The Cactus Incident

Last week I was lucky enough to spend a week in the Canary Islands enjoying some sunshine.

Although it was a week away from the day job and parental responsibilities, it was still the middle of term for the MAFA. So I still attended our Tuesday session, worked on my research paper, and drafted some blogs.

While there I was struck by the many varied and intriguing different types of cacti. There was such an enormous variety, in size, shape, colour, complexity, and spikiness.

Perhaps part of my fascination stems from a specific childhood experience. When I was two years old and living in Sydney Australia with my family, I fell into a large cactus on my left side and was impaled with hundreds of cactus spikes.

I had to be taken to the hospital where they laboriously pulled out the spikes with tweezers while several nurses held me down. I then had to lie in a saline bath to encourage more of the spikes to come out then they’d do the extraction again. Apparently there were several rounds of this process before they got them all out.

Afterwards I had red marks all down my left side that took years to fade away but thankfully they’re all gone and I don’t remember the pain or trauma of the incident, although my parents definitely do.

Funnily enough from a young age I had a recurring image in my head of being in a dimly lit room, lying in a clear plastic tub half filled with water. I can see my mother in the corner of the room and also see down a long corridor because the door was open. Many years later I mentioned the image to my parents and they said that it was definitely from that cactus incident.

So it may seem strange that I was fascinated by so many examples of a plant that hurt me as a child, but thankfully I don’t associate them with a bad experience.

For your viewing pleasure here are just a small selection of the cacti from my holiday…