The Ring Story

There lies my severed wedding-ring, its symbolic 'unbroken-circle' of never ending love, in tatters. The Dr in the "Accident and Emergency" department of Edinburgh Royal Infirmary examined it and announced with a grin, that, "We'll either have to cut off the ring, or the finger". Well - better the ring than the finger I thought, and so they set to work, grinding through the only piece of jewellery that I have ever really worn, and which has been on my hand for twelve and a half years!

The trouble all began at the Hon. Percy Cowpat's house in Edinburgh where we were staying. My ring finger was a bit sore around the knuckle, and so I asked my (Dr) wife to look at it. She advised me to take off the ring, which I did. All was well, until I tried using logic. My thought was that if I left it lying around, it would get lost - not what I wanted. If I tried putting it on my little finger, if would fall off - also not what I wanted. Then I came up with what I thought was the perfect answer - to put the ring on the fourth finger of my other hand. It, I reasoned foolishly, wasn't aching, and so would be the same size as the fourth finger on my left hand and so would be the perfect place to keep the ring until the usual finger was better. Well, so I thought..

What I hadn't bargained for was the fact that my right hand is larger than my left (I have since discovered that in right-handed people this is almost always the case). The ring went on, smoothly enough, but then began to ache, and then began to really ache. My wife (The Dr) noted with concern (not a usual reaction to my many ailments I might add) that the aching finger was swelling and going blue, facts much more pertinent than the crescendo of pain beginning to accelerate into my arm. So with various lubricants they set to work, trying to pull the ring off. Sadly all their attempts came to nothing, the ring got firmly stuck over my knuckle and the finger began to go numb. I was duly dispatched to A&E where the cutters came out.

To be fair to the good doctors of E.R.I. they did give me the option of finger amputation. It would probably have been quicker than the cutters they did have. It took at least ten minutes of grinding to cut through the ring, the worst of which was the heat that the cutting generated.

The question now is whether to be a sentimentalist (melt this ring down and make a new ring from exactly this piece of gold, as put on my finger Aug 3rd, 2006) or a pragmatist (its only a symbol, get a new one). The latter option is by far the cheaper, however there is still a discussion to be had as my wife is more of a pragmatist about such things than I am. I am, no doubt, a tragic sentimentalist!