At 57, I had never been camping nor had any desire to. But late last year I was taking part in a televised walk from Belgrade to Istanbul with other showbiz types. We were on the Sultan’s trail, mirroring a journey made by Suleiman the Magnificent, the longest-reigning sultan of the Ottoman Empire, who ruled at the same time as Henry VIII. The group included Adrian Chiles, Dom Joly and Edwina Currie. One night we fetched up in a Bulgarian field; it was getting dark and we had to make camp for the night, which is how I came to share a very small tent on a hillside with former Olympic javelin champion Fatima Whitbread.
At 4am, Fatima nudged me awake to say, “I think someone is trying to get into the tent.” At first I thought it was a prank. I popped on a headlamp and lifted the tent flap to see my canvas bag disappearing into the pitch-black darkness. With the fuzzy logic and stern will of a sleep-deprived woman, I gave chase to the thief: a fox.
It was as astonished as I was, to find itself in an unseemly tussle over what it now considered to be its bag. This element of surprise was the only reason I caught up with it, because it was a faster mover than me. We tugged the bag to and fro, the fox getting ever more furious that anyone would deny it such a prize (at the time I couldn’t understand why, but I later found a handful of almonds and half a chocolate bar at the bottom of the bag). It all happened very quickly, but when it wasn’t getting its way, the fox bit me: a good, sharp nip on the ankle. In doing so, it gave up the struggle and I raced back to the tent clutching the bag.
Although Fatima later declared she’d rushed to my aid, she had the presence of mind to grab a phone and take two rather blurry photographs of the scene. No one else stirred – all we could hear was Dom snoring nearby. We got back into our tent, with the shredded bag, and zipped ourselves in. I thought the ordeal was over, but suddenly the fox returned, launching some very impressive four-footed attacks on the canvas. They were forceful and vicious, like the footage you see of a fox jumping through snow to get at its prey. With no joy, and no bag, it eventually gave up and went on its way.
Later that morning, I was sent to get medical attention. The chances of contracting rabies from a rabid fox are not zero. But because the charity walk couldn’t stop, I had to have jabs at hospitals in three different countries. In Bulgaria, a grizzled, ancient doctor attended to me with much laughter, telling me the good news that “at least it wasn’t a bear”. He located the dainty, double puncture wound above my left ankle, simply applied iodine and a plaster, and sent me onwards to Plovdiv, the last city before we crossed the Turkish border.
There, more iodine was administered and a different doctor laughed that “at least it wasn’t a bear”. I got my first rabies jab, and the doctor wrote a schedule of follow-up jabs for me and put in Latin vulnus morsum cruris sinistra (the bite wound left leg), to help explain it when I got to Turkey.
Three days later, I presented it and myself at an Istanbul hospital A&E. I had a companion who spoke no Turkish, Bulgarian paperwork, Latin instructions, and Google Translate. The doctor dismissed all of these with a wave of her hand, gave me another jab and ordered me to return a few days later. This time I was alone but, through the power of mime and pointing, I was in and out in eight minutes.
My last jab was administered in a near-empty hospital on the outskirts of Dublin, long before coronavirus had reached Ireland. I had no side-effects from the bite or the jabs, and was able to complete the walk, so I can rest happy in the knowledge that there is a fox in Bulgaria with a little bit of Irish in it.
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