If you have ever visited Beachy Head, you will know it is 530 feet of sheer cliff. I can only look over the edge by crawling, in case I get the urge to jump.
Clifton Suspension Bridge is similar: if you walk across it, it moves. I make sure I walk on the inside, so I dont have to see the 245 feet to the bottom.
In the last couple of years, I have slipped off a cliff and had to go to hospital to sort out the torn ligaments in my shoulder;
fell off the pitched roof outside my son's 3rd floor bedroom window (fortunately landing on the scaffolding planking one floor below);
suffered a collapsing hammock onto concrete in the garden, missing breaking my neck on the raised garden wall by inches;
had a proper wobbler while trying to cross a Dartmoor stream, finding myself unable to leap from rock to slippery rock, which felt like vertigo, in that I froze, unable to go backwards or forwards;
and then tonight, stretching at the top of a step ladder outside, trying to fix a drafty window in the dark, the ladder slipped and I fell 6 feet onto the concrete, missing, I dont know how, that same raised garden wall. I gazed at it, inches from my nose, stood up, felt the gashes on my legs and hand, and wondered what higher purpose I am being saved for. The morning after: aching ankles knees and back.
Until that purpose has become clear, I am now free to wander on motorways and railway tracks, and climb tall structures, confident in the knowledge that I am apparently indestructible, if bruised. Maybe I should just avoid heights. Damn: am I in Heroes?
8 comments:
Don't forget the time you tried you fell off a platform and tried to throw yourself under a train.
My theory is that you're the one that Henry's Invisible Friend uses to check that gravity is still working.
You had better stay in one piece at least till after New Year or I might have to slap your ankles!
(I have gin and plenty of tonic)
What, Cadbury's Heroes?
Thanks for bringing Katherine Wright into the story in your comment.
you have nothing to fear from falling...
it's landing that causes the damage
"confident in the knowledge that I am apparently indestructible, if bruised"
That's what I thought when I bounced off the side of the skidding car that hit me and I performed an elegant parabola into the ditch. I don't want to push my luck though.
Christ.. I had visions of 1998 Babbacombe Beach and Walls Hill in my head as I perused this post..
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