OK, so last week was never going to be good. Son and daughter in law, after 6 months of living and working in Orkney, were going south and naturally enough taking our grandson with them. I know all the stuff about how lucky we were to have them near for six months; I've said it myself, I've agreed with other people when they've said it to me, but at the end of the day that wasn't going to make saying Goodbye any easier.
Monday actually was OK; in fact I might go so far as to say that it was a pattern day for how I hoped autumn and winter would be. Got up at a reasonable hour, did a bit of housework, a bit of ironing, a bit of baking, had a walk and then did lots of reading. And knitting in the evening. Lovely, constructive, peaceful day.
Tuesday it started to go pear shaped. OH, who was taking them south, started to get a wee bit stressed. Son starting to pack, trying to clean ready for landlord inspection. Lots of coming and going. Boxes brought in. Discussions about routes, timings, logistics. Front door left open A LOT.
Wednesday was Tuesday in spades. Given that I was getting more and more wound up I resorted to my usual method of overcoming stress and got out a jigsaw puzzle. Experience has taught me that imposing the order of a finished picture on the chaos of several hundred pieces of oddly shaped cardboard is very soothing to my nerves. Sadly, last week this fail safe let me down. Seems some stress is just beyond the reach of the calming effects of puzzling.
Friday came, inevitably. I spent a lovely morning with the grandson while his parents did all their last minute stuff and OH got in some sleep and at 3 o'clock they all got into the car and set off for the ferry. I'll draw a veil. It was hard.
The plan was that OH would drive through the night all the way to Cheltenham, a drive of about 12 hours with minimal breaks, so that the kidlets could pick up the key to the new flat early on Saturday morning. Motorway all the way from Glasgow. I think you could safely say I was worried. I got progress reports until I went to bed. When I got up I checked with my sister who was expecting them all for breakfast. They had been and gone - all was well and going according to plan.
Which was all very well for them but, at the risk of sounding totally self centred, that didn't help me much. Yes, I did at least know that they weren't all lying dead or dying in a mangled heap of metal on the motorway, but I was miserable and alone with four cats and a recalcitrant fire to look after. It was, I decided, time for A Good Wallow.
My wallows these days generally take the form of time on You Tube. I might sample every recording known to man of Tosti's Ideale, or I might watch a young Mandy Patinkin singing Younger than Springtime, or it might be the Productio Diary videos from the forthcoming film of The Hobbit. Like Lord Peter of that ilk, it's a case of Where My Whimsy Takes Me. Saturday it took me to Iain Glen.
(Just in case there's anyone out there who doesn't know Mr Glen is a talented Scottish actor of considerable charm who also posseses a very pleasant voice.)
So I spent some time Wallowing in the company of Mr Glen until I felt better and then I made a plan. I would have lunch. I would take a walk along to the house of my friend J, whose cat we were feeding while she was away. I would come home and make some lemon loaves, one of which would be nice for us when OH got back, and the other I would take along to my friend G the following day, as she was just back from Aberdeen hospital where surgeons had been fiddling with her knee.Upside for her - no more pain and the prospect of beng able to walk properly without sticks in the not too disant future. Downside - currently more or less immobile.
It was a lovely day on Saturday and the walk to J's is not long, about 15 minutes, although half of it up a steep enough brae. The first bit though is flat and I was enjoying my walk. The sun was warm, the sea was calm and blue and sparkly, my day was planned for the next couple of hours, and there I was in a little world of my own, reliving the video clip of Iain Glen in Small Engine Repair singing If I Could Only Fly , and singing along with it. All was right with the world.
And then my right foot turned outwards and I staggered a long way along the road trying not to fall flat on my face. When I managed to get myself upright it was two or three minutes before I could bear to put my foot on the ground, and the phrase 'if I could only fly' had taken on a whole new meaning.
And this is where it gets silly, because instead of crawling along the road to the nearest house and begging for help, especially foolish in light of the fact that said house belongs to my friend R, I carried on round the corner and up the brae to J's, where I fed her fish and her cat and left her a note about the necessity of worming, and then I locked the place up again and started home.
Fortunately my stiff upper lip was not stiff enough to get me past R's house twice, and to cut a long story short I spent most of the rest of the afternon in the local hospital, being x-rayed and plastered and shown how to inject myself with something that thins my blood, because my ankle is broken and the general feeling is that I won't be mobile again for approximately 7 weeks.
Looking back I have no idea what caused my foot to suddenly slip like that. I may have just caught an uneven piece of road, it may have slipped on a wet patch of leaves, or it might just have been my shoe being too loose. Whatever the immediate cause , I blame the whole thing on Iain Glen. Because if I hadn't had him on a distracting loop in my mind I would have been paying a bit more attention to what I was doing. And then this would never have happened. I reckon the guy owes me a Get Well card.
No comments:
Post a Comment