Pain and suffering in the great outdoors
6th December, 2006
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We were taking our places at the table when the meal became airborne, crashing to the floor in an explosion of shattered crockery and a salad that was now well and truly tossed. There were the usual few seconds of post-disaster silence before all eyes turned to me. While it was true I had been responsible for erecting the table, it did not necessarily follow that blame for the loss of dinner could be laid at me feet, alongside the meal.
"There's a Maccas down the road," I said before anyone could utter an accusation, and we filed out of the motorhome in which we were camping and tramped off down the street. Thrusting my hands into my pockets, I felt the steel pin I had meant to insert in the table support to ensure it did not collapse. That was a long time ago but the memory returned as we rolled down the highway in a borrowed motorhome one recent weekend, bound for the great outdoors. My wife and I had been camping only once before, an occasion on which I successfully lit a fire. Feeling suitably smug, I was about to stand back and admire my work when the wind veered and a sudden gust caused the flames to flare. Moments later I stood there, smoke curling from where my eyebrows had been and strands of charred hair standing up on my head. My wife has retold this story several times in front of friends who find it terribly amusing. I am yet to see the joke. There would, I vowed, be no fires this weekend. We pulled into a caravan park and I set up camp, which involved getting an electric extension cord and plugging one end into the van and the other into a power point. Blue flames shot out of the power point when I attempted to do this. Maybe I should have plugged it in to the van and then the power point, rather than the other way around.
"Everything okay?" asked my wife.
Wary of collapsing motorhome tables, I decided we would eat outside beneath an awning which cleverly folded out from the roof, using a folding table which I had found in the van. There are various levels of pain. There's the steady, thumping pain you get when you bang your head and the stinging pain when you cut your finger. If you want to experience real pain, however, get your finger caught in a folding table. I have no idea how this happened. One moment I was congratulating myself on finding the table hidden away in a storage compartment and the next it had hold of the little finger on my right hand. I shrieked as its aluminium jaws closed around the flesh of the finger. The more I struggled, the tighter it gripped. I hopped on one leg and then the other, waving my arms with the table, still attached to my right hand, flapping in the breeze. Several fellow campers paused to watch what they must have thought was an exhibition of some form of folk-dancing. Perhaps they thought I was celebrating the arrival of summer by performing the Dance of the Folding Table, complete with shrieks and howls to add that primeval flavour. My wife finally appeared from within the van. "Keep quiet. You're making a scene," she hissed. I pointed out that the table was performing a traumatic amputation of my little finger and that any help would be appreciated. As I spoke, I continued my manic dance around the concrete slab beside the motorhome, it being difficult to stand still when your finger is being sliced off. She chased me for a couple of laps of the slab as a passing elderly couple smiled at us indulgently. Nice to see young people dancing and enjoying themselves, they must have thought. My wife finally pinned me to the ground, unfolded the table and extracted my finger, which had turned the colour of an overripe plum. There was a time when I used to think I was the kind of person suited to the outdoor life. A small voice keeps telling me I am no longer one of them. |
