After 4 years, Julie's work on the restoration of her Dad's old Lincoln Zephyr was almost done. Built in 1941, the car had travelled to Scotland with her parents from France, where they had just become newly weds. Etienne and Juliette, both from a small village some 150 miles south of Paris, had exciting new jobs in Scotland's oil capital, Aberdeen. Etienne was an engineer, and worked on the new developing technologies of the day, and, in his spare time, he 'tinkered' with cars. This Zephyr was his pride and joy, but as he became older the car gradually became too much work for him, and it had lain, untouched and forgotten, under dust sheets in the old barn behind the family home in Banchory for the past 20 years. Etienne's death those 4 long years ago had shaken the family, and Julie had undertaken the restoration of the car as a memorial to her Dad.
Julie was in the process of fabricating a bracket to support the exhaust pipe. Normally a very 'safety conscious' person, on this fateful occasion Julie had forgotten to put on her safety goggles. Without warning one of the steel wires from the fast spinning bench grinder came loose, and, like a teeny tiny spear thrown by a teeny tiny tribesman from a teeny tiny South American village as yet undiscovered by David Attenborough, embedded itself deep into Julie's left eye. Two thoughts immediately ran through her mind. The first was "Ooyah .. that really hurts!" and the second was "David Attenborough would probably miss a teeny tiny South American village ... because he would be expecting a full sized South American village." It would, after all, be difficult to spot a teeny tiny village in all that South American forest foliage.
Julie ran into the house, one hand covering her eye, and explained the situation to Juliette, who was sitting in the conservatory doing a Woman's Own cryptic crossword while listening to the Radio 4 chat show called "Ways to fill the days when you are old and stuck at home." Juliette had been a doctor for one of the oil companies, and was experienced in this kind of work related accident. She immediately went to get her first aid kit !