The tale of the broken ankle
This is turning out to be a very strange year. Seriously, bizarre things just keep happening.
I went to cricket, after a quiet-ish night involving the usual, beer, smoke and idle chatter (now with added fish watching). Saw a couple of the guys we’ve missed for a while, J-mo, & GG, and then there’s me. It’s my first game back for eight weeks or however long it’s been I crippled myself with the back injury.
Cashcow nuding up, Webko negotiating the fence, and 40hex having a laugh at it all.
Three of the new guys, ready for action. I mean they look fucking mean, grim and cool, with the shades and stoney-faced Samoan Jak at the front. Which I think is probably the best photo I’ve taken in the two weeks I’ve had this camera.
We kicked arse. Sadek cleaned up their tail (they were short - surprisingly) in the first three balls of the day - first innings points to us. Webko enforced the follow on. They’re all cranky, and they came out batting insolently, not believing we could possibly knock them over again. That’s the kind of arrogance you get when you’re top of the competition. After all we have a girl on the team, we must be hopeless. It’s true. There are two in fact, Miss Penny, you met last time I took a million photos of fish, and Mel, here with her little girl. And much grass. I like grass. It’s obvious.
The inner workings and epic struggle of the cricket game
- you can skip to the photos if you want. Much cricket jargon…
We dropped so many catches, it was looking grim. I exchanged a few words with one of the batsmen, who took his shot back, and the hate and anger rose within me :) He lasted about three more minutes. That happens a lot. When I really hate the opposition, I start heckling them, niggling them, not in an obviously nasty way, but in a way that can really get to you, it’s easy to figure out the things that get to people. I hate them, and I can do interesting things I can’t normally do. Like bat. Or move the ball in the air. It’s that whole jedi mind trick thing. Webko likens it to Pratchett’s Granny Weatherwax and her "headology". Whatever it is, it seems to work. It’s probably not a good thing, especially if I’m going to have no powers when I’m happy.
Then the wickets start to fall. I bowl and get smacked around the park a bit, I’ve forgotten how to control the ball, so I bowl a bit of lofted spin to stop this guy from just using what little pace I have against me (like throwing a slow ball in baseball). It works. There’s a few good stumping chances, if this guy would only move his feet (which he affixes with much ado as he takes his guard, which I had laughed, yawned, or generally mocked him for *every* ball) Next over, I mix it up and he smacks one not quite hard enough and Jack snaps up the catch on the boundary. The game swings further towards us. Some more drops on hard chances, and a couple of great wickets and catches.
I have a little run-in with their captain, we don’t really get along anyway, we’re a bit too alike I suspect. He gives me a dig, when I suddenly remember how to swing the ball out, and almost miss the pitch. And then said something about it I couldn't quite hear once I'd removed his leg stump with the same ball.
I take the softest caught and bowled I EVER have been given, and we're in the unlikely position of finishing them up, maybe. A few balls later, I'm getting hit again, and in a follow thru watch the ball sailing away, and not my feet. I go over on my ankle. I hear bits crackling and popping in 6/8 time for a bit and I hit the dirt. Much pain.
I'm surrounded by concerned team mates eventually, and I'm in absolute agony. Again. This is supposed to be my return from injury match, not an opportunity to break something else.
Anger rises. Hate. Red mist descends.
I force myself up, and insist on finishing the over. Two more balls to get thru. "I’ll be right." I hopble (which is a new word for my injured form of locomotion) back to my mark, while the field resets, I practice hopbling in, and go through the action. OK I think to myself nothing to it, be right as rain once I walk on it a bit.
I bowl, barely, and the ball strays to the edge of the pitch. I so can't do this. I have to re-bowl the next one as it's called a "Wide", and the next after that. I'm fucked. I finish the over and hopble post-haste off the field. We're short a player already, and we need everyone on deck. I start calling for reinforcements.
