Houseguests

A few weeks ago when I had relatives visit for a brief few days we had an incident that kind of put a dampener on one of the days.

The guests arrived on the Thursday and we spent the Friday doing a big tourist thing. By Saturday they were very tired and still feeling the effects of jet lag and we all decided to just take it easy.

In the morning I went to my exercise class and one of the guests asked to come with. He is sixty five and had spent over forty years in the army and still kept a fitness regime despite being retired.

So he came with me and I have to say that he kept up with the fittest of us. In fact, twice he outran me. Even the personal trainer said "there is a man who looks after himself".

I did wonder about his ego a bit because he had no qualms about walking around the house in his underwear and no top. Just bare chested. Not an ounce of fat on him. I mentioned it to my husband and he said "I didn't notice".

Anyway, later in the day they all decided to come for a walk with me down to the local shops. It only takes about twenty minutes.

The day was perfect. Sun shining and blue sky. Not too hot.

We got to one road to cross and as we stood there waiting for cars to pass my uncle suddenly started walking across the road. I called him back but he kept going and to my utter horror he was hit by a car on his left.

Up on the bonnet he went and then down in front of the car.

I ran over to him and helped him up. He was bruised and shaken. The poor driver of the car was so shocked.

My uncle had momentarily forgotten about the whole change in the way the traffic goes here. When we cross the road, the cars are coming on our right whereas in Demark they are on the left.

So I would look right and left and right again. But he must have done the opposite because when he got half way across the road he was looking to his right rather than the left and the cars were coming on his left and he did not see it. Luckily the driver could see something was not right and had slowed down enough to brake just before impact.

I was so shocked (as we all were) because when you actually see such a thing it is very confronting. Fortunately my uncle's injuries were superficial but we had to fill in paperwork at the police station and spent the afternoon there.

It put a bit of a gloom over the weekend which was compounded by watching the football grand final on television and seeing my team get hammered.

Later on we went to my older sister's for dinner. She and I have a tense relationship but I put all that aside to make sure our uncle and the gang had a great time.

Family stuff can be stressful.

Ciao
LC