Talking Point with Vicky Turrell

Zoom, zoom, they were frantically invading the clear blue sky over our house. And not just one or two, there were about 10 of them. They went under our eaves and clung to the east side of the wall. Then they tried the apex on the south but in the shadow under the overhang. House martins, looking like glossy black toy planes with flashing white undercarriages, were suddenly everywhere.

I was not sure if these were recently fledged from elsewhere or this year’s adults desperately looking for a place to stick their mud nest. In any case they soon lost interest in our eaves and to my dismay they went next door, swooping up to their roof tops.

‘Oh, please choose our house,’ I urge to the empty sky.

Martins bring luck and I would love to watch them here through the summertime.

My friend told me that she did not have time when she was waiting in A&E the other day. I was at a belated party with a group of colleagues from my working days all those years ago. I told of my nine-hour waiting recently.

“My neighbour took me, I was too ill to drive,” said my friend. But the hours ticked by and she still had not been seen. Midnight came and went then at 1am her neighbour said,

“I have to work tomorrow so I will leave you if you don’t mind”. My friend had had enough too, and they both gave up and went home.

In the morning, she rushed to her doctor’s surgery. He sent her back to A&E, so she got a taxi and still had to wait. She had not skipped the queue by leaving the emergency department. I was glad I had sat it out and waited those nine hours.

My friend was eventually seen and it turned out to be serious and she was kept in hospital for a week. Luckily, she was able to organise my belated 80^th party and was fit enough to tell the tale. She brought floating balloons with 80 on them which boldly announced my age to everyone in the restaurant. I took them home in the car and even though we thought we had fastened them down one escaped and appeared on the back seat.

Our man in a van has also appeared again. I am sure he was the same person I saw on the A5 all those ages ago before we moved house. There he was on the grass verge sitting on the steps of his wooden caravan, his carved wooden animals displayed for sale in front of him as if he had all the time in this frantically busy world.