Trees and knees

My Christmas Tree arrive ten days ago, and it's very pretty, if I say so myself, hee!

I've been to lots of Christmas events over the last couple of weeks, with much alcohol and high-heeled shoes involved. The irony is, I had an accident that did not involve either, which irks me greatly.

I was doing well, had spent the Wednesday (7 Dec) at an industrial estate in Basildon, and managed to have swift Christmas lunch with a friend in Chelmsford along the way.

On Thursday I had lunch at Aldwych One, a place I'd been to before, that has a little theatre with popcorn where one watches the presentations one was there to see.

One glass of wine for lunch, and some time to kill before the next event, a couple of us went to TGI Piccadilly Circus - halfway between the two events - to indulge in some work type activities over a couple of diet cokes. Honest.

We then walked to Portman Square, where we were due to meet people at Home House. Unfortunately about 200yards away, I managed to trip over my own feet in the middle of the road and face-planted in the most inelegant way possible.

Because I couldn't feel my legs, an ambulance was called and failed to arrive. After five mins or so, I had enough feeling to crawl out of the road, after about twenty minutes my knees de-numbed enough that I could feel my legs, and as it was also raining and ice cold, we managed to hobble to the Starbucks about ten yards away. There were several passersby who were wonderfully helpful, and my colleague was a complete star.

We called the ambulance to see where it was, over half an hour after it was called, and it hadn't been dispatched. With our destination so close, we decided to cancel it and hobble to Home House. The staff there were gorgeous and helpful with the first aid kit, and after finding the people we were there to meet with, I spent a couple of hours with my feet up gossiping, eating chip butties and working my way through a couple of large glasses, before heading home.

This is the spectacular knee...

...and this is the knee I actually did damage to.

This was a task that was made surprisingly easy with colleague and I taking taxi to Charing Cross and station and Southeastern staff looking after me, and finding me a taxi home from the station. With Friday and Monday off, I spent all weekend with my feet up.

I now have one spectacularly bruised knee that I show everyone, because the knee that I've actually pulled ligaments in, doesn't look like I've done anything to it, hardly.

With wraps on my knees, this week has been very civilised, with lunch at Mosimann's on Wednesday, which was just divine.

Thursday I went clay pigeon shooting near Oxford, and I killed 28 out of 48 clays, which I hought was quite good for a first time. Although I will totally admit to loads of help from the instructor which basically involved me just pulling the trigger when he whispered 'bang!'. And we won't mention the M25.

However, we will mention the enormous gigantuan fork-lift farm vehicle carrying three hay bales that didn't see us - me, my boss and two colleagues in my little car - pootling up the farm track to the shooting. It was stopped in a yard when we went down the track that ran past the yard. He came barrelling out the gate and on to the single lane track straight towards us. We tooted, and I thought he'd seen us and was moving over at one point, but no, he was clearly negotiating a pot hole.

His forks were quite literally about go straight into my baby's engine, so with all four of us screaming, I hit reverse and shot backwards faster than Michael Schumacher could have managed. The driver heard that, and braked so sharply his hay bales all fell off.

We were all okay though, and we all waved and laughed, and I now have super-lightning-fast-reflex-hero status. *beam*

Friday was the office party, on a quirky boat on the Thames which was very cute, and I lay in this morning til 10am, so it must have been a good party.

The way home last night was a bit of an adventure, as I got to Waterloo East to find trains cancelled left right and center. My train came in ten minutes late, hobbled along minus three motors for a while and then dumped us off at Hither Green. To give them their due, Southeastern made the next Ramsgate (via Ashford) train stop to pick us up, which was excellent and reasonably prompt decision-making on their part.

Unfortunately, Hither Green couldn't make up it's mind which platform the train was coming in, so four platform changes for two hundred people via a little footbridge was not fun. My knees weren't impressed either. Bizarrely, I bumped into an associate from one of the organisations I deal with, so we chatted for a while, and then I sat next to lovely gentleman on the train and we gossiped about planning applications, which made the journey pass very quickly.