damerell

I hope this covers people's questions. Thanks to everyone who sympathised.

I left B-Movie a little late after 2am, intending to get home in the usual way; catch the 0234 from Paddington, ride home from Maidenhead. This works pretty well; the ride back through the country in the wee hours of the morning is very pleasant.

However, when I got to Paddington, there was no train. I was cutting it pretty fine, but I'd swear I arrived in time to at least see it pull out of the station. This leaves two choices; wait for the 0520, or ride out West, trying to hook up with the Waterloo line (so if the trains start, I can go back to Bracknell). I rang Wednesday, who advised me to wait for the 0520, but this minicab tout was bugging me to let him drive me and the bicycle somewhere, and this pushed me over the edge and I rolled off into the night. I managed to hook up with the Thames Path - which is very nice to ride along, and many of the stations on the Waterloo line are in towns on the Thames - but at Chiswick Bridge it all went wrong.

There I misunderstood the signs, and ended up trying to continue on the North side of the river - if I'd had the sense to look at the map, I'd have abandoned the river for now and gone towards Richmond. I found myself blocked by a fence - about four feet tall, with blunt "spikes" on top - lifted the bike over it, and tried to climb over. It was tricky to get a foothold, and so when I did get my feet up I gave myself a good hoik upwards, only to realise that I'd hoiked a little too hard and had no way to halt myself. Wham.

Fortunately the impact caused a huge rush of adrenalin, so I was quite active and coherent while there were things to be done; I picked myself and the bicycle up, found the way _around_ the fence, and made my way back up the steps to the road; I knew I'd want to phone an ambulance from somewhere easy to find. I did so, chained the bike up, and phoned Wednesday - it was now quite cold and I was bleeding extensively, and once the necessary tasks were done I started to get quite shocky. However, the ambulance turned up quite quickly, and they toted me off to Charing Cross hospital. I had a nice chat about Raoul Julia and Overdrawn At The Memory Bank with one of the ambulancemen, who were quite pleased to have a patient on a Friday night who wasn't roaring belligerent drunk...

I was seen quite soon after being admitted; a nice Australian cleaned and sowed up the extensive puncture wound on my chin while enduring my merry banter [1], and I was X-rayed, which showed a neat break on the lefthand side of my jaw. Unfortunately they couldn't operate until Sunday, and Saturday was not very pleasant because I couldn't eat or drink any great amount - I could only open my mouth to a very small degree, and each successive swallow was more painful. They had me on a drip (saline plus occasional antibiotics), of course, so I wasn't actually in danger of dehydration, but my mouth simultaneously managed to be very dry on the outside and full of saliva on the inside - after a while I gave up trying to swallow, and just dribbled blood every five minutes.

My parents, sister, and Wednesday were fairly regular visitors, so I didn't lack for company - or books; and my mother and sister kindly retrieved my bike, which I could tell was going to be tricky otherwise.

The operation on Sunday put a titanium plate into my jaw which I gather will be a permanent fixture, and some wire around the teeth in the affected area which is due to come out in a week; that was all done under a general, so I have no idea what that was about. They X-rayed me once more on Monday to check they liked what they saw, and sent me home. I'm on antibiotics, painkillers, and a soft diet for the next week at least, but the whole thing was my own stupid fault, so...

[1] Actually most of the banter was hers, because I couldn't talk while she was actually sowing.