One green bottle

After Sunday's late-night work session and yesterday's lazy recovery day, today began unadventurously. This was the only photo of the day, taken as I walked down a laneway on the way to the local shop. I immediately thought of the Ten Green Bottles, of course, but then I began to see a story unfolding. It didn't seem as if whoever drank the contents of this bottle would have been neat enough to leave it on top of the wall, so I surmised that it had been lifted off the ground by a civic-minded passerby and put on the wall to be out of harm's way.

After that, the day was incident-free until I got a call from Susan, my next-door neighbour. I wasn't quick enough to get to the phone before the answering machine clicked in, so it was her message I heard rather than Susan herself. All she said was "I'm stuck", and I knew at once that she'd had another fall. Unfortunately, I no longer have a set of keys to her house, so it took a fair bit of running around and phoning up and wracking of brains before I finally got in touch with her daughter. A neighbour and I were able to speak to Susan through her window and to reassure her that help was on the way, but it took a good while before we managed to get in to the house and get her off the floor.

Actually, before her daughter arrived a squad car showed up, having been alerted by a total stranger whose number Susan had dialed by mistake. The Gardai helped out, and thought it wise to call an ambulance, even if only to have Susan checked out. She'd fallen in the kitchen and had cut her hand when the cup she was holding smashed. She managed to pull herself into the front room, but couldn't get off the floor. We didn't know at first that the fall had happened where it did, and it was only when she calmed down that we went in to the kitchen and saw a surprising amount of blood on the floor.

The ambulance crew were terrific, checked her out thoroughly, told her she was "strong as an ox" and that all her vital signs were perfectly fine. They tended to her cut, spent a while with her, and left without having to take her to hospital (which she'd been dreading). I got back into my own house a couple of hours later, pleased that things had been no worse, but only after leaving strict instructions about getting me a set of keys for future use.