(no subject)
Yesterday, my wife and I* went to Exmoor. All very nice and pretty for sure, especially with the heather blooming and the weather being unseasonably nice for August, but on the way we decided to pull into Sainsburys in Bridgwater so that we could have a good old piss in their toilets and put more diesel into the car. Nothing else. Just urine and fuel.
Imagine our bemusement when it took more than an hour to leave the car park. For some reason, the road outside was completely gridlocked. Coupled with an appallingly designed car park, this meant that the entire car park was chock full of people not going anywhere. Then chaos descended as people got thoroughly fed up and started trying to find shortcuts in between parked cars. The people on the designated routes through the car park then resolutely refused to allow these cheeky queue-jumpers any access whatsoever. I was a "Christian Driver" - as they call them on Top Gear - in order to keep the traffic flowing and allowed two cars into the queue in front of me. It then took 35 minutes to move approx 3 yards. From there on in I was glued to the bumper of the car in front, much to the enragement of a middle-aged woman who tried to ram her way in front of me.
A man in a fluorescent tabard and carrying a walkie-talkie walked around the traffic chaos and did precisely nothing other than look bewildered. Occasionally people would gesticulate wildly at him while he shrugged. At one point, I overheard him plaintively respond to the aforementioned enraged middle-aged lady something terribly post-New Labour, like "I haven't got the power to do anything about it, pet" and "There's nothing I can do, love" ironically proving that the one thing he could do was patronize a cross woman. All the while she whined about drivers who wouldn't let anyone into the queue. I realised with glowing pride that she was referring to me.
Helen and I ate our sandwiches, listened to two programmes on Radio Four throughout this bizarre entrapment AND Helen managed to walk back to the main store and buy me a Snickers Duo without me so much as moving the car forward a nanometre. Extraordinary.
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Today we went to my mother-in-law's*. We went because today was the first ever Compton Martin Olympics. A cross between a proper old-school primary school sports day, a piss-up on a village green by all and sundry, and the celebrated Face Jumping Competition at the Fool and Bladder from Sir Henry at Rawlinson End.
Penny signed up for the egg-and-spoon race. Helen refused to do anything remotely resembling a sporting activity. I was nagged (ironically by the woman in the mobility scooter) into taking part. I chose the sprint. I hadn't done any sprinting since I was 14, since when I've smoked about 10,000,000 fags, eaten plenty of lard and generally swelled my guts up to their current giant-pork-pie dimensions, and lay supine on the sofa for a combined total of three years.
During the afternoon there was also a barbecue. I ate a meaty lump of carbon with some yellow plastic melted over the top. To kill the taste, I put some red goo on the carbon and shoved the horrid black-yellow-red concoction into a dusty bun.
Later on, we were thoroughly bored of hearing 'Jerusalem' and the Chariots of Fire theme for the gazillionth time. And the commentary was pure Sandford:
"Jeff's going to take on Mr Pochard in the sumo ring (there were those humourous padded sumo suits for people to climb into and then barge each other off a bit of tarpaulin. Brilliant)... ooooh, there's a bit of a tussle... come on you two!... and JEFF'S JUMPED ON HIS HEAD well done Jeff...Now later on we've got the sack race and there's a cake for the winner, I see young Toby's signed up already, no surprises there, healthy growing boy that he is AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA...see, this is the sort of fun we can have here in the village today, not like all that nonsense in Beijing..."
So, in the spirit of the day we trudged down to the bottom of the hill where the Welly-Wanging competition and the cabbage shot putt was going on. Now I was once an accidental shot putt champion and under-13s record holder for South Glamorgan, and being horribly competitive, I did a proper crouch (which got a sarcastic "Oooh" from the observing crowd of middle-aged Bristolian downsizers) before putting my cabbage a not-even-remotely respectable 17 metres (about 10 metres short of the competition leader).
And then I tried wanging a welly. First throw (with added verticle arm rotation beforehand) this time got a fair "Oooh" of grudging respect from the besandalled crowd of young professionals who have tired of their lives in the city and moved to the country for a change of pace and somewhere nice to bring up their kids.
I tried a different approach for the next throw. I decided to spin around like a discus thrower. I got another variety of "Oooh" this time as I span round, got disorientated, mis-timed, and hurled the welly into the groin of a nearby teenager.
Chastened, embarrassed and thoroughly apologetic, I returned with wife and mother-in-law to our blankets (which were cleverly positioned right next to the goalposts in the corner of the field where by now pissed dads and bored teenagers were blasting footballs into the net). Then the sprint was announced. I was wearing a black t-shirt, black trousers and my black boots. The pissed downsizer dads I was racing against were all wearing shorts and trainers and being decidedly jovial and matey with each other, but also subtly alpha-male and competetive. The race was divided into two heats. One had all the serious competitors, and the other was the race for those with inappropriate footwear. All the dads were in the first heat. I was running against a chap about my age who took his DMs off in order to run, and a ginger-haired girl in a vest top and jeans who was beginning to get sunburn on her shoulders and kept loudly telling everyone she was bound to lose.
The dads all had their race. They took it incredibly seriously. Someone won.
Our turn. I lined up. Having learned from my showing off of my shot putt technique, I decided to do a standing start. This ground is slippery in these shoes...I hope to Christing fuck I don't fall over and make myself look like a complete dick in front of all these cottage do-uppers. Ready... set... CRAP WHISTLE THAT HAS LOST ITS PEA!
I got ten yards in when something in the back of my left thigh went *twang* and incredible pain shot down my leg and back into my brain. Amazingly, I kept going. Then my right leg went kablooey and I tumbled onto the ground. I went into a roll. I got up and searing pain shot back up my left leg again. Somehow I carried on running. Pain was excruciating. I came second.
Helen rushed over, she had yelped loudly in alarm when I theatrically fell. I kept asking if I ran like a girl and if I looked like a twat when I fell. She said no. She asked if I was all right. I wasn't. The leg was not supporting me well and the pain surged through me. I hobbled up from the finish line with Helen suggesting I went to the First Aid tent. I "Nah-I'll-be-all-right"ed her, and that was possibly the eighth mistake I made that afternoon.
Penny drove me back to hers without a seatbelt on. For once, I said nothing.
I was then on the sofa. Neither Helen nor Penny could take my boots off my feet, despite a lot of puffing and tugging. They're very nice boots, but fuck me, they're hard to get off. I moaned on the sofa, wanly. We rang NHS direct. Apparently it may take weeks to get better. The nurse on the other end did not congratulate me on coming second in the race.
I'm fine. Except I'm not really. Something has gone ping in my leg, like a guitar string snapping. That's my diagnosis and it hurts. I drove home somehow. Changing gear was really, really painful.
It hurts constantly. I've spent the evening on the sofa and no position is best. Everything hurts. Bending down really hurts. Going to the toilet for a sit down and a read REALLY HURTS when you have to stand up and pull up your trousers from round your ankles. It hurts right now. It really hurts. Ow ow ow ow ow ow ow OW OW OW OW OW OW OW OW ow ow fucking ow ow ow ow ow ow OWWWWW ow ow ow ow ouch ow ow ow ow
*Novelty of using such a term has not worn off yet. I suspect it never will.