I am typing with my right elbow jammed against the side of this conveniently designed chair so that my shoulder doesn't move.
The injury came about because of skating. Last week I went skating in Edinburgh's St. Andrew's Square with my mother and brother and a young family with children, and it was wonderfully warm. It was so warm that the ice kept melting and refreezing, so that every scratch and tear in the surface instantly healed as if by magic. It was constantly a centimetre deep in water, and it made for fantastic skating, even with picks on the ends of the purple plastic rental skates.
Suddenly I realised that I was good at something I'd forgotten, having learned how to skate at the age of four and having been enrolled in an ice hockey league at 11 or 12, or whenever it was. I was a terrible player, but I was a good, fast skater. And, lo, even with picks on the ends of the rental skates, I quickly returned to my teenage facility on the ice, skating forwards and backwards and generally speeding about like Gaetan Boucher while all about me Scots tottered and fell. Not only was skating over that constantly self-smoothing ice a marvellous feeling, a fellow ex-pat popped up unexpectedly and witnessed my triumphant flight.
But alas! I turned up at the rink a week later to experience the magic again, and the ice was in a shocking state. It was very, very cold, so the ice could not heal itself, and if the ice had been cleaned before opening that day, I would be very surprised to hear it. And then there were those stupid picks on the ends of the purple plastic rental skates. Before long they caught on the pitted surface, and I fell. And fell again. And then fell with an almighty crash with--bizarrely, since I was taught better than this over 35 years ago--one arm out to stop my fall. That was it for Ms. Right Shoulder.
"Are ye all right?" demanded a blue-eyed old man with a wide grin as I dragged myself to a bench. He was not skating himself, so I suspected him of having a kinky interest in watching women fall down and hurt themselves. I sat down until I established that my arm was not broken, and then I went back on the ice to finish my allotted time.
Afterwards I went on a cafe crawl with my brother Quadrophonic, and then next day the Historical Household went to the countryside for two days, so I didn't do anything about my shoulder, except not do any work. On Saturday, however, I was in enough pain that I had a meltdown to my ex-pat pal about my Lot in Life, and on Sunday morning I telephoned the NHS 24 hour hotline.
I hoped very much nobody would advise me to go to an Emergency department, and nobody did. Instead they told me to take paracetamol and ibuprofen at intervals all day, and so I did. And I am doing the same today. And it is marvellous.
Sitting immobile in an armchair popping pills and reading novels because you have to is a great way to end the old year. It is also a good way to begin the new year. Well, after an hour of Polish review and my first lesson in Urdu because, never mind a new year, there is no better way to start a morning than with a good helping of brain training.
Życzę wszystkiego najlepszego w nowym roku (& *نیا سال مبارک ہو ) !
*We will have to trust Google Translate on this: lesson one was very basic.
No comments:
Post a Comment