I call the old man (which is a very Uk-Australian term), and ask him to bring some strapping, I should have asked for ice as well. The boys finish off the batsmen, and we need 63 runs to win outright. VC's in Hong Kong fixing his servers, Mick’s disappeared - probably arrested again (last time was for king-hitting and knocking out a cop), 40hex/Silk’s exhausted and I’m crippled. Oh goody…
The boys bat hard, all giving that little bit that they can, I’m scoring with the 12th man, GG, and am getting nervous. I strap my ankle, which looks like someone has implanted a golf ball in me, as we creep to the total and drop a couple of wickets along the way. Ten points is on the competition table here, but more than anything else we want to put it over these arrogant buggers.
Silk / 40hexcops a cricket ball in the ribs which knocks the wind out of him, and will probably win the "Best bruise…" award at the team cricket dinner. The mark is a perfect circle and the line that you can see there is the seam of the ball where it cut into him. Getting hit happens a lot. And it's considered good aggressive bowling when done well. Yes, cricket can be brutal.
We crawl our way there, and there are a lot of nervous players wondering if it will be up to them, including me. Crippled or no, i won’t see this lost if there is anything I can do to prevent it. We reach the score, I want the captains to examine the books and declare the game won or lost, the boys opt to let them bat on for a couple of extra runs just to make sure. This never works, and Silk loses his stumps. So then, they pull it up.
I leave pretty much immediately, I'm a little worried, and angry that once again I'm injured. Straight to the hospital for our free, but sometimes slow healthcare.
Reception. I waited for a few moments flirting with a Scots girl, before i got to see someone. "Can i please, have some ice and a form to fill out so i can sit down?"
The careflight chopper. This is not the Caecescu chopper I previously mentioned. This is a similar thing, but this is primarily for sick kids, needing to come in from the country and the like, where the air services are limited.
and then there’s a pizza guy, which I find surreal.
And my rapidly swelling ankle
I don’t even know if you can tell that it’s swollen anymore.
Then there’s Nick who gets carried in by his mother and sister, also with an ankle injury, his from touch football. I haven’t seen nick since the summer we finished high school apart from the reunion a couple of years ago. We’re both in more pain than we care to admit, but couldn’t keep a straight face at the idea of a photo to celebrate this reunion of old, and newly crippled, friends. I mean what are the odds?
I’m xrayed a couple of times, and I’m starting to worry and wonder. This is my worried face. All I want is a cigarette, a beer, and the pain to FUCK THE HELL OFF.
"We think there’s something busted up in there."
The doctor was so enthusiastic about photos that he made me hop out of the room and down the hall, past bemused medics, to the lightbox so i could get a good photo. I told him it wouldn't come out.(I’m quite good at hopping, as well as skipping, but they’re not very gentlemanly and dignified forms of locomotion).
"So yeah, maybe we’ll put you in some plaster."
Are you fucking serious?
But it’s so ridiculous it’s still funny.
The last time I see my leg… bye-bye leg. Have fun. In the darkness. Alone.
My cool medics Ian and Rita, I am not to put her head onto the internet with a fake body, she said so. They got me to turn over. I think the doing the cast was a bit of fun for them, i almost felt like i was getting in the way. Like my head in this photo.
The plaster is warm when it sets. I've been told this before, but had never actually experienced it. Warm and tingly, like an ewok hugging my leg or something.
The finished product. Something like art. Ian was very proud of it. Even my doctor is nuts.
and the old man thought this was all very funny.
He broke his leg coming off a motorbike, or a roman chariot or something a million years ago.
So the prognosis is that I go in to the fracture specialists on Monday and find out whether I can take this fucking thing off and cope with a bad sprain, or whether I should get used to wearing a cast. There was a few left from the teams at the pub, given that we all finished about an hour apart, most had gone home while I was about three hours at the hospital. (the Esperanto word for hospital is malsanulejo which I just adore, mal-a negativiser, san- from the noun sana meaning 'health', -ul- and -ej-, which respectively mean 'a place for' and 'people of the characteristic', and -o the noun ending. malsanulejo "the place for not healthy people". Esperanto is just so fucking wacky. I really should pick it up again :) Yes, i'm raving. I'm in pain.
Beer in the pub, now with added broken foot and crutches.
Not how I’d envisaged my Saturday night, but you can’t have everything can you?>
and i even got my html right, eventually.
