Caffeine Bubbles: #21 I hate being a cripple

25th December 2012 - 8.37pm. Family holiday house, Middle-of-Nowhere, FRANCE. It happened as I was walking up and down the bottom step of our big staircase, trying to do some exercise to burn off calories from Christmas lunch.

(Erm NO I was NOT going to go jogging because a) it was so cold outside I risked freezing my nose off and end up looking like Michael Jackson, b) I couldn't be bothered, c) it was pitch black which, in the middle of nowhere, means you end up running into Dementors or Big Foot or werewolves or all of the above - have you seen Harry Potter??? Honestly, Dementors are TERRIFYING! Although I guess that if you replaced their heads with Pikachu's face and pretended they were a new Pokemon, they'd be relatively cute.

*blink*

That's even worse.)

ANYWAY! So that is how, as I was stepping BACKWARD down the POLISHED WOODEN STAIRCASE in my SOCKS as any sane person would, I twisted my ankle with a big loud 'CRACK', fell to the ground, and then thought I should probably start screaming my head off in order to attract my parents' attention and elicit some sympathy. Which was a pretty dumb thing to do because it made my mother react in the way she knows best, which is to run around screaming in panic and flailing her arms for 10mins like a headless chicken. Except chickens don't have arms.

Or do they...?

In A&E that night, the French doctor was like, 'Hon hee hon, oui, it eeze le sprain. Sacrebleu, your tendons are torn, hon hee hon. Zut alors, you need ze crutches and vous cannot walk for three weeks, hon hee hon. Le camembert, baguette, mais oui, hon hee hon!' (I may have paraphrased a bit for the purpose of accuracy) (Why was he speaking English to me, anyway? Weren't the fact I have a FRENCH name, a FRENCH accent, spoke FLUENT FRENCH, and kept saying 'Stop speaking to me in English with that stupid accent, I am FRENCH' in FRENCH, a bit of a giveaway? Maybe he was scared of my step-dad who is English.)

So now, after having spent many weeks at home in London drooling over my New Look sparkly 10-inch heels in tormented anguish because I can't wear them, and after various hospital visits, some new X-rays have revealed that my ankle is not only sprained but is in fact FRACTURED and is going to take months to heal. Seriously. Couldn't the NHS see the GIANT CRACK in my vestal pedula, and I dunno, make necessary recommendations for my recovery????

(OK yes, I guess the fact I used the cross-trainer at the gym for weeks despite the shooting pain in my ankle and the fact I frequently hobbled to Sainsburys without my crutches to buy lifetime supplies of Maltesers despite warnings from everyone not to... may not have been a great idea.)

But to make matters even more amazing, I have now sprained my wrist while showing off my amazing Jedi moves with my crutches to strangers staring at me in the street because I was awesome, then have fallen down the stairs again, causing me to pull my back. Perhaps in the future I will try NOT to experiment hobbling down the stairs safely with my eyes closed just to see if I have psychic powers or not.

So the lesson is...

ORGANIC GREEN TEA TIME! Hmm Maltesers.