Confession time: I am not that steady on my feet. By which I mean I fall down all the time. All. The. Time.
There are a lot of stories about me falling. The time I said to Clare “I’ll race you”, took off at a trot, cut a corner, didn’t realise there was a concrete block in the overgrown garden, and arsed out on the footpath of the busiest road in Christchurch.
The time I was walking down Woodward Street in Wellington, didn’t realise there was a step, tripped, sending my mp3 player flying, losing a shoe, and necessitating a lady helping me up.
By far the most spectacular to date, was one afternoon, after work, walking past the bus exchange in Christchurch at about 4pm. If you don’t know the bus exchange, imagine a small area, filled with teenagers. Annoying, hordes of teenagers. I was carrying a bottle of milk. I still don’t know what happened, perhaps I fainted. Whatever, I ended up, on my hands and knees, the plastic bottle of milk smashed on the ground beside me. Two of the aforementioned teenagers helped me up. I was so embarrassed, I ran inside the bus exchange, onto my bus, not pausing to thank the admittedly kind teenagers, or clean up the milk. I had milk on my clothes, in my hair, and in my handbag. It took days to stop blushing.
On Friday, I had another. I was carrying a basket of washing down my back steps. Which are wooden, quite steep, and open – as in there’s no back on them. I was wearing shoes that have a slippery sole, and the steps were wet. Can you see where this is going?
I slipped. Somehow, I ended up on my hands and knees, my hands on the ground, my knees two steps from the bottom. One foot was through the back of the step. My shoe was off, and my foot, and the shoe was covered in mud. In a particularly delightful note, the basket of washing ended up on my back.
As a veteran of many a fall, the first thing I did was look around to see if anyone had seen me (our neighbours can see into our back yard), to see if i needed to do any kind of (impossible) face saving technique. Then, I spent a few minutes extricating myself, trying to avoid my washing falling on the ground.
This is the result:
Some things about that photo:
- It doesn’t really show off the glorious black and blue and purple and yellow colours.
- It also doesn’t show the lump
- Or the grazing that made me feel like I was back at high school, playing Saturday netball in Christchurch in winter, where you would fall and graze your knee, and it would be so cold that the blood would freeze on your knee.
- It’s a spectacularly unflattering picture of my leg.
- At the bottom you can see the offending, but very cute, shoes.
- Yes, my leg is that pale.
I must love you guys a lot, to entertain you with my falling down stories, and put a photo of my pasty, foreshortened, cankle looking leg on the internet.