I went to cricket, after a quiet-ish night involving the usual, beer, smoke and idle chatter (now with added fish watching). Saw a couple of the guys we’ve missed for a while, J-mo, & GG, and then there’s me. It’s my first game back for eight weeks or however long it’s been I crippled myself with the back injury.
Cashcow nuding up, Webko negotiating the fence, and 40hex having a laugh at it all.
Three of the new guys, ready for action. I mean they look fucking mean, grim and cool, with the shades and stoney-faced Samoan Jak at the front. Which I think is probably the best photo I’ve taken in the two weeks I’ve had this camera.
We kicked arse. Sadek cleaned up their tail (they were short - surprisingly) in the first three balls of the day - first innings points to us. Webko enforced the follow on. They’re all cranky, and they came out batting insolently, not believing we could possibly knock them over again. That’s the kind of arrogance you get when you’re top of the competition. After all we have a girl on the team, we must be hopeless. It’s true. There are two in fact, Miss Penny, you met last time I took a million photos of fish, and Mel, here with her little girl. And much grass. I like grass. It’s obvious.
The inner workings and epic struggle of the cricket game
- you can skip to the photos if you want. Much cricket jargon…
We dropped so many catches, it was looking grim. I exchanged a few words with one of the batsmen, who took his shot back, and the hate and anger rose within me :) He lasted about three more minutes. That happens a lot. When I really hate the opposition, I start heckling them, niggling them, not in an obviously nasty way, but in a way that can really get to you, it’s easy to figure out the things that get to people. I hate them, and I can do interesting things I can’t normally do. Like bat. Or move the ball in the air. It’s that whole jedi mind trick thing. Webko likens it to Pratchett’s Granny Weatherwax and her "headology". Whatever it is, it seems to work. It’s probably not a good thing, especially if I’m going to have no powers when I’m happy.
Then the wickets start to fall. I bowl and get smacked around the park a bit, I’ve forgotten how to control the ball, so I bowl a bit of lofted spin to stop this guy from just using what little pace I have against me (like throwing a slow ball in baseball). It works. There’s a few good stumping chances, if this guy would only move his feet (which he affixes with much ado as he takes his guard, which I had laughed, yawned, or generally mocked him for *every* ball) Next over, I mix it up and he smacks one not quite hard enough and Jack snaps up the catch on the boundary. The game swings further towards us. Some more drops on hard chances, and a couple of great wickets and catches.
I have a little run-in with their captain, we don’t really get along anyway, we’re a bit too alike I suspect. He gives me a dig, when I suddenly remember how to swing the ball out, and almost miss the pitch. And then said something about it I couldn't quite hear once I'd removed his leg stump with the same ball.
I take the softest caught and bowled I EVER have been given, and we're in the unlikely position of finishing them up, maybe. A few balls later, I'm getting hit again, and in a follow thru watch the ball sailing away, and not my feet. I go over on my ankle. I hear bits crackling and popping in 6/8 time for a bit and I hit the dirt. Much pain.
I'm surrounded by concerned team mates eventually, and I'm in absolute agony. Again. This is supposed to be my return from injury match, not an opportunity to break something else.
Anger rises. Hate. Red mist descends.
I force myself up, and insist on finishing the over. Two more balls to get thru. "I’ll be right." I hopble (which is a new word for my injured form of locomotion) back to my mark, while the field resets, I practice hopbling in, and go through the action. OK I think to myself nothing to it, be right as rain once I walk on it a bit.
I bowl, barely, and the ball strays to the edge of the pitch. I so can't do this. I have to re-bowl the next one as it's called a "Wide", and the next after that. I'm fucked. I finish the over and hopble post-haste off the field. We're short a player already, and we need everyone on deck. I start calling for reinforcements.
