I am old, I'm seventy, there is no way I can climb Ben Nevis again but I have run it in the past, a couple of times. I've done the Three Peaks in Yorkshire not too shabby to do those in just under a very wet fourteen hours (the record then was ten and a bit, most likely done by some southern tosser who was lucky and encounted perfectly dry conditions). I've several Lakes fell runs under my shoes. I have raced cars and dived in seas, climbed bits of rock, ridden motorbikes, never won anything in anything but was once awarded a best newcomers plaque at a car hillclimb, in a car I built myself. The silver salver went rusty, made me suspect it wasn't silver. I did come third in a village wakes run and could have come second had I not been distracted by some totty who I got chatting to during the final mile. I have been hit hard. Very few bones have remained intact.
I've been lucky, I met a young medic in the old Sheffield Royal Hospital after I hit a sheep on my BSA Bantam, the sports 175cc model, it had power that took ones breath away. He did a wonderful job on my ankle. We came to an agreement. I could give him a ring anytime and for a pound a week he would do the necessary when I did something again. A year later I clipped the top of a wall with my knee when the naughty bike, a BSA C15, mega grunt it had, hit a bit of a bank and fired me over the handlebars. He always said to keep the bits. I did, I popped them in my helmet and a passing motorist a very nice if slightly squeamish bloke drove me to the Royal on West street. I told the nurse I was private and could she give him a ring. He was there and sorting everything out within the hour and all for fifty four quid. In those days there weren't Direct Debits I used to have to tell my bank to give him a pound on a bit of paper. He rebuilt my knee cap from the bits and it has not given a moments gyp since.
Twenty years on and somehow, through little fault of my own, I hit the tyre wall at Charlie's Bend Cadwell park. There is enough room on the out field to hold a cricket match but inexplicably the bike and I washed across the tarmac a bit higgeldy piggelldy. I was rolling over and over on the grass having hit badly designed curbs and the bike, a CB750 engine in a Seeley frame, was fast catching me up, it achieved it's goal just as I met the tyres. I felt properly out of sorts. The rest of the incident is a bit blurry. I had a wife, a pregnant wife and from the back of the ambulance told her to ring the man what mends me cos I felt proper not right and poorly. The bastard had gone to work in the USA and was unavailable. I then had no end of rigmarole trying to find anybody who seemed remotely competent to sort a fractured vertebrae or three, a bad wrist and a terrible pain in my left bollock. Me who had tingly arms and a bad testicle was panicking first in Louth and then in Leicester for two whole days. I rejected the first two medics I saw as they looked more frightened than I was. I rejected the third as he looked a bit weird, he had that silly grin vegans and other self opinionated folk have, all teeth and no substance. Then my crooked surgeon who my wife had hunted down in America came good and paid for an Egyptian chap in Chesterfield to do the necessary fusing of my backbone bits, slapped a cast on my wrist, gave my bollock a stroke. He was so good that Egyptian that he wanted three grand and I was only in credit for a thousand and a bit. My old besty mender paid the balance but suggested I use BUPA in future. I looked into the matter. I went with a different company and only stopped premiums of a few hundred a year five years ago when I decided that no one can live forever and the last thing one needs on ones death bed is the inside of one the NHS death camps. Or even a posh private one.
And that doesn't even mention helicopters in Hawaii or wherever it was. You're a bloody marvel, man. No wonder you don't give a toss about Covid-19. Apart from that you have the gift of the story-teller, If I'd written about it (but then I'd most likely not survived anyway) it would have read like a deposition in court. Mind you, lets be frank, you're a bit cavalier with your body at the best of times anyway. May you live forever. Hmmm. Perhaps not. Wasn't that another Chinese curse?
ReplyDeleteGraham, I am terrified of doctors. I see so many of my peers swallowing tablets for this and tablets for that, they even have tablets to counter adverse effects of tablets. About twenty years ago I did have a flu jab.....It worked fine I got a really unpleasant dose of flu.
DeletePS. The helicopter whoopsie was in the Azores. I still suffer from that but not to worry the suffering is better than the alternative.
DeleteI share with you the view of doctors. Unless one has to it is best not to go near them and never, ever volunteer for any of their tests.
ReplyDeleteThere must be some good ones but in my experience they are few in number.
DeleteAs Graham said, no wonder you have no fear of Batflu! I can imagine my younger son writing something like your post in about 20 years although a late onset of fatherhood seems to have quietened him down. I hate to think of the aches you must suffer!
ReplyDeletePauline, lying down is the worst bit, things get all in a twist. I have to watch the animals as well. Cattle and horses are a bit clumsy at times and can fetch one a real wallop. I miss being able to take a bike or even a quad out for a good thrash round, I don't like being old.
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