What a bozo!

I did a very silly thing today. Now that the base of my new garden tool store is almost ready to concrete, I went across to Leroy Merlin on the other side of Périgueux to pick up some wood. First off, I needed a plank similar to those that I made the shuttering boards out of cut to a length of about 3 metres to use to screed the concrete off to the level of the shuttering boards and tamp it down. Secondly, while I was there, I thought that I might as well pick up the 24 ‘demi-chevrons’ that I need to make up the store’s framework.

The latter had been stacked up at Leroy Merlin in bundles of four with those horrible little plastic straps around them that can be a real pain in the backside to cut, but cut them I had to because I like to check each length of timber that I’m going to buy to make sure that it’s fairly straight, not full of knots and not split or damaged. I used one of my old Stanley knives for the job but unfortunately wasn’t paying enough attention and as I was slicing through one of the more intractable of the straps, succeeded in slashing the heel of my left hand.

The cut was pretty deep and something over an inch long, so I grabbed a few sheets off the roll of absorbent paper that I keep in the back of the Kia to use to staunch the blood and walked across to the yard office to see if they had a large plaster. Luckily they had a first-aid kit and a customer who was being served kindly gave me priority over his paying for the goods that he’d just bought. The look on the lady’s face behind the till when she saw the cut was something to behold, but I assured her that I wasn’t going to die there and then in front of her 🙂

Fortunately, I’m not a ‘bleeder’ and the injury didn’t stop me finishing loading the wood onto the roof of the Kia and tying it down or getting it off again when I got home. However, I want to get cracking on the concreting tomorrow and I think it could then begin to pose a bit of a problem. I’ll try changing the dressing and putting on a rubber glove before I don my leather working gloves and then see how things go. But what an absolutely stupid thing to have done. I really could kick myself this time 🙁