Turps

Operations, they're bleedin hilarious, aren't they? Some half-wit attacks your leg with a pen-knife and some turps, and then leaves you in the hands of physiotherapists who tell you to do dozens of exercises that redefine tedious and remind you that your once-fully-functioning leg can now do no more than bend very stiffly about 45 degrees before shooting PAIN appears where once you had hamstrings.

Oh dear, think I had a bad day. I shouldn't take it out on those heroes in the NHS. Love those dudes, man. They're just awesome, with their white coats, painkillers and friendly knee-surgery ways. Kiss them all week.

It's a long haul, this ACL reconstruction business. My leg seems to ache in new ways every day - hamstrings, thighs, calves, knee cap... And all the while I'm paranoid that I'm gonna bugger up all the good NHS-inspired work and have to go in for another operation. I've been told I can bend my leg but not twist it - and you'd be surprised how often you want to twist your leg. Every time I do, I can imagine my new ligament snapping off and it gives me the shivers. Got to think positively.

I'm driving, though, and walking about - stairs are fun. I take each step at a time and it takes me ages. People walking with me get bored and wait for me at the bottom. I used to be a bit of a bounder, a three-steps-at-a-time man, so it's a bit of a shock.

Anyway, I should be doing my exercises - good GOD they bore me senseless. All is not lost, though - Swindon Town got a last minute equaliser tonight, and Oxford United got beat again last night. Hoorah.

Haircuts

Golly. It's been a while, what with Burns night, haggis, going back to work and generally filling my days hobbling around Oxford, I haven't had the chance to post anything, for which I can only apologise - to you, but also to myself. I feel ashamed.

Haircuts, though, they're a bit rubbish, aren't they? I got mine snipped on Saturday, and I'm beginning to think the whole thing was a terrible mistake. Speaking as somone with very curly, slightly gingery, fairly rubbish hair, haircuts aren't exactly my favourite thing. For years now I've taken to growing my hair til it gets like a horrible shaggy mop (think that TOTAL IDIOT from Toploader) and then brutally shaving it off so I look like an evil Nazi, just to avoid having to go through with the whole ordeal.

Just about the worst thing about haircuts is having to look at yourself in the mirror for anything up to half-an-hour, or even more if I'm having a particularly bad Toploader moment. Now, I've worked out I probably look in the mirror for approximately 30 seconds in an average a day, and even then I'm not really focusing on anything, just brushing my teeth angrily. This suits me fine - I get to believe I'm an inoffensively not-ugly, almost-handsome sortaguy, and my confidence remains in tact.

One thing guaranteed to shatter that confidence in a thrice is a haircut, with those giant, unforgiving mirrors and brighter-than-bright lights reflecting back a very jaded (and ugly) me - bloodshot eyes, hungover skin, terrible facial hair that you thought made you look rugged, and features that somehow look a combination of too big, too far apart, too pointy, too squashed and too sticking out, all at the same time. By the time I get out, I've been reduced to a tearful wreck, unable to look anyone in the eye or be seen out in public before dark again.

But I'm aware that this makes me sound like a massive girl, so I won't go on. Mind you, it's no wonder that girls suffer from low self-esteem and over-awareness of their own shortcomings - they spend far too much of their time analysing themselves in front of mirrors. Conversely, it's also why some boys have such inexplicably high levels of confidence and believe that woman should fall at their feet - they have no idea how truly, offensively ugly they are.

Anyway, other rubbish things about haircuts:
- they remind you that you should really do something about your dandruff
- they only ever have copies of the Daily Mail or FHM to read while you wait
- male barbers only ever know how to do a short back and sides
- you can tell that most female hairdressers hate cutting curly hair, even though they'll tell you how lovely it is and that they'd love to have curly hair themselves
- you always get some rubbish sub-taxi-driver chat, and all you want to do is shout at the hairdresser that they're cutting it ALL WRONG
- your hair ALWAYS looked better before you got it cut, whatever anyone at work / your girlfriend says
- you're always hungover
- they give you a cold neck / ears
- your Mum won't like it.

Can you think of any more? Well, can you? I'd like to see you try.

Football

Ah, football. Guaranteed to take your mind off injuries, work and Room 101. This is where I was on Saturday...

