Its amazing how fast you can hit the floor. I’d thought that my extensive training in tai chi would have me totally in control of all bodily movements without even thinking about it. We practice ‘falling over’ all the time. How to fall painlessly, how to fall in control and be up again to defend or attack pretty much instantly, how to roll, anything you may need in a fight. But not, apparently, in a fight with a protruding paving stone. So my back foot hit the stone, my front foot having leapt into action that I might catch the really annoying pedestrian lights by Farringdon station that were green and only about 30 yards away and if you miss them you have to wait an horrendously impatient 3 minutes (feels like a fucking hour) before they change again.

And that sudden change in my momentum was like the carpet being pulled out from under me. I just went down. Splattt!!!! as Batman would say. Glasses flying, both knees BANG! onto the concrete, hands out in front. I jumped up (avoiding the karate stance, thought I might appear even more stupid in the circumstances), some nice people offering assistance to the old man, someone else handing me my glasses, another asking as to my wellbeing. Oddly, I was fine. And said so. Thanks very much. You’ve all be really wonderful. And I ran off again and still caught the light change. It happened that quickly. Then I took stock.

Trousers a little dirty but not torn. Good thing. Though both knees smarting. Ah, my right knuckles seem to be bleeding. Quite a lot. Never mind, hold a tissue there. Fine. Well, what a lucky feller I woz.

Then I noticed that my left hand, holding the tissue against my bleeding right, looked and felt a bit odd. The little finger, to be precise. It didn’t behave in the way I’d kind’a known it to behave in the previous 61 years. And it felt funny. Not funny ‘ha-ha’, just odd. A bit numb, a bit painful. At the same time. And was at a very slightly odd angle. But I could wiggle it and bend it so diagnosed it probably wasn’t broken.

But as it got more swollen and everyone at work said it needed an x-ray, I relented and spent a wonderful 2 hours at St Thomas’s hospital. Where it was confirmed that it was luckily neither broken nor dislocated, just badly sprained.

The A & E was actually remarkably brilliant. Ok, it takes time but they are wonderful, efficient and consistently charming and helpful. Even funny. Great people doing the most amazing job imaginable. And often unimaginable.

Happy Thursday, try to stay vertical if at all possible. Trust me, the alternatives are not nice.

A xxxx