What’s that old aphorism for something being better than nothing? That it is better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick?
Well, let me tell you, that expression is pointless: everything is better than getting a poke in the eye with a sharp stick, and I have just had the extremely pointed experience to prove it.
Barely a couple of weeks into the year, it appears that 2024 has already got it in for me with the occurrence of what can only be described as the most freakish accident of my apparently accident-prone life.
It happened while I was taking care of business outside – and no, I don’t mean the septic tank is full again and we’re back to using the Thunder Box in the second-best woodshed. The “business” was our 16 cubic metres of firewood that we acquired before the new year from John up the road.
Most of it is lying in three great piles out near the tractor shed in a spot which, with El Niño finally delivering Wairarapa its first hot summer in three years, is currently getting more afternoon sun than Saudi Arabia. However, a few days of gentle rain and high winds just before New Year’s Eve sent me rushing out to cover our precious seasoning firewood – it set us back $1500 – with tarpaulins.
Days later, with the sun having set out its shingle again, the tarps needed removing, and it was while struggling with these clumsy giants that 2024 decided to set out its shingle as well.
As I stood with my back to a row of large, mature flaxes while trying to haul the covers back from the wood, I moved my head sideways, leading one old, long-dried, spear-shaped flax leaf to sneak from outside of my peripheral vision and into my eye through the gap between my left cheek and my glasses. While debating whether I should be more shocked or surprised by this turn of events, my eye cast the deciding ballot: it decided it was painful.
After squirting yellow dye into the poor, sore thing the following morning, a nurse declared that I had managed to scratch the cornea, which meant my firewood-tarpaulin fiasco would have me spend the next couple of days “looking like a pirate” with an eye patch.
“Shiver me timbers,” I announced in a vain attempt to be cheerful. Even with just one of my eyes working, I could see her roll her own.
Days before 2024 poked me in the eye with a sharp stick, 2023 had a go as well. Just after new year, the bill for the event which nearly stole Christmas – discovering the septic tank was full again – arrived in our inbox.
If you’ve ever wondered how much it costs to get rid of 4.4 tonnes of poo, I can tell you: it is $921.87. That includes GST because even if the service is poo, the government must have its cut.
Why the tank needed emptying again after just three years is still something of a mystery. Glenn, the bloke who did the emptying, suggested it could be overzealous use of the wrong kind of cleaning products.
Pete, a reader from Central Otago, had a different thought. Thanks to his own travails at “Arid Ranch”, as he called it, he is now a “bit of a septic tank expert” and suggested that our tank’s grey water outflow could be the problem, possibly due to a partial or full blockage.
Meanwhile, Pru, our friend and la présidente of the Donkey and Mule Protection Trust, said what we needed was a septic tank wonder drug, made in Cardiff of all places, which apparently restores and maintains the thing’s “natural biological process”.
When I asked for it at the store Pru recommended, one of the two blokes at the counter said, “It ain’t cheap,” before informing me that the six, small water-soluble sachets would set me back nearly $65. I must have grimaced like I’d just been poked in the eye with a sharp stick because the other bloke at the counter smiled and said, “Oh, well, it’s not like you’re flushing it down the toilet.”