Bright sunshine, blue sky, a winter's day and the finest example of the beautiful game: Union Street FC v North Oxford Reserves, in the RT Harris City League Division One. The location? The magnificent Sandy Lane, Oxford. The home of football. Kind of. Note: fully-engorged gas tower, low-key dressing rooms and U.S.F.C warming up.

More of that funky sunshine. Jumpers for goalposts, the thrill of the chase, balls in the air, long throw-ins... Kinda warms the heart, doesn't it?

Our bored goalkeeper Danny Kavanagh. See the gas tower a bit closer up. That's Tesco's car park just behind there, you know.

Danny K clears his lines. Nice action shot, eh? Rather pleased with that. My hands was bleedin freezin though. Should've taken my gloves if I wanted to take photos, shouldn't I?

Ol' Rich 'straight leg' Adams chases for the ball with some other folk. Just so you know, the mighty Union Street won 7 - 1, which is pretty much unheard of. When I started playing for them we were more likely to lose 10 - 0 than win anything. Shows how things change, eh? Hmmm?

The knee's hurting a bit, and the docs should really warn you that losing a bit of hamstring really HURTS afterwards. I'm really paranoid that I'm going to do something that ruins the new ligament. I'm walking around with straight legs (bit like Rich above) and hoping that it doesn't twist and break again. I'll find out if the op has worked for sure in a few weeks...

Work

Back to work, what joy! What a lark! Makes you feel ecstatic to be here, hmmm?

Oh well, at least it's good to be in the land of the semi-living again. I'd actually forgotten how to hold a conversation (and, let's be honest, I had only the most tenuous grasp of that in the first place).

Achievements of the day
1. I answered / deleted / left for next week approximately 200 e-mails. Well done me.
2. I had the same conversation with approximately 15 different people. Not bad.
3. I had a cup of tea.
4. I did my exercises in one of our meeting rooms. I did get some funny looks through the window whilst doing the pelvic thrusts.
5. I walked up and down the stairs twice. I also had a staircase stand-off: I was on the inside (need the rail, you see), and this woman refused to budge. How rude.

I also got sent this rather magnificent diagram of my knee from one of my colleagues. It's actually the same as the one they use in medical textbooks. Marvellous stuff.

Physio

These are the knee and leg exercises I've been given to do. Nice drawings, eh? I love his big hair. Taken from the rather lovely blue physio book the hospital gave me. The exercises below are for the first two weeks after the ACL reconstruction operation.

Calf stretch. "Move the foot up and down from the ankle to maintain good circulation in the leg." Easy-peasy.

Extension exercises. "Sit on a firm surface and fully straighten your knee. To help the knee go straighter, tighten the front thigh muscles. Pull your foot towards your face and at the same time brace your knee down onto the floor. Hold for 5-10 seconds." This isn't as easy as it looks / sounds.

Knee bends. "Slide heel up and down a firm surface, bending and straightening the knee." This isn't all that easy, either. To begin with, my knee didn't go much past 90 degrees, and it still doesn't go all the way, I think because of the swelling and general stiffness.

Standing knee bend. "Stand upright, bend operated knee, bring heel to your bum. Lower the foot slowly back into a straight position." I was told not to do this one striaght away, because there's no support for the leg. Frustratingly, I can't currently get my leg past 90 degrees, and I feel tightness in the front thigh, knee and hamstrings.

Static hamstring stretch. "With the knee very slightly bent, push the heel into the floor and hold for 5-10 seconds." I feel this one in my now-puny hamstrings.

Thigh co-contraction exercises. "With your knee bent over a bottle [preferably a full 2 litre fizzy drink bottle or something, mine's Sainsbury's own brand cola. Nice] wrapped in a towel, push the heel down into the floor, and push the knee down into the bottle at the same time, keeping the pressure on the heel. No knee movement should occur. Hold for 5-10 seconds." This involves contracting the quads and hamstrings at the same time, and is a bit difficult at first...

