Which reminded me of a happy story.
We got married at Shelly Beach, a (relatively) quiet wee spot in Sydney, just around the corner from the much larger and less charming Manly beach. Shelly Beach has pleasantly calm water (it's in a cove thing so no waves to speak of) and has lovely clear water (the sand there is less sandy and more shelly, and what with the lack of waves it doesn't really get churned up much so you can always see what's going on underwater at Shelly Beach) and is generally popular with families (who are scared of their kids being drowned by waves) and snorkellers. A few years ago I went snorkelling at Shelly Beach. It was all very pleasant until the part where a bluebottle got its horrible bluebottle tentacles all wrapped around my neck and stung the hell out of me.
I don't really have a lot of experience with being stung by bluebottles. In general I find that they usually manage to get other people instead of me, and so my main memory at the time was of when my sister got got by one and it left all these big horrible red welts around her ankles that didn't go away for ages.
Anyway, there I am flailing about in the ocean, probably about 30m or so from the shore, trying to get these tentacles off me and meanwhile getting ever more tangled in them and also getting stung all over my hands and arms. By the time I eventually got back to the shore I was all a-tizzy with the exhaustion of coping with the horrible burning pain, swimming back to shore and trying to remember how you are supposed to treat bluebottle stings. I know we used to be told that vinegar was the way to go, but then didn't they change that advice to fresh water? Or salty water? Or urine? Opting for the easiest and least pervy* option, I went to the shower things and put my neck under the water, but that just made it hurt more. There were no life guards around (ie. the people who would have the vinegar) so instead I went to a cafe and asked if I could have some ice or something, which also didn't really help me much and plus I was getting quite a lot of strange looks as I sat there clutching ice at myself and feeling hysterical. Not to mention the fact that I was almost crying from the pain and I was secretly convinced that I was going to collapse with either a heart attack (because it felt like my heart was galloping along at about a zillion miles an hour) or some sort of anaphylactic shock (because it felt like my neck was swollen to about 8 times its normal size, which I was sure was hindering my breathing and therefore killing me. Incidentally, I was later very disappointed when I looked in a mirror and saw that my neck wasn't red or swollen at all. I do like having the visible signs of trauma; it's the best way to get more sympathy).
Needless to say, I survived and then enjoyed telling people about the day that I got a bluebottle wrapped around my neck. My story lost a lot of its charm (for me) when I met this dude who had been out surfing a week or two earlier and and been stung by a bluebottle and reacted reeeally badly and got these enormous welts all over his torso which ended up turning scabby and taking weeks and weeks to heal, but still, my "and then a bluebottle tried to strangle me!" story remained traumatic and dramatic for me.
And then I got married at the same place. Nice.
* Urine obviously being the pervy option. Frankly, although the pain was pretty bad, I think it would have had to have been a lot worse before I started asking strangers if I could borrow their urine.
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