In my PJ’s, bare footed as always indoors and making hot chocolate yesterday evening. Hot chocolate mixed. Nicely foamed and being decanted into fancy double walled glasses. All going well until glass insert slides out of cafetiere, pushes fancy double walled glass over, glass tips over spilling foamy brown liquid everywhere, falls onto tiled floor and smashes. As brittle materials are wont to do when they strike hard surfaces at 9.81 metres per second acceleration.
Annoyed at being so clumsy I said “Bugger!” very loudly. Hot chocolate and broken glass all over the place. I turned to go and get the mop when Mrs S arrived to see what the all fuss was. “Stay back. There’s broken glass all over the place.” I said.
“What’s all the noise about?” She asked, then; “Bill. You’re bleeding.”
“Just get the mop please. And pass the paper towels.”
“Bill. You’re bleeding all over the place. I’ll get the first aid kit.” She told me firmly. I was about to say, ‘It’s only a scratch’ when I looked down and noticed that there was a large trickle of my O rhesus positive, venous (darker) rather than arterial, coming from a neat six inch long slice across the top of my foot, skin deep, nothing worse, leaving large splotches of slippery dark red on the floor. “Oh.” I said.
Then “First aid kit’s in Decon.” I said, referring to our large downstairs bathroom. So off we trolled to Decon where I could leak blood to my heart’s content without leaving a mess that might alarm any guests. Ten minutes later, bloody paper towels discarded, butterfly sutures applied, several large dressings on top, the flow of red staunched, Mrs S disappeared to clean up the rest of the mess. Including the trail of large bloody splotches I’d left traipsing into the bathroom.
Of course it didn’t hurt, I lost less than 150ml of blood, and the whole business had me kicking myself for being so bloody clumsy. I was more upset about breaking the glass. Those were Mrs S’s favourites. Which I shall replace, as it was my fault one got smashed.
First thing the following morning I even found a couple of shards almost three metres from where the glass hit the floor. So I carefully went around and double checked the whole kitchen and dining area. No more glass shards.
Oddly enough we never found the bit that sliced my foot. Or else Mrs S threw it away with the rest. Now I’ve broken glasses many times before, but never had a piece go ballistic and slice me like that, So I will exercise a little more caution with that particular type of glass in future.
Oh well, it’s all part of life’s great tapestry. Smashing, eh?
The Bill Sticker Alternative 