Things # 2

As I draw ever closer to the frightening monster that is Going Back To Work On Monday, I'm trying to switch on all my positive thoughts to make it a less harrowing experience. To that end, I'm doing away (at least for a day or two) with my Room 101 obsession, and concentrating instead on the many things that make me happy. So without further beating around the proverbial, here are a few of my favourite things:

The few occasions I lie in
Swindon Town
Fish pie
Nurses
Steven Gerrard
The AA
Stephen Fry
Sing-a-longs, including banjos
Weekend newspapers (well, The Observer and The Guardian at least)
Physiotherapists
The Office Christmas special when Dawn and Tim get together and Brent tells Chris Finch to fuck off
Badgers
Guinness
The Black Swan
Porridge
Watching / playing for / drinking with Union Street FC
Single malt whisky
Not being at work
The A420
White Horse Hill
Munching Italian food, drinking wine and getting merry in Italy on a warm summer evenin
Communigate
Yorkshire puddings
Jonathan Winkler
The Thames
Friendly Germans at the DAM
Funny beards
My new friends at Test Match Special

Oh well, I couldn't resist it, a few more things I don't like:
Standard lower league footballers' haircuts, with dyed bits, quiffy bits, and idiot bits
Noel Edmonds
Bridget Jones' Diary
Sex In The City
Harry Potter
Wind
Mild winters
Women wearing suits with shorts
Tattoos

Roads

Blimey, windy innit? Just the sort of day you wanna go down the A420 and get stuck behind a swaying lorry, I shouldn't wonder. Ah, the A420. Where would Swindon be without it? The best thing to come out of Oxford, ha ha. Home of Shrivenham, Kingston Bagpuize and the Botley Interchange. Not forgetting, of course, a rather far-off view of the White Horse at Uffington (incidentally, one of my top five places in the universe - I'll be sure to tell you the other four at some point).

Where was I? Oh yes, on my way to Oxford for my physio appointment, two weeks after my ACL operation. I'd almost forgotten why I was writing this blog, for a moment. The appointment passed without comment, save a few expletives from my Dad about the A34 (which would lose hands-down to the 420 in a Battle Of The A Roads), and some soothing words from the physiotherapist.

She (physios are always a she, it seems, not that I'm complaining - softer hands, you see) gave me some more exercises (some like these, but nothing quite as fun as this alas), which mostly involved balancing a bit, stretching my leg / hamstring / knee much more than I'd like, and one which involves getting a big bottle and putting it under your knee and pressing down til you yelp. The physio said I had lovely calves, and was impressed with how far back my good leg went. Always useful, I find.

She said I could do some gentle swimming (I refrained from telling her that swimming is satan's physiotherapy). She also said I could do some upper-body weights down the gym if I wanted, go for a bit of a walk, and generally stop being quite so much of a loaf. Apparently, it's twisting the leg that I need to avoid (presumably so that the new ligament doesn't twist off), but straight leg movements are dandy. The knee is still a bit swollen, so I need to keep it raised and iced, and try to do these new exercises three times a day. That should be fun.

I don't know why I'm boring you with all this detail, but there's bugger all else to tell you. Oh, I've shaved my beard off, so I'm officially a beard-wuss. I think there's a critical stage in beard growth where the itchyness / gingerness / twattishness is at its peak - if you can get through it, you'll be the proud owner of a distinguished, non-twatty, non-itchy, nice-coloured beard. Alas, I gave up. I couldn't stand looking like Mr Twit any longer. Beards are for Christians and ale-drinkers, anyway.

But all is not lost, my hair gets more MAHOOSIVE by the day. It's at least two-foot tall, now. With my new poncey tweed jacket, I could fit in at Oxford Brookes University easily. I might even get a student discount on my train fare. Worth a shot, surely?

Rubbish

Oh, I'm so tired today - I got zilcho sleep last night. Thanks in no small part to doing absolutely naff all for two weeks, I think my brain has gone into overdrive - and a speeding brain is no good when you want some zzzzzs. I ended up listening to England v New Zealand on Radio 4 LW (no digital radio for me, you see) til 3.00 am.

I was so awake and bored I even texted in to the TMS people - and it got read out LIVE on radio (something like: "Listening in bed recovering from a knee op - great to hear Vaughan back from a knee injury blah blah di blah. Ben from Swindon"). Seems my radio career isn't over yet, huh?

But back to the RUBBISH STUFF we should put in Room 101 - Yr Chairman has crafted some gems which I wanted to share with you, as well as a few more I've dreamt up. We REALLY HATE these things...

