today I was reminded of my brother. People said HE was a hero. He, from his point of view, just 'did his duty'. When, as a met Police officer, he and a colleague were called out on a 'domestic' to find that it was not just an argumentative married couple but enraged illegal immigrants engaging in drug-dealing. The illegally-owned handgun produced while my brother was attempting to handcuff the suspect was fired and resulted in surface injury to my dear brother and the death of his collegue, who didn't respond to the shout to hit the deck quite quick enough. I asked Richard to cook pasta, while he was waiting for it to cook he was leaning on the cooker. Thomas saw that Richard's jumper was on fire and whacked it with his bare hand having told Richard it was on fire. Richard instinctively put his hand up behind his back and has badly burned his hand (becuase the man-made fabric of which the jumper was made burnt on to the end of his finger....).

However things seem at the time - one just gets on and deals as best as one can with the situation - upon reflection one can see that the action of Thomas saved Richard from potentially serious burns on his back.

the funny thing is (the bit that reminds me of the care of God in all this) that on Monday we had a general knowledge quiz which gave us the questions 'what is the biggest danger in an accident apart from the physical injury?' - the answer is, of course, shock. Richard fainted and of course was in a great deal of pain - he is, thankfully, feeling a bit more comfortable now. Thomas went off in his car and I began to think (once Richard had stabilised) that he would suffer from shock and there he was whizzing round the M25. I'm thankful that Thomas was kept safely and that he returned home without accident.

It briefly crossed my mind that I ought to take Richard to A and E - but all the hurdles : car park : the fact that with a burn you are at the back of the list and sitting in that inhospitable environment in severe pain for hours in order to be seen by someone who will tell you they can't do anything for you anyway decided me on staying home. I did go out and buy a bag of frozen peas as the green beans were a bit limited in flexibility.

I now hope that our 'accident season' is finished - David's two recent visits to A & E with a broken toe and then a bit of metal to be removed from his eyeball added to today's incident are enough to remind us of our frailty and our multiple causes for thankfulness.