I call the old man (which is a very Uk-Australian term), and ask him to bring some strapping, I should have asked for ice as well. The boys finish off the batsmen, and we need 63 runs to win outright. VC's in Hong Kong fixing his servers, Mick’s disappeared - probably arrested again (last time was for king-hitting and knocking out a cop), 40hex/Silk’s exhausted and I’m crippled. Oh goody…
The boys bat hard, all giving that little bit that they can, I’m scoring with the 12th man, GG, and am getting nervous. I strap my ankle, which looks like someone has implanted a golf ball in me, as we creep to the total and drop a couple of wickets along the way. Ten points is on the competition table here, but more than anything else we want to put it over these arrogant buggers.
Silk / 40hexcops a cricket ball in the ribs which knocks the wind out of him, and will probably win the "Best bruise…" award at the team cricket dinner. The mark is a perfect circle and the line that you can see there is the seam of the ball where it cut into him. Getting hit happens a lot. And it's considered good aggressive bowling when done well. Yes, cricket can be brutal.
We crawl our way there, and there are a lot of nervous players wondering if it will be up to them, including me. Crippled or no, i won’t see this lost if there is anything I can do to prevent it. We reach the score, I want the captains to examine the books and declare the game won or lost, the boys opt to let them bat on for a couple of extra runs just to make sure. This never works, and Silk loses his stumps. So then, they pull it up.
I leave pretty much immediately, I'm a little worried, and angry that once again I'm injured. Straight to the hospital for our free, but sometimes slow healthcare.
Reception. I waited for a few moments flirting with a Scots girl, before i got to see someone. "Can i please, have some ice and a form to fill out so i can sit down?"
The careflight chopper. This is not the Caecescu chopper I previously mentioned. This is a similar thing, but this is primarily for sick kids, needing to come in from the country and the like, where the air services are limited.
and then there’s a pizza guy, which I find surreal.
And my rapidly swelling ankle
I don’t even know if you can tell that it’s swollen anymore.
Then there’s Nick who gets carried in by his mother and sister, also with an ankle injury, his from touch football. I haven’t seen nick since the summer we finished high school apart from the reunion a couple of years ago. We’re both in more pain than we care to admit, but couldn’t keep a straight face at the idea of a photo to celebrate this reunion of old, and newly crippled, friends. I mean what are the odds?
I’m xrayed a couple of times, and I’m starting to worry and wonder. This is my worried face. All I want is a cigarette, a beer, and the pain to FUCK THE HELL OFF.
"We think there’s something busted up in there."
The doctor was so enthusiastic about photos that he made me hop out of the room and down the hall, past bemused medics, to the lightbox so i could get a good photo. I told him it wouldn't come out.(I’m quite good at hopping, as well as skipping, but they’re not very gentlemanly and dignified forms of locomotion).
"So yeah, maybe we’ll put you in some plaster."
Are you fucking serious?
But it’s so ridiculous it’s still funny.
The last time I see my leg… bye-bye leg. Have fun. In the darkness. Alone.
My cool medics Ian and Rita, I am not to put her head onto the internet with a fake body, she said so. They got me to turn over. I think the doing the cast was a bit of fun for them, i almost felt like i was getting in the way. Like my head in this photo.
The plaster is warm when it sets. I've been told this before, but had never actually experienced it. Warm and tingly, like an ewok hugging my leg or something.
The finished product. Something like art. Ian was very proud of it. Even my doctor is nuts.
and the old man thought this was all very funny.
He broke his leg coming off a motorbike, or a roman chariot or something a million years ago.
So the prognosis is that I go in to the fracture specialists on Monday and find out whether I can take this fucking thing off and cope with a bad sprain, or whether I should get used to wearing a cast. There was a few left from the teams at the pub, given that we all finished about an hour apart, most had gone home while I was about three hours at the hospital. (the Esperanto word for hospital is malsanulejo which I just adore, mal-a negativiser, san- from the noun sana meaning 'health', -ul- and -ej-, which respectively mean 'a place for' and 'people of the characteristic', and -o the noun ending. malsanulejo "the place for not healthy people". Esperanto is just so fucking wacky. I really should pick it up again :) Yes, i'm raving. I'm in pain.
Beer in the pub, now with added broken foot and crutches.
Not how I’d envisaged my Saturday night, but you can’t have everything can you?>
and i even got my html right, eventually.