The song Take My Breath Away from Top Gun
Crop tops for toddlers
Vacuum packed screws
Impossible-to-open hard plastic packaging for miscellaneous electrical items from Comet
Tiny 'funky' plastic dustbins
Sharon Osborne
Tracking orders on the internet that tell you what time your order was received at some distribution centre in Harlow but not when you'll actually get it
Australian cricketers' nicknames
Footballers who kiss their rings when they score
Thierry Henry looking all serious and arrogant when he scores
Tiny open decks on ferries
Old people in the Post Office early in the morning
Footballers who suck their thumbs when they score
Vanilla Ice
Rubbish disposable razors with two blunt blades that only your Dad seems able to use without turning his face into a blotchy mess
Carpets in toilets
Free DVDs of Allo Allo in the Star
Old men's combs
Giblets
Not being able to get to sleep
People who tell you how well they slept when you tell them you had a really bad night's kip
Massive four-page "books of the year" articles in broadsheet newspapers, where hundreds of poncey people you've never heard of tell you that they read some book about some ancient politician (who you've also never heard of) which was "just brilliant"
Cheese Flavoured Moments
Fosters
Tequila
Shopping on Saturdays
The queues in Boots
Microsoft Word
Tight people, esp. people who leave a group meal early and don't leave enough money
Shaving
Ironing
Pubs with too many TVs in them

So, what do you think? Anything to add?

Bravo

Today's the day I took my dressing and steri-strips off, 10 days after my ACL reconstruction op. Thought everyone would like to see what state my knee is in. Nice, huh?

These are the steri-strips. Pretty, don't you think? It was agony taking off the dressing. I don't think there's one hair left on my knee. Ouch, ouch, ouch. You can put ripping massive plasters off in my room 101, any day.

And here's the knee in all it's glory. First daylight it's seen for 10 days. Nice to feel a draft on it, too.

I've got to say, doctors are flippin' clever, aren't they? They 'harvested' a hamstring, somehow screwed it in to the middle of my knee, and only left two marks - a neat little hole, and a tidy strip. Imagine the mess if we tried to do that. Scabs and blood everywhere. Bravo modern science, that's what I say.

Things

Watched Room 101 on friday, it were quite good. That square-headed comedy dude Marcus Brigstocke put in Lynne Truss and "grammar bullies" (quite right too), it made me want to compile my own list of irksome things. Not terribly original, I know, but at least it keeps me busy. And I like lists. Without further mucking about, here are a few of my least favourite things:

Stag weekends
Golf
Party games
Squash ladders
Arrogant Australians
The Daily Mail
Jeremy Clarkson
Fancy dress
Campaigning cyclists with 'one less car' t-shirts
People who tell you when your face has gone red
Alex Ferguson
Weird, icky marzipan
Oxford United
Dirty, expensive London
PlayStations and all games consoles
Football managers who moan about referees
Ryanair

Oh, I have so much more to give than that. This isn't the end of it, believe me.

Stags

Today's rant: why are stag dos so over the top these days? Time was (admittedly not in my time) when a few beers down the pub, followed by something suitably embarrassing involving dressing up / stripping / dodgy nightclubs would suffice. Now people want a whole weekend, usually abroad, with water sports, karting, shooting and all manner of expensive shenaniganery on top. I've been invited on one today and I really I want to go to see the ol' blighter off in style, but I just can't afford it (Berlin, flights, hotel, nightclubs etc). Ho hum.

If I ever get married, my stag do would look something like this:
(all times subject to change)
12.00 pm: meet at the Swan for initial round of Guinness, whisky and singing
2.00: epic game of football with the Street and mates on Sandy Lane
4.00: epic rendition of Hail Hail in the Lane showers
4.30: retire to the Swan to see how the Town got on
5.00: pub snacks (cheese, bits of lukewarm pie) provided by Dick
6.00: more Guinness, whisky and maybe even some Limoncello
7.00: pizza and tiramisu
8.00: get the badger costumes, banjos, guitars, harmonicas, triangles, maracas and child drum kits out
9.00: sing, shout, dance, boogie
10.00: amusing round of drunken speeches
11.00: maybe get that rough stripper from Martin's 50th to do her, err, bit
12.00 am: run down Cowley Road in badger costumers, jumping on nearest available post box
2.00: epic group-performance of Golden Slumbers involving aforementioned instruments
3.00: stumble down the high street, frightening students with ferocious singing and badger impersonations
3.30: arrange traffic cones in amusing shape on Carfax
4.00: pass out in neighbour's garden, cheesy chips on lap, very drunk and very happy.

