I seem to be using up rather a lot of sticking plasters lately. It isn’t that I see myself as accident-prone in a general way, but when the cereal packet says blandly: ‘Insert finger under flap and move sharply to left and right,’ I just know that for me it isn’t going to work.
Tentatively I poke where directed and one of two things happens. Either the inserting bit is easy, I move sideways too confidently, my finger tears its own ragged route and the family is doomed to several mornings of cereal from a jagged cardboard shambles, or else I can’t get started and after a great deal of prod and waggle I am the torn shambles, hence the sticking plasters. This is not the ideal way to start the day.
We once had a neighbour who leapt from her bed each morning, flicked open a freshly starched gingham cloth, gave the silver a quick polish and then skipped out into the sun-drenched morn to pick a single rose for her breakfast table. Our house isn’t a bit like that. Not a bit.
There was one morning when I tried a tentative leap from my bed. But none of my limbs joined in and I crashed heavily to the ground. I do have a bit of a problem with my early morning limbs. And not just legs. My husband handed me a well-meant tray of tea once and we both watched as it passed right between my outstretched hands and plummeted to the carpet. But I still don’t regard myself as accident-prone – just daft in the mornings.
One friend really does manage a continuous stream of accidents. We love her dearly and we worry about her but we can’t help laying bets as we approach her house – will it be a squashed thumb this time – a lost purse – an exploding hot-water bottle? No, this time it turns out to be a leap from a moving vehicle: ‘I sort of nose-dived,’ she tells us, with an apologetic laugh. ‘And I couldn’t stop running. People must have thought it strange to see a woman tearing along the main road for quite some distance, with her nose a bare six inches from the ground.’ Her best effort to date is the day she fell off her own trolley.
‘I was changing a light bulb and I forgot I was on castors,’ she said sadly. ‘Before I knew it, I zoomed off into the next room.’ It is fascinating enough to think that there are people who stand on their tea trolleys, but to have them whizzing from room to room as if on giant, elevated roller skates really does make one marvel.
My husband has his moments, too. Quite early in courtship I said: ‘‘Here’s your coffee, dear,’ as I put his coffee carefully down on a chair. ‘Right ho,’ he said and promptly sat on it. And I shan’t easily forget the expression on a small nephew’s face as David, a kindly man, advanced with a big, smiling, avuncular hello and crunched small nephew’s new miniature fire engine absolutely flat into the carpet.
Another grown-up relative of my husband, not normally accident-prone, was driving dashingly through the New Forest. You know how it is – the open road, the wind-ruffled hair, the Le Mans gear changes. Suddenly a wasp flew straight down the front of his shirt.
Unless one knew this, it must have seemed strange when all that Graham Hill-type cool suddenly gave way to wild screams, clawings and chest beatings as his car unexpectedly zig-zagged off across the heather.
In hard-up early-married days we, too, once had a little accident in the forest.
‘What’s that funny smell?’ I kept saying.
‘Never mind that, this car’s not pulling too well,’ my worried spouse kept replying.
As the sweet, sickly smell grew, the car slowed down and finally stopped. When David lifted the bonnet I remembered I’d tucked my plastic mac over the engine the night before to protect it from a sudden heavy frost. As the engine warmed up the mac had dissolved.
‘Anti-freeze would have been cheaper in the long run,’ I said bitterly as we scraped out the glutinous remains – a collar, two patch pockets and a row of front fasteners.
Looking back, I suppose I must admit to my share of accidents. There was the day when, in a long pale blue coat, I ran for a bus and missed. Picking myself up from a sizeable muddy puddle I tried again and just managed to swing aboard. Suddenly, on the pavement, I noticed a group of people I knew. They saw me at the same moment. ‘Oh look, there’s Betty!’ they all called, waving cheerily.
They hadn’t seen me run and fall but they did think it strange, they said later, to see me hurtle past on the running board, smiling radiantly in their direction and plastered from head to foot in mud.
I suppose we’ve all had our moments – how many I wonder have gone away for the weekend and left a rice pudding in the Aga? Or reluctantly plugged in a terribly strong-willed, scary electric floor polisher and, at the very second one pressed its switch, heard a nearby car backfire?
‘Why is the floor polisher lying out there on the terrace?’ said David.
‘Because for the children’s sake, I was brave enough to throw it there,’ I told him. And hands up all those who have forcibly turned on a tap to tackle the washing up and had the water hit the upturned bowl of a spoon? And been absolutely drenched. Believe me, you are not alone.