4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
Rolling along
“That’ll probably hurt in the morning!” exclaims Jean-Paul.
I was everso slightly shocked to see that the index finger of my left hand now shared the proportions and profile of the business end of a tea spoon. I therefore wasn’t taking Jean-Paul’s comment in too seriously at that moment but accepted that it probably served as a sort of apology for having just dropped a two tonne farm roller onto my hand.
I had responded to an advertisement posted on the public notice board in our local supermarket. It declared that various items of old agricultural equipment were for sale as a result of their owner’s recent retirement from farming.
What the advertisement failed to mention was that their octogenarian owner had recently been obliged to retire because he was now blind in one eye and didn’t see too well out of the other. This didn’t discourage him though from attaching a chain around the field roller I had just agreed to buy from him and lifting it with the front bucket of his old Renault tractor, with the idea of lowering it into my waiting trailer.
I also accept that it was probably my own fault for reaching out in a vain attempt at trying to prevent the roller now swinging wildly about under the Renault’s front loader from colliding with the back of my Range Rover. I'm sure Jean-Paul must have been trying to apply all due diligence manoeuvring the roller. It was just that he couldn't actually see it. He had then most probably interpreted my "Watch out!" as a command to drop it. His hearing ability being not much better than his eyesight.
Jean-Paul had though sensed something was amiss following all my leaping around
and yelling expletives hitherto unheard of in rural Brittany and climbed down from
his tractor to investigate. Once close enough to see with his one almost serviceable
eye he added, I guess by way of cheering me up even more, “That’s a lot of blood!
You’d better go into the house and ask the missus to bandage it up.”
The thought didn’t occur to me at that time as to why my antagonist couldn’t do the courtesy of asking his wife for me but the reason soon became apparent once I got to the farm kitchen.
“You didn’t let him drive that old Renault did you?” Jean-Paul’s wife admonishes me. “You should have realised he’s as blind as a bat!”
So now it was definitely my fault for the accident. No longer any ‘probably’ about it. Jean-Paul though, fearing recrimination from his wife had wisely decided to stay well clear.
“Sorry!” I found myself mumbling between spurts of blood across the hitherto squeaky clean floor.
“Don’t get blood all over my floor. Here, wrap this around your hand! Do you want me to call an ambulance?”
“No, I think I’ll be OK thanks. I probably won’t be up to driving though so would you mind if I call my wife and ask her to bring someone out to drive my car back?”
Jean-Paul’s wife thrust the phone at me with a sort of leer and I grabbed it with my remaining good hand. I don’t know whether anyone reading this little account has ever pondered the viability of trying to dial a telephone with one hand bound in a blood soaked tea towel but suffice to say, it isn’t possible.
“Would you mind dialling for me please?” I asked, apologetically.
Jean-Paul’s wife recovers the ‘phone from me and looks inquisitively at me for the required number.
“Zero, deux” I begin.
“Comment?” (literally ‘comment’. As in ‘repeat’, I don’t understand’.)
“Zero, deux” I say again.
“Comment?”
“Zero, deux” I repeat, again.
“Comment?” Jean-Paul’s wife replies, yet again.
With the prospect of another eight digits to call out in what for her must have been
my massacring of her native tongue I decide that this isn’t going to work either. I did
have time to wonder though what other French numbers could possibly rhyme with or
‘sounds like’ zero and deux but contrary to Jean-Paul’s expert prognosis that my
recently sustained injury would “probably hurt in the morning!” the throbbing was
beginning to overtake me.
“OK, forget it. I’ll drive.” I said.
And so it was.
I thanked Jean-Paul for my bloodied trophy, paid him and left. I drove straight round to my local clinic whereupon the duty nurse exclaimed “You have what looks like a Compound Splat Fracture of your left index finger. It’ll probably hurt in the morning!”
Both Jean-Paul and the duty nurse were quite wrong - It bloody well hurt right now!
I've finished bleeding now.
For the day anyway.