What more could you possibly want? Eh?

Ramblings

It's been seven days since my op - this time last week I was babbling incoherently to some poor chap opposite me in the recovery ward. Gawd knows what I was saying (off my bonce on anaesthetic you see), but he gave me one of those polite smiles that told me I was being a fool.

Incidentally, anaesthetic's a bluddy larf, innit? I dunno how much they gave me, but I lost four hours of my life, and I was proper groggy afterwards. Could barely chew a digestive. And then I got the shivers - I was chatterin and jumpin til they put about eight blankets on me. A couple of hours later they complained that I had a temperature - that bed was a warm and sweaty place, let me tell you.

Anyway, I'm nearly off crutches now, though I still haven't really done more than walk up and down the stairs. I get occasional pangs up my hamstrings, and inside the knee, and I have a weird numb patch on my shin, too. I can't bend the knee much past 90 degrees, though that's normal I think. I'm taking the dressings and steri-strips off on Monday, when I'll get to see what state my knee's in. I'm still taking painkillers and stuff, and just getting as much rest as I can.

So what have I learned this past week?
- Your toes go numb if you sit around with your leg up all day
- I have two and a half days of music in iTunes
- If someone rips out your hamstrings, it hurts afterwards
- It's still embarrassing to watch sex scenes on telly with your parents in the same room
- A flight to Thailand in April could cost £450
- You can get 10 hours of sleep a night and still feel tired
- Baths are not as good as showers
- There's a football team called the Swindon Badgers
- Nurses are great
- I shouldn't watch Liverpool play Arsenal
- Alex Cobham should keep his trap shut

I've learnt more than that, I'm sure. Hmmm. I'll write more tomorrow...

Photos

It's a photo special today. How exciting.

My 'work station'. Note stool for leg. And cructches.

The view from my window. Note rain.

The view from my window # 2. Note rain, again. And wind.

The view from my window # 3. Note willow tree and pond. No rain, this time.

My beard. Still a bit sparse, truth be known. Pleasing ginger and blonde bits. Uneven growth, though. More work needed.

Tosh

Having a lot of time on your hands is a curious thing. I'm not exactly bored, though I am filling my days up with an awful amount of tosh. So far, this includes:

- the entire first series of The Office
- Liverpool 1 Arsenal 3
- putting all my CDs into iTunes
- The House of Spirits by Isobel Allende
- three different kinds of soup
- two episodes of Can Gerry Robinson fix the NHS?
- far too many episodes of Friends on E4
- Talk to Her by Pedro Almodovar
- something on the BBC about the London nail bomber
- Manchester United 2 Aston Villa 1
- a copy of the NME to remind myself how out of touch I am
- this blog
- The Guardian every day (well, the sport at least)
- talking to my Dad about where we went wrong during the Ashes
- Moulin Rouge (no laughing at the back)
- about 30 seconds of Celebrity Big Brother
- chocolate
- writing a to-do list
- researching holidays to Thailand
- sausages and mash
- an hour of CBeebies with my nephew
- checking to see if Craig's written anything
- the first episode of Ugly Betty
- scratching the numb bit on my leg

The question is, is all this a productive use of my time? What do you think? Is there anything else you think I should do with my time off?

Knees

It's a picture of my knees. Woo hoo. The yellow-stain under my left knee is cos I haven't washed my leg properly since last Wednesday, and they cover you with that weird iodine stuff when they operate. The two dressings on my knee cover the very precise keyhole, err, holes they made during the op, and the one on my thigh is where they put a dirty great tube to drain off the blood. I have to keep the dressings dry until they come off in 10 days, hence the no-washings.

It's not that swollen, but I'm still under strict instructions to keep it rested and iced. To be honest, if I do so much as walk up the stairs it aches loads, so it's for the best. I'm just glad it doesn't hurt like when I injured it in the first place - that was eye-watering, can't-move-at-all pain that I'd rather not experience again. I just need to put all this rest to good use: blog waffle, laptop idiocy, and beard growth.

Exercises

It's pretty boring, this staying-at-home-and-waiting-for-your-knee-to-get-better lark. For those that want to know about these things, my knee is pretty stiff, but not too painful. I can put weight on it, which actually makes things more frustrating - I've been told I need to rest it properly, so I can't go gadding about into, err, Swindon.

