nettles

Nettles

Stinging nettles seemed to figure a lot in our young lives. They were a major threat to our wellbeing when "playing out". There always seemed to be a patch or nettles, often unnoticed but well placed somewhere to catch you out. I once tried to take a bend too fast on my trike and fell headlong into a patch. Man that was painful. The best “nettle story” I have though, involved a large patch of them at the side of the dirt track that ran down the end of the street and onto the main road. It was opposite the house of an old lady called Mrs Haycock. In those days, most old folk were miserable and complaining. Mrs Haycock was an expert at it, always telling us off for some minor indiscretion.

One time me and Barry started whacking these nettles with long, thin sticks that we had snapped off a tree somewhere. The nettles were in their prime, tall and succulent and a deft swish with the stick would slice the tops off them easily. We had a great time until we realised we’d cut them all down and created an unholy mess of dead nettles all over the place. Realising Mrs Haycock would certainly see it and find a reason to moan and complain, coupled with the certainty that she had probably witnessed us doing it, we figured we’d be carted away to the local jail if we didn’t do something quick. (We were always in fear of the law catching up on our “crimes” and on the off chance that she hadn’t actually seen us do it). So we set about frantically throwing the dead plants over the fence and into the laundry to dispose of the evidence. The other side of the fence was overgrown with grass and weeds anyway and would not be noticed. The adrenalin made us oblivious to the stinging factor of the plants for a while. Until we stopped and then. ……Bloody hell it was painful. You know how it is with nettles, they sting like mad for ages, then turn into itches until you scratch them and they start stinging again. Our hands swelled up like cows udders. We needed a lorry load of dock leaves to calm that down.

A few days later – we were down in the area playing when Mrs Haycock emerged. “Do you know who’s chopped all those nettles down”? She asked in her spiky, cracked voice. Fearing the worst, that they were somehow precious to her and that she would call the police if she found out, we instantly decided to lie.
“No”. We said (and got ready for a quick exit).
“Well they made a good job of it, it looks much better now”. She said. That was the only time I heard her say something good and it was too late to claim the credit!