The wife was doing the ironing when I got back from the pub.

‘For fuck’s sake, will you stop that baby crying?’ I said.

‘I’m worried about you, George,’ she said. ‘I think you’ve got a mote in your eye.’

I had no idea what she was talking about.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘There’s definitely a mote’.

​

***

She didn’t have to tell me about the splinter. I woke up one morning after a bender and my eye itched. I rubbed and it bled on the pillowcases.

‘You’ll have to wash those,’ I told her.

She pulled my eyelids open and peered.

‘It’s grown,’ she said. ‘Does it hurt?’

‘Not much,’ I said.

She looked disappointed.

​

***

A week later I was chatting up one of the office girls. Maureen… lovely legs, big tits, a great arse on her.

‘What’s that sticking out of your eye?’ she said.

‘Just a splinter,’ I said. ‘Nothing to worry about.’

She held up a mirror. A bit of wood roughly the shape and size of a chair leg was poking out of my left eye. Where the fuck had that come from?

​

***

The first person I saw in A&E looked like a schoolgirl on work experience.

‘Wearing a stethoscope doesn’t make you a doctor, love. Get me a real doctor,’ I said.

It was still growing. By the time the registrar arrived, I was choking back tears.

‘I’ve never seen a man with a plank in his eye,’ he said. ‘I expect it’s painful.’

​

***

The wife turned up eventually. The thing in my eye was now the size of a railway sleeper. I screamed in agony.

‘Jesus Christ! What is it?’

She pushed the doctor aside and plucked it out.

‘It’s a beam,’ she said. ‘It’s definitely a beam.’

She raised the massive timber above her head, brought it down hard, and parted the Red Sea.