They've given me some exercises to do, which look a bit like these, but with better drawings. Basically, they involve sitting down and contracting my fast-disappearing leg muscles. The new ligament is apparently at its strongest immediately after the operation (cos it's still got oxygen pumping around it or summat), but then it gets weaker after two weeks, so I'll need to make sure I don't overdo it.

I'll see the physio in two weeks and then step up the exercises, and go back to work. All the stuff I've read online seems to suggest I'll be playing football again after about 8 to 12 months. It seems like ages away, but I'm determined to turn out for the Street before the year's out. In the meantime, I've got a whole lot of tedious swimming and other physio-crap to be getting on with.

Hospitals # 2

Some more musin's on 'ospitals. Any guesses what that thing above is? Well, after my op, through a fog of anaesthetic, painkillers, sugary tea and digestives, I asked if I could go to the toilet. The nurse promptly handed me one of these things, whipped the curtains around my bed, and told me to "buzz when I'm done".

Now, I'm afraid to say I get stagefright at the best of times, but it's a weakness I've been working on, much like a cricketer who has been ruthlessly exposed outside off-stump, and has gone back to work on his foot movement with an elite batting coach. However, no amount of work or practise in the nets could have prepared me for this. I blurted out my first concern before the nurse had a chance to leave: "How am I meant to work this?" She gave me a shrug and a half-smile as if to say, "You'll work it out, you BIG GIRL."

I can hear you laughing, but it really wasn't easy. I had no feeling in my left leg, which in any case had a dirty great tube filled with blood coming out of it. I had a drip in my left arm, and was hooked up to a computer monitoring blood pressure, oxygen in the blood, and how badly I needed a wee (possibly). The ward was full of people oblivious to my torment, chatting, coughing, groaning and generally putting me right off the task in, ahem, hand. And one nurse after another kept poking their head through the curtains, "Are you done yet?" No, I'm FLIPPIN WELL NOT DONE YET. CAN'T YOU SEE THIS IS AGONY?

It was near impossible, and took me all of two hours to get the merest dribble out into the cardboard tube-thingy, which I promptly forgot about and tipped on to my leg. I varied my methods of attack - under the covers, over the covers, left side, right side, good leg on the floor... I even tried to get my bad leg down, and immediately remembered that it was completely numb from the upper thigh down, and had thus turned into a two-tonne elephantine limb which was impossible to shift.

Every time I approached the promised land, a nurse, visitor - even Yr Chairman - would appear and leave me exasperated. I was concentrating so hard sweat was pouring down my face. The nurses were laughing at me. Something had to be done. I decided on a change of attack - ignore it.

So I picked up The Guardian sport section, read some nonsense about 'Cricket Australia' (a side issue: anyone else resent the reversal of normal English when it comes to naming sporting bodies, Cricket Australia, Team GB etc - what's wrong with 'Australian Cricket'?) objecting to Cricinfo calling Justin Langer a 'brown-nosed gnome' (Craig would've been proud of that one), and lo! It all came gushing forth. A veritable torrent. The relief was unconfined.

I buzzed for the nurse and beamed at her as I handed over my pot of warm piss. Happy days! I even asked for another tube, and was slightly concerned later that night when I had a full conversation with a nurse whilst I was weeing into my pot under the covers. An odd sensation, I can tell you. By morning time I had three warm pots to hand over, and all was well with the world once more.

The moral of the story? There's nothing like Australians taking themselves too seriously to help you (take the) piss.

Beards

I've got two weeks off work with this knee of mine. I'm going to use the opportunity to grow my hair and beard as big and long as I can. I'll be sure to keep you in the loop, dear readers, don't you fret.

Current status
Beard: still quite short and slightly gingery. Itch factor of 6.
Moustache: a pleasing depth of colour, but a bit camp.
Hair: very voluminous, very posh. Would go down a storm at Henley Regatta.

