Month: April 2009

Something that happens with reasonable regularity at work is that the caterers, who bring delicious sandwiches and cakes for the many meetings that take place in the building and the building next door, have excess food at the end of a meeting (particularly if it’s a Welsh Assembly meeting, as they seem to be particularly good at cancelling their meetings and forgetting to cancel the catering service). And, as always, when this happens, a co-worker and I race down to the ground floor kitchen to get at the best of the remains – the delicious cookies and cakes (by the way, I can heartily recommend Madeline’s for cakes and buffets: even if I didn’t occasionally get their fabulous food for free, it’d be awesome) – before the folks from the other offices do.

Of late, there’s been particularly tough competition. These days, SmartData is on the top floor of our building, with a fabulous view of the marina and the nearby beach (at which my boss, a keen windsurfer, can sometimes be seen staring wistfully on days when the conditions are just right for watersports). And while this is all good from the perspective of having a great view, it means that we have a lot further to go to loot the remains of abandoned buffets on the ground floor than, say, some of the hungry-man-filled companies on the first floor. And so they sometimes get their first and eat all of the tastiest leftovers, if we let them.

I’ve gotten pretty quick at getting to the ground floor, though. A co-worker and I have discovered that, by using the fire escape and leaping down about four steps or more at a time, we can be from our office to the ground floor kitchen in a little over 25 seconds (I don’t know why he bothers, personally: he’s allergic to just about everything in the world, and only gets to eat tiny nibbles of anything that we’re able to scavenge). And herein lay the imminent, inevitable disaster.

This afternoon, I’d just put on my coat with the intention of going across the road to the shop where Paul works, to buy some lunch, when the call came in: there was food left over in the downstairs kitchen. Already ready to leave the office anyway, I was off like a shot, rocketing out and into the stairwell of the fire escape. And there, somewhere between the second and the first floor, is where I tripped, and fell head-over-heels down an entire flight of stairs.

There was quite a bit of shouting and grunting before I tried to stand up again. No good – my foot gave way beneath me with even more pain. Realising I was in the fire escape and not somewhere that anybody might look for me, I pulled out my phone to call the office, upstairs, and get some help. I hadn’t got that far, though, when somebody from one of the middle-floor offices (conveniently, from a first-aid perspective, a volunteer lifeboatman) heard my pained grunts and came in to find out what was going on.

A quick trip to casualty later, it turns out that it’s not fractured, thankfully, but is (as I already knew) too painful to walk on, so I’m stuck at home with my leg in the air and crutches to move around on. It’s really quite remarkably painful, as I keep forgetting when I’m happily dosed-up on painkillers and laying back, playing Wii games (although not the high-energy, active ones, of course), until I try to hobble to the toilet or something, whimpering as I go. Oh, and why didn’t anybody tell me (I’ve never used them before) that crutches are actually pretty hard work? <sighs>

(on the upside, and you know I always look for an upside, I met a cute radiologist with a hot Scottish accent)

So; I’m feeling kind-of useless and at least a little bit stupid. I’d write more but I don’t have time, because I’m going to try to pull myself together enough to get to Rory‘s birthday meal and I suspect it’ll take me a while to get my boots on over my enormously swollen foot. Here goes…

Turns out that the principle doesn’t apply to everything. This week, I discovered that wearing shorts and a t-shirt doesn’t stop it from raining.