Post-Unaugural (black and) Blues

A week after my spill on the way to Unaugural 8.0, the cankle has reduced enough for me to get my bike boot on again, but has too many sore spots to make riding feasible right now. Besides, the lovely James has my bike safely stashed where I can do it no more harm for a little while. (You're a star, James!)

What a week it's been. My first thought after crashing was “Fark – my ankle!” The second was “Omigod, the soup!” (5 litres of the stuff in plastic bottles in my saddlebags) and the third was “Oh SHIT – how the hell am I going to get around at school? I've been in the job for only 2 weeks – I can't possibly take time off!”

So... in order of those concerns -

Number One - The ankle – or 'Cankle', as Julian Smee so correctly called it – nothing broken, apparently. Pretty colours though! Have a look at the pics, one week after the event.

The foot...and the Cankle...

Boomerang Boy hired me a set of crutches to get me through the week, and for a couple of days I worked at building biceps and deltoids that would give Arnie Schwarzenegger a run for his money. OUCH! After 2 days on crutches my shoulders were screaming. I was whimpering in a corner, trying to hide from the dreaded crutches and rubbing emu oil into my aching, screaming delts.

Number Two - the soup – those big plastic juice bottles are pretty robust. They did not explode on impact as 200kg of loaded motorbike flung me hard onto the gravel. They also did not prevent the ensuing lever and blinker carnage on the bike, dammit. The soup survived, and some of those ausmoto folk actually got to breakfast upon it – a hearty start to a foggy and hungover Sunday after our wild and raucous Saturday night.

And the biggie - Number Three - getting around at school... OMFG!

The staffroom is at the top of a rather steep flight of stairs. The school (as schools tend to be) is rather spread out. Most of my classes are in the one block, but up and down stairs. As for getting to the library for Year 9 Geography assignment research, or the chapel for, well, God-type things, or my post on the bloody school cross country circuit.... aaaaaaaaaagrh - it was agonising!

However – my lovely staffroom colleagues mothered me and swapped classrooms with me... most of them are half my age, and they figured the Old Girl needed looking after, and got playfully stroppy when I tried my Independent Tough Old Bird routine – thanks folks, you're wonderful. They found it highly amusing, though, when I hopped across the staffroom with a thermal mug full of coffee in the pocket of the Coles supermarket eco-friendly cloth bag that I hung around my neck to carry all my stuff in (so classy!), and didn't spill a drop!

Also – I was so incredibly moved and totally impressed by the lovely manners of the kids at my school. Kids I don't even teach would dash to hold doors open for me as I hopped about the place on my crutches. I heard it so often that the words “Do you need any help, miss?” and “Can I carry anything for you, miss?” are still echoing in my head. What beautiful, beautiful young people.

By about Wednesday I was ready for the moon-boot that the hospital sold me after The Willy-Willy Incident last year – just as well I kept it! The foot was still mega-swollen, but I could put a bit of weight on it. By Friday I could walk on the moon-boot without a crutch.

Today I can abandon the moon-boot. My foot will fit into my joggers. In fact, it fits into my bike boot again, which is great news. It is, however, still multicoloured and still too painful to be relied upon to hold me up, so I've extended my crutch hire for a week. Thank goodness the new job pays well – I've also had to extend the hire of that nice little red car for a week.