Injuries

I'm injury prone. It's a harsh truth, but one I've come to cope with over time. I asked my physio once why it might be so, and she said it's because I have joints which 'hyper-extend' or some-such. I think she was being kind. Mind you, I do have flat feet, and I don't think that helps at all, what with the pressures on the ankles, knees, groin, back and all sorts. Anyway, for those who want to feel smug in their injury-free lives, here's a quick run-down of all the injuries in my life so far:

broken wrist (aged 12, trying to save a penalty)
broken collar bone (aged 13, falling over in the box a la Cobham)
broken wrist, again (aged 13, can't remember how)
broken big toe (aged 15, 'moshing' in my mate's bedroom)
numerous heavily sprained ankles (aged 19-25, all playing football)
cracked rib (aged 25, when we lost 10-0 to East Oxford, and one of them kung-fu kicked me)
groin strain (aged 26, when we beat North Oxford and I got booked for calling the ref 'surreal')
sprained medial ligaments, right knee (aged 27, trying to foul someone v Testworth)
ruptured anterior cruciate ligament, left knee (aged 28, err, jumping in the air and landing)

Oh dear, I'll stop there. I think I'm getting a bit Martin Scarfe.

Operations

Oh, I'm sorry, I seem to have gotten ahead of myself. I've not even told you why I'm writing this yet. I've just had an operation on my knee, which I injured playing for the mighty Union Street FC back in March 2006. If you're interested in these things, I ruptured the ACL in my left knee winning a header against some chopsy-larrakin called Ramsey, and it took me all of 8 months to get an operation on the NHS.

The operation is really clever (or just plain horrific, depending on how squeamish you feel about these things). Your ACL (anterior cruciate ligament) is a ligament right in the middle of your knee that connects your tibia to your femur (look at me getting all technical) and stops your leg from shooting off in front of you. I ruptured that, which means that it isn't there any more (in the past 6 months I've learned the oh-so-important difference between a rupture and a tear).

You can play sport without an ACL - apparently my all-time Swindon Town hero, former Scotland midfielder and current Notts Forest manager Colin Calderwood kept playing after he ruptured it. It's just a question of building up the muscles around your knee (I imagine Colin had lovely thighs). But my consultant told me that if I want to play football - which is just about the nastiest thing you can do to your knees (just ask Martin Scarfe) - then an operation was the only way to go. Maybe he didn't like my thighs.

The ACL can't repair itself, so they (they being the clever doctors) need to graft (tear off) a bit of ligament from somewhere else. Sounds fun, huh? They could take a bit from the ligament that attaches your patella (knee cap) to your leg. Mmmm, nice. Or they could take a bit of your hamstring (there's plenty to spare apparently) - which was what they did with me.

So, the operation goes a little something like this: drug the patient til his eyes pop and make some quite neat little holes in the front of his leg. Somehow take a strip of his hamstring (apparently they test its strength mid-op on a ligament-strength-testing machine - images of giggling surgeons pinging ligaments around the operating theatre abound) and screw it into place using dissolvable screws (hopefully they're not made of sugar, or I'm farked). Stitch patient up, stick a worryingly-large tube in his thigh to drain the blood from the knee, and laugh when patient wakes up from his anaesthetic - babbling like a drunkard to everyone in the ward.

Ta-da!

Hospitals # 1

OK, so it's a couple of days since my operation on my knee, time for some reflections on hospitals, before I get into all that physiotherapy-recuperation nonsense.

Nurses are nice, aren't they? I mean, really nice, and not in a "NURSE!" sexual way, either. They put up with a lot of, err, crap (literally). They hand out drugs like there's no tomorrow, they tuck you in at night, they give you a special cardboard pot to piss in (and then take it away again, piss-filled - more of which later), and they make you tea whenever you want it. I LOVE NURSES!

What's more, they have to bow down to the fat cat doctors when they swan up, late as ever. It's interesting observing the whole colour-coded hospital food-chain - at the hospital I was at, this went something like: porters at the bottom, with their black jumpers, grey school-trousers and sensible shoes. Then you've got the nurses in blue t-shirts and trousers, the radiographers in rather fetching maroon, physiotherapists in white, anaesthetists with their green hats and then the consultants, who get to wear whatever they like - usually an awful suit from their public school days, complete with patches and stripy tie.

Interesting also that everyone bar the doctors and the porters is female. OK, so maybe that isn't interesting, but there was definitely a gender divide going on, and a bit of a class thing too - all the consultants were terribly posh, talked about rugger and seem to swan about as if they owned the place, patients included. And the friendly nurses were from all over the world - even Wales. I love that multicultural shit, man.

Hospitals: they're like a microcosm of society, aren't they?