I'd been meaning to write this story up for a while, but the
sad story just posted in Fort in Sport means I really have to do so tonight. Not quite twenty years ago I was teaching Yorkshire as a foreign language in a Russian provincial town. I'd bought an ex-traffic police bike and sidecar (oh, yes) with a souped-up pursuit engine. As an aside, Russian traffic laws at the time stated that the police could not pursue a motorcyclist who was not wearing a crash helmet, in case they were injured during the chase. On the other hand, traffic cops were armed, and could open fire on vehicles that refused to stop when commanded to do so...
My plan was to ride the contraption back to Blighty through Europe on the expiration of my contract. On the day of my departure, I stretched a bungy cord taut over a bundle on the luggage rack and, thinking the hook had engaged, let go. It hadn't, and although I'd judged the hooking badly, I'd done a cracking job with the return trajectory: it hit me plumb in the left eye. I fell over backwards, and when I sat back up, all I could see in that eye was differing shades of red.
Now, you might think it enough of a coincidence that K, my girlfriend at the time, was a medical student. She'd done work experience on the Russian ambulance service, and so she rushed me to hospital on the tram, knowing for certain we'd get there quicker - the last thing the ambulances were being used for was collecting casualties. You might think it more of a coincidence that her dad was a renowned urologist in the town (not obviously that helpful, after all it's not precisely eyeballs that were close to his area of speciality), but there's not really anything odd about a child following in her father's footsteps, especially in Russia: it's not what you know, etc.
Anyhow, he got me in to see the eye specialist pretty damn quick. The latter didn't know I could speak Russian, and flatly said to him I'd lost the eye. Bless him, the urologist didn't accept this, and he drove me to a different establishment. I was there for two weeks: the treatment involved an injection into the eyeball once daily (and twice on saturdays, for some reason). I can now use the expression "I'd rather stick pins in my eyes" from a position of some authority. It is every bit as bad an experience as you might imagine, and, of course, you can't even look away. But I'm grateful nonetheless: they stopped the gathered blood from coagulating in my eye and persuaded it to drain away. I now have around 98% sight in that eye, which I'll settle for given the initial prognosis.
No, the truly odd coincidence is that K had an older brother who had lost his left eye when messing about with a catapult as a boy - god knows how, all I can picture is that silent movie cliche of the gardener looking down the end of his hose to see where the water's gone - and didn't get home to be treated in time. I did not know this until after my own unfortunate event. Of all the people for me to have got together with, one of the very few people who would have known for sure how much time was of the essence. It still staggers me today.
