It has been a long time for us since we've had to overcome something difficult or sudden or properly bad. And for that I am thankful. Although that very statement seems weird, as if there is something that allows good and bad to happen to people. There just isn't.

Three weeks ago, I was partially run over by a car after what seems like the stupidest chain of events that could be imagined.

Gabriel went to the rugby with our friends; I stayed home, because rugby. Partway through the game, she messaged me that they were going for dinner after the game and I should join. I was keen for that. I even posted it on Mastodon. I was going to Uber to them for dinner and drinks.

Then the plans changed 30 minutes later. Again, I posted to Mastodon the new plans with what can only now be classified as the dumbest foreshadowing I have ever achieved.

I was going to walk to the pub to meet them, a 600-metre walk. Apparently, The Dark Horse has OK food for a pub, and I was going to spend some time with good people—albeit in a pub where the music would be too loud and there would be other people. But I was hungry.

As the post to Mastodon from the hospital the following morning summarised, the walk did not go well at all. After crossing Ramp Road and jumping onto the kerb, I twisted my ankle rather badly, ending up on the footpath in a heap. I lay there for a good while thinking that was a bloody painful sprain. Why I didn’t just head back home, given I was so close, I have no idea. After a bit, I got up and decided to continue on because Gabba and food were in that direction.

Just around the corner onto Parkway Drive, in quite a lot of pain, things got a little grim. I started to feel like I was going to pass out, which I have a history of doing when in pain. Instead of immediately sitting down, I leaned on some wheelie bins on the footpath and tried to fight off the closing-in blackness.

Next thing I know, I am awake again and a car wheel is right there in my face, backing over me. Then, some unknown amount of time later, I'm lying on the road, in even more pain, with lots of people standing around me. I can't blame Jerry (the driver of the car). I was lying on the footpath, wearing black in the dark.

Only five minutes earlier I was happily walking to meet my wife and friends for dinner and drinks, and now I was lying on the road, in 10-degree cold, bleeding from my head and leg, waiting for an ambulance.

Everything went from fine to not fine so fast. Which is the way of all accidents, I guess. One second all is good, and then it's not, for some stupid mistake someone has made—with all the consequences.

The photo

My father's turntable. It's 50+ years old, hasn’t been played in probably 30+ years, and for the last 25 years, it’s been in the attic. Here it is spinning an album by The 1975, making music again. And almost unbelievably, I get to peel the plastic sealer cover that’s still on the control panel.

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Posted: Friday, 20 June, 2025 18:31

Captured: Wednesday, 19 June, 2024 19:17

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