Clangers

Almost everyone has committed gaffs and clangers at the most inopportune moments, I’ve certainly had my fair share, having low vision can bring all sorts of mishaps too although I suppose some disastrous events are more due to my scatterbrained tendency than anything else. Still I’ve has hilarious and embarrassing escapades and near misses over time which I always enjoy recounting.

As a young girl I loved nothing better than climbing tree’s sadly more often than not I’d get stuck and need rescuing.
As a teenager in South Africa, I loved to go for walks through the bush with a group of young friends, one day we were joined by a new boy roughly the same age as myself and definitely someone I wanted to impress. Some of the boys were climbing tree’s, wanting to show off my climbing skills I joined in, dressed in shorts and T shirt I nimbly worked my way up through the branches encouraged by my cheering friends sliding along one thick branch the inevitable happened, my shorts got tangled in the branches try as I might I couldn't free myself. The cheers faded to moans of “hurry up“ and “get down will you“ while I wiggled and twisted. Suddenly to my horror I heard a slow ripping sound and gasped as my shorts and my pants gradually ripped in half. Being stuck half way up a tree minus shorts and pants is no laughing matter, well not if it's you stuck up there, I whimpered and blushed trying vainly to cover my modesty with the remains of my shorts and underwear. To this day I swear I can still hear the roars of laughter coming from below, thankfully one of the boys lent me his T shirt to tie round my waist. I didn’t see the new boy for a long time after than, and I didn’t venture up a tree again for a while either.
In some respects I’m a Mrs Magoo type and have the scars to prove it. As a small child mother warned me not to approach strange dogs because of rabies but being an animal lover I never heeded her advice. One day I spotted a particularly ugly looking mutt, smiling and talking sweetly I held out my hand, the dog hasn’t feeling quite so friendly and bit me on the thigh leaving two little holes. It wasn’t particularly sore but I ran in to tell mother. She was busy making dinner for some guests and didn’t really pay me any attention, without thinking she told me to go bite the dog back. It made sense to me so grabbing a biscuit I ran out to search for the wretched animal. This time I approached more cautiously holding out the biscuit for it to sniff. My efforts paid off when it made a grab for the treat. In a flash I grabbed it’s ear and bit as hard as I could, I’ve never seen such a look of shock and fear on a dogs face before and few times in life has revenge been as satisfying as then.

When I first married we had a twin tub washing machine, (one side washes the other spins), one day the pump broke and the machine wouldn’t drain. I’d seen a program where they emptied an engine of gas by sucking through a pipe so thought I’d try that, no one told me there was a technique to it though! I took one hefty suck without thinking of the level of machine and myself suddenly my mouth and throat filled with dirty warm soapy water. I was laying on the floor gasping when a neighbour popped in and spotted me, I tried to indicated to my throat and water but she assumed I was pointing to my heart and immediately dialled an ambulance. Still gasping and unable to speak they too assumed it was me up to heart machines they headed to hospital sirens blaring wiring my heart (which of course by now was indeed racing), to heart machines. At hospital they rushed me into crash still sweating gasping and pointing. Doctors and nurses hovered over me for what seemed an age trying to assess what was up with my heart while I still withered and gasped. Eventually after about 30 min I managed to croak “water” , recovery was pretty quick after a good gulp of clean fresh water thankfully the hospital staff laughed about it too. But I didn’t dare tell my neighbours the truth of what happened and to this day I think they still believe I had a heart attack at a very young age. The good news is, I still don’t understand the pipe technique but funny enough I don’t want to know.