This month I’m hanging my head in shame. After writing ferociously in September about taking care of yourself on a night out I ended up in A&E after Octopussy. Ten days later my leg still hasn’t healed, although I maintain that even if I hadn’t had a bottle of wine before going out that I still could have ended up with a rainbow leg. Still, maybe best to put the high horse back in the stables for the time being.
Picture the scene: It’s just after midnight at the ABC. 5000 balloons are being released from above the strobe lights, some with prizes in them. Never one to miss an opportunity, I flop out of my ridiculous, ‘really just for show’ high heels (down to £15 from £80 in Office January sale, I’m not made of money) and into my Primark flats (point proven). ‘Aha!’, I thought, ‘How clever I am! I’ll now definitely be able to run around in the balloons and collect my winnings! Those foooooooools, fools I say!’ Fuelled with a lot of Dutch courage, as the hogmanay-esque countdown began I flailed wildly into the darkness. The balloons floated majestically downwards as Don’t Stop Believing blasted out – it was like an over-the-top prom-scene in a teen comedy.
One slip on something nasty and my leg was getting intimate with a metal crowd control barrier.
Usually when that happens you tend to not even feel it until the next day. Even at the time I was fighting back the tears. Being the trooper that I am, of course, I carried on through the night. When I woke up the next morning my immediate thought was that my leg had caught fire during my sleep. I rolled my pyjamas up slowly, like peering in a cupboard after watching a horror film, and revealed something on my shin that resembled a second knee. A second, black, swollen knee.
At Crosshouse Accident and Emergency I hobbled along to the triage nurse as my Mum sat shaking her head in the waiting room. Here’s a tip for you – anything you say in hospital that starts with ‘well, I was out last night...’ is going to be met with rolled eyes. I felt suitably embarrassed that I was one of those teenagers you see on Dispatches, wasting the time of the NHS. A diagnosis later (bruised shin bone with burst capillaries between it and the skin) and I stumbled off home to wallow with some painkillers. Maybe with Glee on a Monday, 90210 and Shameless on a Tuesday, Desperate Housewives on a Wednesday, How I Met Your Mother and Skins (my only television love-affair to rival my relationship with Sex and the City) on a Thursday it’s a good time to be putting my feet up...?