The first test of our marriage today and it was a pretty serious one.
After having had a fortnight or so of feasts and posh meals and champagne we decided to start a health kick, so we've bought loads of healthy food. After a trip to the gym my wife cut up some carrots to have as a little snack to tide us over until dinner. She then headed into the other room with hers to get on with some work, as I sat on the sofa feeling smug that I had a day off and day dreaming.
My peaceful reverie was broken by the sound of retching from the other room. I thought that my wife was being sick - we'd done quite a long work out and maybe it had got to her. But the retching continued and my wife was sounding incredibly distressed.
She came into the lounge and it became obvious that the carrot she had been eating had become lodged in her throat. She seemingly couldn't breath. It's all a bit of a blur to me now and I don't know if she managed to tell me this or I just worked it out from her frantic reaction. But she was clearly in trouble and scared and I wasn't faring much better, as I had little idea of what to do and thought that my bride of 15 days was about to peg it in front of me. I was not yet able to see the irony of this health kick being the cause of her demise.
The only course of action I had was to hit her sharply on the back, which I tried a few times, with no apparent success. I do not know how to administer the Heimlich Manoeuvre and know that it's dangerous to try to do it unless you're an expert, but as the choking continued I half-heartedly gave it a go, based on what I had seen on TV. It wasn't helping.
It was horrible to feel this helpless and useless in a situation like this. And this felt like a horrible dream. Was I just going to have to watch her die? How long would it take an ambulance to get here? Too long surely. I kept on slapping her back and squeezing and she kept on making distressed noises, which I hoped meant that some air was getting through.
When I was about four (as I mentioned in my Metro column recently) I was at my Grandma and Grandad's and they gave me a pack of fruit pastilles to eat and when they weren't looking I pretty much stuffed the entire tube into my mouth and started choking. I vividly remember them grabbing me and holding me upside down in the doorway of the lounge and shaking me until the gloopy mess found its way out of my oesophagus, but I was only a couple of feet high back then and I wasn't sure I could manage the same trick with my wife.
Finally the slapping or the retching or the squeezing did the trick though, as the carrot dislodged itself and the situation calmed down. It was an enormous relief, but also left me feeling powerless and weak. To think you could lose someone in such a silly and random way is bad enough, but imagine spending the rest of your life blaming yourself for not knowing what to do in such a crisis. And also it would mean I would have a lifelong vendetta against carrots, spending all my time trying to avenge my wife's death. Though to be fair if anyone has a vendetta in this situation it should be the carrots - I have been indirectly responsible for the deaths of millions of them. In a way I respect that kamikaze carrot for trying to take out one human.
But I contented myself with probably having saved my wife's life with my ineffectual slapping and squeezing. She now owes me and has to be my slave for the rest of her life (which was my initial understanding of what marriage meant, though so far it's been mainly the other way round). Afterwards I remembered that she has a stand up routine about choking on a carrot (though in slightly different circumstances). That would have grimly ironic wouldn't it? And made watching videos of that routine slightly less funny (to begin with, but time is a great healer and I guess in a few months it might just make the routine funnier). She'd become the comedian who sort of predicted her own demise. And I would be known as the man whose wife couldn't even eat a carrot without dying. It was very much the kind of thing the sitcom Gods had been waiting to build up to. Just as I started showing off about how well things were going my wife chokes on a carrot - and then, to make it really sweet, the police suspect that as no one could possibly choke on a carrot on their own that I had murdered her.
On balance I am glad that she survived.
Though I have to say, in all seriousness, it was very unsettling and upsetting both during and afterwards. Carrots you have made a very powerful enemy. You can hide but I will find you and eat you and then it won't matter where you hide, because I'll be able to see in the dark.
Chew your food now, folks. Choking on a carrot would be an embarrassing way to go.
