Tuesday, June 28, 2005
Ears Story As Promised
Never let it be said that I'm unable to tell a story which shows me in a less than flattering light...
This story begins somewhere in continental Europe. Existing on not a huge budget, I was being visited by Significant Other at the wrong end of the pay month and so hadn't been getting a fully balanced regimen of sleeping and eating, having already had to spend money travelling to fetch SO from an airport several hours away and so on. On the morning in question, SO was about to return to the UK, and being a great big soft git, I figured that having my ears pierced while SO was there after only, ooh, I dunno, eight years of having made the decision and not done the deed was the way forward.
Stud one, straight in, no problem.
Stud two, however, failed to go straight in to the back, and there was a bit of thud that I felt.
What followed belongs firmly under the heading you couldn't make it up...
I'd been told to get whatever solution they recommended (and stocked) for the purposes of keeping the freshly pierced holes clean. As I moved across the shop, I realised I was becoming unsteady on my feet and felt a little rise in my temperature, and attempted to leave the shop to get some fresh air. I recall seeing where I was placing my hand on the handle of the shop door, and at that point my sight started going.
Still on auto-pilot, I opened the door and the vague blurry outline of a couple walking towards me registered on my retinas, but to no effect, and I walked straight into them. Remember this is an old-style jeweller's shop, where the door is a matter of metres back from the pavement, up a sort of channel between plate glass display windows.
I hit the guy of the couple with my shoulder, pivoting around his shoulder, smacking my head into the window glass and falling on the floor. One helpful chap who stopped suggested I now had a stud in an acupuncture point, and that probably didn't help, and undoubtedly my less than 100% physical condition wasn't a great contribution to my wellbeing either.
Non-local-language-speaking SO was petrified at losing all spoken interface with people via me, and couldn't do much but stand and watch and wait and worry. One ambulance ride to hospital later, I was sat with a saline drip in my arm, and faced with someone who now had to make an immediate decision on a rush to the airport in a taxi to make the flight home.
Offered the choice between the reassurance of familiar company and not, still being a great big soft git I suggested the flight be missed and we'd worry about it later.
The mother of SO (who at this stage was barely 17) was rather unimpressed to hear how the flight had been missed, when a friend of mine (see 'Fiends Reunited', several posts below) made the call to share the news.
The flights had been booked under some sort of cheap ticket deal where there was no prospect of refund or rescheduling on offer, and neither of us was up to arguing the toss.
Which left no choice but the long overland train ride, and having been offered a ticket for the next train due, I took the decision that there was no rush and waiting for the first train the following day would be plenty good enough. In so doing I avoided a very dangerous scenario – that next train was scheduled to arrive at the international platform of London Victoria at about the same time that the international platform of London Victoria was subject to a little, er, wholesale redesign and disruption on the part of some people who may or may not have some connection on the other side of the Irish Sea.
The downside of that was that what should have been a one hour train ride from Dover and a two hour onwards journey from London turned into a seven hour plus mystery tour of south east England as train services around London were disrupted somewhat.
Obviously I've graduated to a far greater scale of sparkly vanity in the many years since, but I've yet to repeat a single incident with quite such an expensive or potentially significant set of consequences. Until the Savoy, I suppose, now I come to think about it. Then again, the day I had a chat with a couple of nice policeman threatened to get exceptionally interesting for a moment or two, but this is more than enough story for one day.
