Painfully levers himself back into the saddle

It seems quite likely that you’ve all been wondering where I’ve gone. In a nutshell, a lot of things have been happening one of which has just about stopped all work in the garage. More of that in a mo’ though.

After the Birkett, which I think was where I left you all, we went to Hong Kong for a week with Tom which was great. Just so you realise that there’s rather more to Hong Kong than all those photos you usually see here’s a rather different one.

Back in Blightly there were loads of non-car things to be doing in the run up to Christmas and it was only just before the holiday season that I got around to taking the car off the trailer. While doing that I was thinking that I really ought to put some time into tidying up the garage before setting about the car.

And then it was Christmas and good things were happening and, in what turned out to be a short sunny break on Boxing Day morning Anthea and I went out for a bike ride. Nothing too serious just to blow the cobwebs away.

At least that was the idea. The problem was that at one point, luckily on a cycle route and away from the road the front wheel of my bike locked solid. I still have absolutely no idea why this happened but the effect was that I sailed over the handlebars thinking “what the f*** is going on?”. I landed in a heap, Anthea was behind and gave me precious few style points later on, conscious that I’d actually landed on my chest and in the process my wrist appeared to be hurting. My language was very unpleasant for a while, at least once I could breathe again, and I was aware that I seemed to be properly hurting. So, we cycled home (much protestation from Anthea who said she’d ride home and get a car but I reckon I’d have frozen solid by then) and went up the hospital by which time I was aware that I really had hurt something.

The end result was that I’d broken a bone in my arm (the distal end of the radius) and cracked an indeterminate number of ribs. (“We can’t really see but as we wouldn’t do anything about it anyway it doesn’t really matter.”) I had two spectacularly badly bruised knees but nothing there appeared to be actually broken. Luckily the break in my arm isn’t displaced at all so it was just painful; turns out the wrist is sprained as well.

Since then I’ve done precious little to the car for obvious reasons. There was a comedy period where I couldn’t actually get up out of a seat because my knees didn’t work and I couldn’t lift myself with my left arm (the damaged one) or my right arm (as it pushed ribs about). Worst of all, as it turned out, the crash had damaged my shoulder again (it’s a “separated shoulder” as a relic of a skiing accident some years ago when I shoulder-charged a mountain and lost) which has been quite spectacularly painful.

However, I am now starting to feel a bit more human although I go some lengths to avoid coughing, laughing or sneezing (ask anyone else who’s broken a rib or two!). As such, I’ve started the great tidy up in the garage. In particular I’ve done something I’ve been meaning to do for years in that I’ve tiled the floor with inter-locking PVC tiles which makes a quite spectacular difference to the general ambience of the garage; it’s now almost welcoming. What’s more I’ve bought a large and a half decent toolbox to keep some of my collection of a myriad tools in.

All the same, we’re arriving at the new season rather quickly. It’s clear that despite my grand plans last year I’m just going to have to do some minor tweaks, such as stiffening the front ARB, before the season starts.

I have, though, at least started now. What’s more, I’ve connected up the battery charger. There, that’s bound to help…