Hospital + 1 week

Saturday 27th September: So it’s a week since my fall. A week on crutches, walking (if you can call it that) at a snail’s pace, my entire radius of activity restricted to a few hundred yards of my front door.

At least the work I’ve been doing this past week has been sedentary, correcting the proofs of the book. My deadline was yesterday (Friday 26th) and the original plan, naturally, was for me to hand-deliver them to Harry Scoble - my editor at Hodder & Stoughton - on the Friday. As it turned out, I managed to complete them and get them in the post by Thursday 25th.

It took a good few days (about five) for the bruising to come-out; and now it manifests its “full colours”. Not pretty; the entire back upper half of my left leg, from behind the kneecap right up to the buttock is a tapestry of purple/black blotches and broken veins. It looks like someone has rag-rolled my thigh…badly. It’s not nice at all. And the toes remain numb, albeit moving freely.

Of course, now that the bruises have surfaced, it’s near-impossible to actually sit down comfortably, especially on any kind of hard chair. Consequently, I now have dangling from my crutch a plastic carrier bag with an old cushion in it, and I use that to sit on, especially in my local coffee shop (I’m still not sacrificing my cappuccinos).

I still feel like I’ve had somewhat of the stuffing knocked out of me. This will be a long, slow recovery, I fear; taking it day-by-day, week-on-week, making sure I don’t try things I am not yet physically ready for yet. And making sure that every time I put my left leg forward the kneecap is going forward too, and not backwards (few tendons, see?).

What meetings I have lined up, well, for the present they will have to come to me out here in Redbridge [N.E. Greater London]. And any plans of mine I had to go into town (London) will have to be postponed. Damn! I need cheering up…