Wrong footed Wellies!

Wrong footed Wellies, now there's silly! Like a clown (actually, more like a demented duck!) I trounced along the muddy, puddled path to my studio earlier this week with my boots on the wrong feet. It made me smile out loud', to quote my niece when she was four or five and something silly (probably me) made her laugh. A great visual gag, but by the time your in you reach forty seven, best not shared with an audience. Daft isn't so cute when you reach middle age (did I just admit to being middle aged). Thankfully my only audience was my husband Neil who was out and about in the mud as well. He didn't exercise himself much beyond rolling his eyes in comment, simply smiling back at me. Well, perhaps I should have seen the Wellie boot incident as an omen...or, less portentously, more of a silly sign. 

Once or twice I have been asked abruptly; 'Did something drop on your head from a great height!' Well Neil and his family do hone from 'Gods country'...Yorkshire as those 'less blessed' know it. Being 'arty', often actively choosing to be 'off with the Fairies', I've always taken it as fair comment when proffered. But this week, it did, it really did! 

An empty olive oil tin, boasting a pretty picture of a Spanish lady sat underneath an olive tree launched itself off the top of the fridge freezer where it was decoratively balanced, touching down briefly, smack between my eyes before clattering to the floor. Now the merits of keeping empty tins is doubtful (especially if your from Yorkshire!), but really! I stood there dazed, and not in a fun 'off with the fairies' kind of way, with one ear tuned to Neil's well intentioned, entirely obvious advice, which, if followed (and I can't promise to) would result in such an incident 'never happening again'.

Well, there's more, but this time 'the boot is on the other foot!'. This afternoon; Neil, still out and about in the mud, about important business fixing things, elected to take a tea break. Calling by my studio, smiling up at me, looking like 'Stig of the Dump' he elected that I should make the tea! Cheeky, and it told him so! Reluctantly he trundled off in the general direction of the kettle. 

Moments later, calamity! He'd toppled down the garden steps, recovering himself he hobbled theatrically into view. I looked out to see him, more mud than man limping about like a troll, cursing the air and intermittently calling out for me in a sweeter key. Off course I went running, helping him to the safety of our comfy sofa, providing tea (I know, perhaps I should have made it in the first instance), sympathy...a foot stool and ice! Ice is an excellent treatment for such calamities...I should know, having sat dazed beneath a packet of frozen peas after my incident with the olive oil tin. I do have a 'Harry Potter' style flash between my eyes and an unattractively bruised nose but I've  got away without black eyes. I'm told this is a bonus, apparently you nearly always get black eyes with a punch to the nose...kind of 'buy it' (biff!) and you get these free!

Neil's now quite recovered. He can't think how it happened; you know the score, one minute he was walking down the garden...the next! Generally these things are explained away as 'accidents'. I've proffered sympathy rather than 'advice' offering up no 'why's or where-fore's'. More likely than not it was 'natural slippage', though I strongly suspect fairy mischief. They get bored in January you know...beyond all the sparkle of Christmas, impatiently waiting for Spring. The clue that this week was likely to be a little haphazard was 'in my Wellies', oh if only I'd heeded it, all along.

PS: the olive oil tin is in the recycling bin!