The Hand Of Fate

Yesterday was a typical Saturday morning round our house: we rose, had a sausage sandwich and a smoothie, and watched an episode of Scrubs. Then the missus had to attend a hairdresser's appointment round the corner, so I was left to my own devices (quite literally - I played with my new iPod).

Around 11h00, I thought I'd better do a bit of tidying, as the kitchen looked like it had been burgled. I tackled with washing up with vim (as in vigour - not the 50's cleaning powder).

A bit too much vim. Unbeknownst to me, one of our chunky glasses had broken neath the suds, so when I gave it a good old wrist-twisting scrub, I lacerated my finger at the knuckle, leaving a flap of skin about the size and shape of a 50 pence piece dangling off like some B-movie special effect.

Running it under the cold tap only served to make the amount of blood gushing from it seem even more impressive, so I wrapped my hand in a tea-towel and stalked around the flat with my hand over my head shouting "Shit shit shit!"

I rang the wife, figuring that, after an hour at the hairdressers, she'd be free to come and run me to casualty. Unfortunately, she'd just had forty bits of toxic tinfoil applied to her hair, and couldn't rush me to hospital, as her hair would have dissolved within the hour. Despite my tremulous attempts to reassure her, she felt terrible - it was the only conceivable circumstance under which she would be incapacitated for at least an hour. An audience with the Pope could have been curtailed to run one's idiot husband to A&E, but not a toxic hair treatment!

So I took to the streets, my hand wrapped in a bloody rag, to find a minicab (shambling, we realised later, straight past the plate glass window in which my wife was sitting while a team of four hair technicians tended to her every need). The guy at South Ealing minicab office was just opening up and was on a phonecall. My blood-encrusted gesticulations failed to distract him from his call, so I waited five minutes for him to finish. He said it would cost £6.50 to get to the hospital, and I only had a fiver.

I found a cash machine.

There was a queue.

I asked the guy next in line if I could push in front, and explained why my need was greater than his. He gave a nonplussed "Spose so". I was so flustered that I pressed the wrong button and accidentally requested an onscreen balance, adding still further to the delay "Still...", I thought, as I noticed that I was in the black for a change "... every cloud...".

Accident and Emergency was busy, but surprisingly quiet (apart from "Sandra" a girl in her thirties who was swigging heavily from a can of super strength cider and refusing to sit where the nurses had told her). I felt slightly embarrassed for the Irish nurse who had to call out names, almost all of which were asian-sounding. She would have two or three loud but faltering attempts at them before the patients in question recognised their own names. I felt rather comforted, looking round at the walking wounded: at least I was not in a wheelchair, on a drip, limping, or in tears (although I think my bloody rag probably had a similarly comforting effect on the other patients).

One X-ray, four stitches and 3 hours later, I was at home tucking into one of the wife's famous smoked salmon and scrambled egg brunches, feeling right as rain. Hoorah for the wife! And the bonus is that I can't get it wet, which means no washing up for ten days! Almost worth it!

By the way - I had to type this with my feet - it took 6 hours.