Head over heels update

Trips have been quite low on the ground this week. I suffered one yesterday and one the day before that. Monday's imbalance occurence was a highly dangerous and potentially fatal one, however, and falls into the category of imbalance I call

The Down Stairs Heel-propeller

This is my most feared imbalance. Not only is it rationally the most dangerous but also I have a long-standing phobia of stairs. Stairs will end my life. Stairs are how I will pass.

When I am old and more imbalanced than I currently am, I will fall down a case of metal stairs and hit my head on the bottom stair and die.

I can't recall when this came to me but I know it for sure. Thus the reason for my phobia. (Which happens to be the opposite of my Mum's. She has a phobia of lifts and takes the stairs.)

So, on this particular occassion, I was approaching the METAL stair case that leads down from Darwen train platform to the car park, a stairwell I have to face daily. On about the fourth or fifth step, I did not outstretch my foot enough when passing from one stair to another.... the back of my heel nipped the front of the passing stair and I was propelled forwards treacherously. Fortunately, the treachery was only momentary and I managed to regain my balance. My heart raced but I was fine. I was alive.

The Sidewards Swoon

This is the imbalance most directly descended from my weak ankle genes. The Down Stairs Heel-propeller has nothing to do with ankle/weakness and more to do with a lack of foot/eye coordination on my part (I will return to the subject of this equally worrying and potentially fatal infirmity at a later date)

So I was walking down Manchester's pavements, minding my own business and I came to pass over the bumpy, red concrete slabs that adorn the ends of our pavements for the benefit of the sight-deficient. If you imagine my ankles as personas akin to that of Mrs Bennett, then you will understand that the slightest divergence from the norm is likely to result in fits of faintness. And so it was this Tuesday afternoon. My ankle, finding the red bumps a little too offbeat, responded by simply passing out. It decided instead to lie down there on the pavement and thus collapsed itself sidewards to meet the street.

Fortunately, I managed to remain upright. Which does not always happen. No, on this occasion I stumbled, I called out to the Lord in pain, but I prevailed perpendicular. It was of course the right ankle. It's always the right ankle. It's also always this unnatural 90 degree bending motion that is the imbalance that most often results in a swollen ankle. It is my most frequent imbalance.

(A thought has just occurred to me, perhaps I should dab my feet with smelling salts each morning in an attempt to ward-off any inclination to swooning.)