Bliss!

 

Revision can lead to cabin fever and The Teenager wanted to go out for a drive and a walk somewhere.

I drove him to Everdon Stubbs where I knew there was a rope swing.

The woods were astonishingly beautiful.

I thought the bluebells would have gone over but they hadn’t quite and it was quite a magical place. A cuckoo was calling. We saw rabbits and squirrels, and later views towards Daventry of open fields.

There was a low swing, empty and waiting for us. The Teenager had a go first, and then it was my turn.

There is nothing more wonderful than swinging gently, suspended over the ground. There was birdsong and bluebells in every direction. It was perfect…until…

The Teenager started to push me.

Suddenly, I’m whizzing through the trees hollowing like Tarzan … which is fine until…the swing begins to go in a great circle. This is fine too, until… the swing is pushed very hard once again and I’m now swooping close to the trunk of the tree from whose branch the swing has been tied. I realise that I’m on a dangerous trajectory… there is a near miss of the mighty tree trunk… and I realise that another push is all it would take for me to hit it.

I shout to The Teenager not to push me. I shout that if he does push again that I will crash into the tree trunk. I shout warning after warning.

I forget that I am with a teenager.

As the swing passes him by, he pushes me even harder than before.

The swing obeys the laws of physics, and the meaner laws of fate, and swirls and swings me around so that I curl high up into the air before being smashed, defencelessly, sideways on, straight into the tree trunk.

 

I discover to my cost that tree trunks do not yield when something swings into them. I discover that bark is like a giant form of sandpaper and that clothes are no defence against it. I discover that I’m made of softer stuff than a tree.

I am knocked from the swing and dragged through the earth like a human plough.

Shaken, I stagger to my feet.

Later, when I asked the Teenager why he'd still pushed me after I'd shouted out to him not to; and warned him about the imminent danger, he said...

‘Oh, I thought it was just banter!’

And I’m left wondering why he couldn’t see and guess the outcome of the trajectory he had set me on… how he couldn’t see how dangerous the last circuit was…and I’m also left wondering as to what ever had happened to his common sense and his imagination if he couldn’t predict the outcome…especially when his own self-preservation, and pain threshold is always set at a default setting of maximum!

And why did he not heed my warning shouts.

(sigh)

‘It was funny though,’ he says later, as I checked on bruised fingers, and turned down socks to discover how little skin was left on my ankle bone. ‘It was really funny.’

I can feel tinkling bruises already deepening their hues all down my right hand side. The bones in my wrist are stiffening… I haven’t yet dared to inspect the damage properly…probably because my head has been too jarred for me to think straight.

But I did get back on the swing again, despite the bruises, the fingers that would no longer bend, the concussion, the blood stains, and the dirt covered trousers, and the…er..pain!

And it was lovely once again to be suspended in the air again…to see the bluebells… and the robin…and to swirl freely though the air…and to enjoy the fragrance of the flowers… and to swirl over that strangely disturbed mound of soft earth where once a teenager had stood!

 

 

 

Bliss!