Blackberries

I went walking in Abney Park Cemetery today after dropping off my last rent cheque for the Stamford Hill flat (it sounds like we're good to go for moving in to the Clapton place next Monday. Oddly, we're also meant to sign the contract on Monday? So paperwork and moving on the same day? Am I the only one who think that sounds a little weird?) Since it was such a lovely day out and since I had a handy plastic take out container with me I thought: let's pick blackberries!

Here are some helpful hints for blackberry picking:
1. Wear smart shoes. Blackberries are thorny, flip flops are not advised.
2. I'm not sure if this is true everywhere or not but in Abney park the blackberry bushes are frequently growing in tandem with stinging nettles.
3. Stinging nettles look like this:
4. It is not sacrilegious to stand on headstones in order to reach juicy, delicious blackberries
5. blackberry juice stains. Maybe endeavor not to use your shirt as napkin for finger wiping.

Clever Things NOT To Do

So I was on my way to dance class this morning and because I haven't gone in ages I was really looking forward to it and hoping to get there early because I received an email yesterday about how you really need to be there on time (they've been having problems with people wandering in halfway through) so because I had that in mind when I saw the bus, I ran.

This is not such a clever idea to have when you're wearing flip flops.

I got just about to the bus, made eye contact with the driver who started to stop and then promptly missed the curb, twisted my ankle and lay there on the ground in between the bus and the sidewalk apologising.

I managed to get back to the bus stop (thank GOD the bus was no longer moving!) and then started to pass out so I sank to the ground and curled up in a ball while some very nice women called an ambulance for me. The ambulance took about 20 minutes and multiple phone calls because they kept not understanding where we actually were, so the nice women went and got a couple of handy police officers who came by and started taking an accident/incident report.

Eventually I was with it enough to think to call Ella, so Ella and Josh raced up to come be with me which was SO nice of them. We all went in the ambulance with the paramedics; Tracy and Callum who were wonderful and chatty and made me feel taken care of. They gave me an inflatable brace and some sort of pain relieving gas which meant that I thought that inflatable brace was hilarious. To be fair, I might have thought that without the drugs too.

At the ER we waited for about 3 hours for the X-ray to be available, but the time passed pretty quickly as Ella, Josh, and I shared injury stories and moaned about how hungry we all were.

Here's something neat- they don't do prints of the X-rays anymore, now there is a national database on the internet so your local GP or anyone who is looking at your case can find the X-rays when they need them. Isn't that cool?

Good news is I didn't break my ankle, bad news is I did tear the ligaments. So I've got a crutch, a bunch of tape, and a promise to ice it and elevate it frequently. Already it is feeling much better.

But here's a helpful hint: don't run for buses. Especially not in flip flops.