Or... I fought the greenhouse and the greenhouse won.
Regular readers may recall the incident almost two months ago when I had a slight accident with a scaffolding pole which resulted in a broken window on a greenhouse. It wasn't serious because the greenhouse was due for demolition anyway. Last Wednesday was the scheduled day. So we began demolishing it.
It wasn't a small, back-garden, private-home sort of greenhouse. It was a large commercial greenhouse, used for growing "plugs" for sale to wholesale growers. It was insulated boards from the ground up to about half-a-metre high, then glass panelled walls and roof.
Being sensible little labourers we took the roof off first. The glass slid free easily and we stacked it in the trailer. The frame was partly unbolted and removed, though we left the edges up so as to keep the walls stable. It was decided that we'd start on one side and clear that before switching to the other, and then doing the ends last. We began removing the glass panels. Once that was done we needed to remove the inner boards and insulation, then the outer boards.
It was hot in that greenhouse, we were in t-shirts. The boards came away easily and insulation came tumbling out. Unfortunately for us it was fibre-glass. Nice, fluffy, cotton-wool type fibre-glass. We got covered in bits. Notice that word - fibre-
glass. That powdery stuff that coated my arms was very fine glass. Like on sand-paper. It hurts. In fact it feels like hundreds of little burning pinpricks. I was cursing up a storm. Then something happened to make me forget that my arms were on fire.
A tarantula the size of a rottweiler ran out from between the panels - and on to my (safety-gloved) hand.
Ok, so it wasn't
actually a tarantula - just a big, black, scuttling, domestic house-spider. And it was only about 10cm across - not
quite big enough to saddle, but still...
Anyone who knows me knows that I do not cope well with spiders. Especially big, black, scuttling types. I did what any severely arachnophobic person would do.
I flung my arm out sideways, flicking my glove off, and ran backwards, yelling.
Into the other wall. Where my hand made acquaintance with the glass. Loudly. Shatteringly. And as the glass broke into several large pieces it attempted to take the top of my right index finger with it. Fortunately the glass met bone and stopped rather than going right through. But oh boy didn't it bleed. For hours.
Eventually I got it stopped. Mainly by wrapping it in three or four plasters (band-aids) and cutting off the circulation with a cable-tie around my knuckle. It didn't last though. As soon as I took the plasters off it bled again. I put more plasters on. The following day it bled again. When on Friday it was still bleeding whenever I picked anything up, pressed on anything, or removed the plasters, I gave up and headed for A&E.
You can't stitch fingers very well. So they superglued it. And wadded masses of plasters around it.
So when I went to the wedding on Saturday it was with my finger swathed in chunks of plaster. But at least it wasn't bleeding. It's still swathed in plaster.
I didn't even get to destroy the evil greenhouse. When I got into work on Monday it was gone. They'd finished demolishing it at the weekend.
See you next week. Goodnight and may your God/s go with you.
Ze
