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Take care, stay in one piece


Don Fry
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I read this in the Guardian today. Made me laugh, good writer, and then having written off a perfectly good aircraft through carelessness on New Year’s Day thought I would share. 
 

January is not a boom time for lifestyle statistics. It’s all resolutions and intentions, all inputs, no outputs. But it’s a great time, thanks to NHS Digital and the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents, to find out who landed in A&E in the first year of the pandemic.

I pore over these lists, thrilling with schadenfreude. More than 7,000 people in England got bitten or struck by a dog in 2020-21; my dog is mental, but at least he’d never bite me and can’t, to my knowledge, use a weapon. More than 2,000 people spilled something hot on themselves, which I haven’t done for years. Nearly 1,000 people ended up in hospital having tried to climb a tree (“Accidents are preventable”, the RoSPA says, and of course it would say that, wouldn’t it, but nothing has ever seemed to me to be so entirely preventable as falling out of a tree). Power tools, hammers and saws, keeping rats, scorpions and venomous spiders – I think of all these ways I’ve stayed out of hospital, by not doing things I didn’t want to do anyway, and feel both completely blessed and unusually civic-minded.

 

We had one domestic accident, at the signature Christmas meal, when the table was set for 15, which meant 15 crackers, and – you won’t believe it, but it’s true – 30 glasses, and everything else. Mr Z decided that he wanted beer instead of a regular Christmas drink, but none of the perfectly serviceable bottles of beer would do. Instead, he tried this mini-keg that we’ve had under a table lamp since July, and it exploded. Most of the beer, he claims, ended up in his trousers, but that doesn’t explain how we came to be mopping the ceiling, or that every glass contained a tablespoon of beer, as if I’d laid the table for tiny Vikings, or how the crackers lost their bang, or why the room still smells like a pub a week later which, actually, I don’t mind. All I could think was, oh my, that could have been so much worse. So many ways we could have ended up as an A&E statistic. It would have been such an outlier event, we’d have definitely made it on to the bulletins – something for someone else to feel smug about.

  • Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist

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Too right, my wife is brutal on knives, and to save murder, she is forbidden to use mine. Feeling slightly sorry for her, I bought her a vegetable chopping knife, very decent knife. She always seems to have plasters on her hands now. “That dammed knife gets me every time” is the lament.
 

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But the pain levels of a good kiss of a prop rivals a broken arm in my experience.

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One of my most treasured possessions is my Dad's penknife.  The blades are all worn down through regular sharpening and he's the last person ever to sharpen it even though he died in 1991.  He always said that it's blunt knives that do the most damage to fingers because a really sharp knife doesn't get deflected from its course.  Having cut myself numerous times with brand-new scalpel 9a blades I'm not so sure he was right ?

 

I had a chuckle over Zoe William's article myself over breakfast.  It reminded of a time very long ago when the woman who served in our shop was preparing my tea, set out to open a tin of Spam that was slightly bulging - the rotting semi-fluid sprayed all over the kitchen and the smell was absolutely awful - it quite put me off my tea. 

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I remember a doctor once told me, if you fall off a ship and have to choose between a shark or the ship’s propeller, choose the shark, because a tearing type rough edged wound heals more quickly than that from a sharp edged cut. Hope I never have to prove either!

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I thought the bedroom would be the most dangerous place. Don't more die in bed than elsewhere? And they do it without permission too.

 

As for cuts and burns, a dropped bit of molten rope I was melting the end of, cuts to thumb and two fingers from brushing my hand over a chainsaw blade, chipped bit of the back of a hand from a bit of sheet metal - all within the past month. A&E? Why? It will all heal if left to fix itself.

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"It will heal by itself" is a dangerous assumption. A few years ago I tripped over a kerb and badly grazed my knee, went home cleaned it with antiseptic and stuck on a plaster. It didn't heal, started to swell. I ended up in hospital being treated for sepsis, intravenous antibiotics and all. Don't ignore minor injuries! Most will heal but If it doesn't dry up in a few days you could get sepsis. 

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When I was a lad playing on bomb sites in the Smoke , bombed houses were our favourite. Once a first floor collapsed as I walked over it and I landed on my feet with a 6 inch nail through my Clark’s sandal ! Pulled it out and went home to mum who disinfected it , plaster each side , back out to play ! Elf and safety- no way ! Fond memories! Colin 

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