecuted if she hadn't been on private property. Incredibly the insurance company continues to insure her even though the damage ran into thousands of £s. Goodness knows what her premiums are now!
21-09-2010, 02:30 PM
9
Re: My Guardian Angel is on Prozac!
Originally Posted by Antibrown
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I know and I did'nt.I just saw Rabbit,Rabbit,Rabbit and started to yawn.
21-09-2010, 02:56 PM
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Re: My Guardian Angel is on Prozac!
Originally Posted by Azz
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Hey Ab - if you don't like Qettas threads, or have something against her please stay out of them or add her to your ignore list. And I'm sure Qetta will do the same if she feels that way too
If we all write our life stories it would make these boards boring.
Anecdotes and brief life experiences are OK but come on, this one has gone a bit to far.
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