Sadly, another day in which I feel old before my time. As my dear children will often remind me, I am old, at least by their standards, but this morning at around 0800, on the Newmarket Road leading into Norwich, I had my first ‘senior’ moment. For it was there and then, dear reader, that I suffered a fall.
Suffering a fall is the sort of thing that I’d associated previously with shopping trolleys on wheels, thermal bootees, and for some reason, Thora Hird. And I do have the excuse that I was travelling at least at some pace, but even so, a fall it certainly was.
Being a bloke, I do feel it necessary to drag out both the extreme pain and the ignomy of the experience in some detail. I was running to work along my normal route, not really going either fast or slow, and listening to Danny Baker tearing up the podcast charts, when I, well, just lost my footing. On what appeared to be (and I did check) a perfectly reasonable piece of pavement. At this point I stumbled, and cracked my knee very hard onto the pavement. Which hurt. Then I bounced along the pavement, before I bashed down simultaneously on my left shoulder and elbow. Which really hurt. Then, one more bounce, before I came to rest with my head perilously close to the gutter, having broken my fall with both palms. Which really really hurt.
For those of you familar with this part of the world, you’ll realise that at that time, on that road, there’s lots of traffic, moving pretty slowly. And I must have sailed past about 5 cars travelling in the opposite direction before I finally stopped moving. At which point a succession of very slow moving cars will have seen a bloke in shorts, lying down on the pavement next to them, bleeding. For my part, I think I lay there for a couple of minutes, not through any other reasons than thinking that I’d broken my arm, and not having the first idea of what to do. And, as it happens, whether I’d still make it for my 0830 meeting.
And, nothing would please me more to report to you that the traffic stopped, and I finally came to, wrapped up in a tartan blanket from the back of a car, while perfect strangers administered basic first aid, sweet tea, and kind words of comfort.
But, this being fact, no such thing happened. Every single car drove straight by, although a couple of cars did steer slightly to the right as they did. I suspect that this was to protect their tyres rather than my body though. As it happens, a couple of guys walking into the city ran over, checked me out and lifted me up. Having thanked them, and deciding that nothing was broken, I continued both my run, and, indeed, my general disillussionment with my fellow man.
The Emu 