Re: Painful encounters with animals
I was about 13 or 14 when I went to Blankenburg (Belgium) for a week on a school trip. One sunny day we all went down to the beach, teachers and all, to play games and swim in the sea.
I loved swimming and was the first to go splashing through the surf and started swimming out. We had been warned about the jellyfish lurking just below the surface, but were assured that should we inadvertently come into contact with one, it would be no more than a nettle sting of which I have had plenty.
So I ducked and veaved my way through a small gathering of them undaunted, until I came face to face with a large purple one that looked somehow different from the others. It was heading straight for my face, so I raised my arm and swept it out of my way. I immediately felt an excruciating pain down my arm, my chest and tummy, and the inside of my thigh as it swept past.
In great pain I swam to the shore and staggered up the beach to a concerned teacher. Each beach had it's own little hut for changing and a bloke who looked after it. He applied something to the red hives that were now burning like fury, he told us that it was very serious and I should be taken back to the hotel and a doctor called forthwith. A teacher helped a now delirious Foxy back to the digs, and the doctor soon followed with a hypodermic full of some potion, and apart from the intense pain, that was the last thing I remember until waking up in the evening.
I have never forgotten the pain that I felt on that day, and have not experienced anything like it since, even when breaking my arm in a road accident, when the car left the road and fell on my arm after it went flailing through the windscreen...(I wasn't driving just in case you were wondering)
I returned to Blankenburg (Belgium) last year (before Covid) on a New Year Cruise. We left the ship to travel by train to Bruges, at the ticket office they refused to take cards, so I was advised to go to the machine round the corner and bring back cash. The machine was faulty and ate my card....I had to spend the rest of the holiday with no card and no access to my bank account...
I have sworn an oath never to return to that God forsaken place ever again....