A sparkle in my eye
We were in France. Bastille Day. My first. All I could dredge from my school day memories was “Let them eat cake!” and some rioting. Oh, and the end of the kingdom. Until Sarko that is. Bread prices or availability of the yeasty staple seemed to be the cause. Kind of similar to these days, I recall thinking. It’s not that I’m not interested in history, quite the opposite, it’s just that the date Nasr took over or the Ottoman Empire ended are more in my line of life. And perhaps, having just reached one year closer to and 355 days away from the big three-zero the clouds of time were becoming gloopy and schooldays seemed ever so far away.
So there we were. France. Deep in the countryside. Or whatever that can mean in France where little village lies a euro-km away from little village. Not real deep countryside where miles away from anywhere, an isolated little cottage nestles a nigh unreachable corner of a valley. Celebrations were unfolding in our particular little village and we bundled up and set off to watch the feu d’artifice (fireworks).
The appointed hour struck and 800 onlookers bore witness to a fizz and a spark. Not looking good. Bets had been laid on how much the village had spent on the evening. Mr S’s sister bet 3000 Euros, Mr S, after pausing and evidently calculating certainties, probabilities of the types of fireworks to be displayed, the transportation costs bearing in mind higher fuel prices and generally things that people who studied physics and maths think about, opted for 20,000 Euros. La Soeur was looking to be the hot favourite.
As for me in amongst 800 merry Frenchfolk, I was preparing to test my sparkly new beast of a camera - there have to be some good things about turning nearly three-zero - in the dark. What we hadn’t counted on upon purchasing the sort of snapper that you have to carry in its own rucksack was that the instructions would be in French. Only. As I twiddled and fiddled the fizzing and whizzing continued. In a before unheard of stroke of luck, both the feu d’artifice and beast camera managed to sort themselves out simultaneously.
Whizzing and exploding and sparkling colours abounded as Grouse here trigger happily snapped away. Bets were now on that La Soeur was going to loose her bet. Les Parents were a little concerned about exactly how much of their tax money was disappearing into thin air. And I was getting some pics.
That is, until I couldn’t see. I wasn’t sure why. It all happened so fast. And all of a sudden I realised my eye was burning. “Aaaaaah! Aaaaaah! Something’s in my eye! Aaaah! It’s burning. It’s BURNING!” Not one to give into bouts of hysteria in public Mr S quickly reaslied something serious was happening: a spark from a feu d’artifice had landed in my eye. To the family members around him who didn’t speak English, suddenly I had switched out of my faltering French, was clutching my eye and unable to stand up.
A quick search for a doctor or first aid point turned out fruitless so La Soeur and Maman rushed home to get the car to take me back. An hour of offers to take me to the hospital were turned down as I rinsed and rinsed my eye and tried, rather unsuccessfully to open it. “Umm,” said Mr S at one point, “Umm, your eyeball is swollen.”
“Yes, I can feel something like that.” I said, again trying to rinse the eye and again declining the hospital.
Finally, the fact that in twelve hours we were supposed to be out of deep rural France and sitting on a Cairo-bound plane coinciding with the fact that I still couldn’t open my eye without searing pain invited my acceptance of the hospital. Les Parents, Mr S and I put on our cold weather clothes again (Summer? I don’t think so) and headed out for a midnight trip through deep countryside to reach the institution that I care not mention again.
Yes, you see, my refusal to visit this care facility was born not out of the fact that I grew up eating porridge and am extremely tough. Unfortunately. I mean, I am tough too, but this building does not secure in me a feeling of serenity. Quite the opposite. So much so, that as Mr S checked me in, Maman exclaimed to Mr S, “She’s cold, she’s shivering violently”. In between sobs, I squeaked out, “I’m not cold. Je déteste les hôpitals” (yes, not grammatically correct, but I did say faltering French!).
Luckily, my eyeball was still in the socket, I wasn’t going to go blind, the eyeball swelling would disappear, the pain would cease, I would be able to open my eye and I will go back to being my severely myopic self.
And the price of the fireworks? Well, we don’t know, but given that they ended up being like the ones from the Castle (Edinburgh’s that is) at the end of the Festival (Edinburgh’s that is), Mr S won.










