On the second Wednesday of every month Julia has a quiet evening watching TV and I go to the museum to sit in a room of middle-aged men (I’m being kind here, we might be, on average, elderly rather than middle-aged) and listen to a talk on a military subject.

Last month I was unable to attend because I had a bad arthritis day. This month, although everything went so well in the beginning, I missed it because I had to take Julia to A&E after her attempt to move a plant pot went horribly wrong.

Don’t worry, she is fine, though they have kept her in for observation.

It all started with a broken plant pot. It was a big one, blue-glazed and big enough to build a water feature in. That’s why I originally bought it, but we never got round to using it. We moved it down from Nottingham yesterday and, when we arrived home, she sent me inside and started to unload the car. She does not allow me to unload the car as she regards me a s an unstable safety hazard. Dismissed, I went in to make a cup of tea.  She unloaded.

Minutes later I heard the call “Simon!” and got up to find her in the bathroom pressing a blood-stained face cloth to her throat. On examining the wound I found a large hole in her throat and a worryingly heavy flow of blood. It wasn’t squirting, but it was bleeding at a rate that suggested proper medical attention was needed, and that it needed to be quick because blood shouldn’t leave the body as quickly as that.

The question was, did I panic, call an ambulance, wait, and let her bleed all over the house, or did I wrap her in towels, run her to hospital and hand her over to a highly trained team of medics, all with a burning desire to tend to the consequences of a flower pot injury?

Oh yes, the injury. Imagine a small woman built on the lines of a teddy bear. Now imagine that woman with her arms wrapped round a large garden flower pot of blue-glazed earthenware. Don’t bother asking why she was doing it in the first place when she had a perfectly good husband available for heavy lifting, she will just mutter and make little sense.

So, with both arms wrapped round the pot, which is something close to three feet across. she stumbled, feel and used the pot to break her fall. It broke into a dozen large pieces and as she fell, one of the pieces jabbed her in the throat, penetrating into the muscle. Seven hours and eight stitches later she was still oozing blood, so they added a few extra stitches and took her away for a CT scan (the original X-Ray may have missed some damage) and a night in hospital. They want to make sure it doesn’t bleed again and cause more problems. They also want to see if she can swallow. Tomorrow they are going to check the damage with a camera, which will be inserted via her nose.  Then I will be allowed to bring her home.

My alternative title for this was “A Night to Remember” but it has already been used. However, we are definitely going to remember it. I also thought of “The Curse of the Second Wednesday”, but it was a bit melodramatic.

I thought about using pictures of Julia, but that seemed a bit too much like an obituary, so I went for fish and chips.