My beloved wife is a bit of a lunatic.
I mean this in the nicest possible way of course, and also the most historically accurate. She’s mad for the Moon. Usually, during our Amroth stay, there’s one night when, as I’m happily snoring away, she’ll get up and open all the windows, allowing the sea breeze to not so much whistle as blast through the house, and then dangle out of windows, contorting to see round corners that physics claims are impossible to see around...and when that’s no longer enough, she’ll creep downstairs, and tiptoe down to the sea, to stand, mesmerised, by the big full Moon. Then she’ll creep back and (because I ask her to), wake me up, and we’ll creep down together, and being a bloke I’ll fail to appreciate the full significance of the moment, but nevertheless, I’ll be impressed and enjoy the sensation of a Moon that seems much bigger than it should be for a satellite in a stable-ish orbit, and a sea that seems to have bogged off to Devon, allowing us, should we wish to do so, to walk and dance for miles on the soupy sand of Amroth beach, beneath the light of the Moon. (Incidentally, I’m under no illusions that I understand the full significance of these moments – it’s the sea, and the Moon...it couldn’t be a more female moment if there was bra-burning, angry poetry and interpretive dance).
Last night was The Night. We actually went to bed early, being so entirely disinterested in Doctor Who Confidential that unconsciousness was a far better option. So when I felt the apparently Arctic gusts blow through the room, and then felt the absence of my wife, I quickly understood that it was Lunar Night. I got up and padded to the other room, where she was twisted at about 68 degrees out of the big window.
“Ooh,” I said. “The Moon...”
“Yyyyyeah,” she sighed happily. “Look how bright it is...”
“Wow,” I said, blinking the sleep out of my eyes. “That’s bright...”
“Yyyyeah,” she said again. She padded back to our bedroom and sat down on the bed, as though waiting for me to lay down before she swung her legs in. I laid down. There was a beat.
“So...how ya feelin’?” she said.
“Ah...right,” I said, catching up. “Sooo, you waited for me to lay down again before inviting me to get the fuck up?”
She had. We got dressed.
“We’ll go out the front door,” she said, “’s’not like anyone’ll burgle us while we’re gone. We can put the front light on.”
I did – the front of the cottage lit up, an over-door lamp showing pretty much the whole of our front patio area. d walked to the gate.
Now at this point, it’s important to re-iterate some disclaimers. d was a good few paces ahead of me. We’d turned on the light, so it wasn’t as if I couldn’t see. And, for the sake of completeness, I’d like to categorically state that I do not hold the solid wooden planter on our front patio even remotely responsible for what happened next.
What happened next was that I took a step forward, past the planter. There was a gust of wind. My next forward step became a semi-backward step, which ended up putting my left foot on the wrong side of the planter. I didn’t register this fact, only that I appeared to have been blown backwards by the breeze. I took another, rapid step forward, only to discover that the full length of my leg wouldn’t go through solid concrete – legs, and indeed wood, being what they are. Gravity took rather a dim view of what was essentially me trying to walk on thin air, and slapped me down, hard, on the brick of our patio.
I stayed there for a few seconds, running through the order of what had just happened.
“I’m on the floor,” I thought.
“Again,” I thought.
“How the Hell did I get here?” I thought.
Meanwhile, d, who appears not only to keep the family brain but also its presence of mind, had rushed back to me, and was asking if I was OK. Could I stand?
“Can I stand?” I thought. My legs seemed suddenly adamant on this point, and I almost jumped back to my feet.
Which is when the pain started.
Most of me was fine – a little grazing on the hands and the left knee. But mainly, fine.
My left big toe though was not happy. Not happy at all. It was raging, in fact, hot and screeching and thunderously annoyed for such a generally insignificant digit.
“Oh honey!” said d. “C’mon back inside.”
“Oh Hellno!” I said. “We’re up now, dammit, I’m gonna take a look at this bloody Moon.”
We did, me bitching riotously with every step. We went down to the beach, spotted the Moon (big off-white ball, in the sky, at night, you can’t miss it), spotted the North Star, watched the sea for a bit. Went “Ooh”. Went “Ahhh”. Went...well I went “OK...done now...owwww, goddamnedsonofafuckin’bitch, this foot!”
D, bless her, tried not to take this invective personally and got me home. The toe, in all honesty, didn’t look that bad when examined. I just couldn’t put any weight on it, either above or below. d took out a bag of frozen cauliflower, and bashed it with a rolling pin, then tried to fit it on or around my foot.
“Erm...sorry,” I said, having discovered a bizarre connection between the nerve in my left big toe and the nerve in my right arm. Luckily, d ducked. The cauliflower disappeared from my life fairly rapidly.
This morning, the toe was...erm...interesting. Swollen, puffy, and in places, turning a nicely gothic shade. Still can’t put any weight on the wretched thing – either on the bottom of it, to press down, or on the top of it, where the nail itself is starting to blacken. I’ve just done a massive journey of about a hundred steps to the bench overlooking the beach and back. There is, coincidentally, an inaugural Iron Man competition in Amroth today – five miles of swimming, a hundred and twenty odd miles of cycling, and a full 26-mile marathon run. This exhibition of ultimate masochism is all very well, but for me today, my hundred steps or so is quite iron enough, thankyouverymuch...
Hell, just putting a sock and shoe on the bloody thing was practically Man of Steel stuff if you ask me...and if you ignore the Wookiie-style roaring and whining that accompanied the action...ahem...
Of course, today’s entry was never going to be all about me. Even I’m not that egotistical on the tenth anniversary of 911. It is of course a day for remembrance, for reflection, for sorrow and sadness and yet, if we can manage it ten years on, also a day to focus on the boundary-dropping wonder of human beings. In the wake of 9/11, people came from all over the place to help out, sent whatever they could afford, and often what they couldn’t, to help ease an impossible burden of suffering. The day was also used, cynically, to start a war of acquisition and crusade that continues to eat up lives and entrench positions. So 9/11 is perhaps the example of our generation of an event that shows us both the best and worst of human potential. Ten years on, the victims of the day are still dead, their families still shattered, and the day itself began a chain of death that still endures. But also, a chain of hope, in the acts of kindness and sacrifice that came as a result, and in the acts of charity that continue to be made, day in, day out, long after the attention of the world has moved along.
So remember this day, always, and strive to be one of the positive impacts it has had.
Now, if you’ll excuse me after that nauseating act of emotional blackmail, I have a bath to soak in, cos apparently, it IS all about me after all...
Oh, speaking of which, blood was 5.4 this morning.
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