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Morning, Pain
Bidding farewell to fondue after the latest London noder meeting and catching the Northern Line tube to Waterloo station didn't really prepare me for the rest of the evening. In much the same way I normally don't like to claim victory until the last move, I shouldn't have thought I was home and dry until I was lying in bed. Firstly, getting into waterloo , there were a lot of people milling around; it seemed that everyone was rather angry, their previously happy drunken states heightening their anger and frustration. Almost as though to taunt us, the new modern plasma television screens just showed test information. Thankfully the old flip boards were still working, but I would rather have had better news than that which they showed me; many, many trains were cancelled or delayed. My slightly drunken state lending an edge to the fear beginning to grip me, I frantically scanned the boards, looking for my home town. I live on a main line from London to the South Coast of England, so I am always assured of a train. And so, yes, I found a train, leaving over an hour later than I had hoped, but a train nonetheless. Unfortunately, this train was also going to serve a whole bunch of people whose more local journeys had been cancelled, so the train was going to be packed full of drunk, tired and angry people.
So, yes, I was stuck on a train with a whole bunch of angry smoking drunks, I was feeling the beginnings of a stress headache and I was in a crap seat that didn't allow me to stretch my poor, recently operated on leg out. So, by the time that we slowly pulled into Basingstoke station, I was not a happy bunny. In fact, I was looking forward to getting a taxi home and falling asleep to the comforting, beautiful voice of my fiancee. But no, there were no taxis or buses running from the town centre. I tried four different taxi firms, 3 said no cabs until 6am, 1 said yes we can get a cab to you in 3 hours time. So I had to walk home, about 5 miles, on a bad leg, in the misty, cold, early morning fog. The last mile, I think, must have hurt me more than the rest. It began to get harder and harder to walk; by the time I got home, after goodness knows how much walking, I could hardly pull my boots off and get upstairs. I left an message on my beloved's answering machine, then fell asleep.
Waking up, all the chores and cleaning I had planned has been thrown out of the window; I can hardly walk because of the stabbing pains up and down my left leg, the left knee seems to have seized up completely and the ankle feels as though I have sprained it at the very least. And the doctor's advice? "Put some ice on it and rest for a couple of days" Wonderful! Who is going to finish off the decorating? Who will do the christmas shopping? Who will tidy my house up?
Apologies for those who expect a deep, introspective daylog where I hold my soul up to the light for all to see. Today, I am in rant mode :-(