NOTE: For reasons that will quickly become clear I want to reassure people that there will be NO photos or descriptions of injuries in this post.

Monday: I sold some Etsy stuff to a repeat customer today. I think that is probably a milestone of some sort.

At 9:30pm this evening I found myself walking back to my car from the Accident and Emergency dept of Walsall Manor Hospital.

I was not the injuried party.

Via texts between myself and the injuried party, between the A&E waiting room and the car park upon which I and my car sat, we decided that a less than 4 hour wait to be seen was acceptable and I could play Eye-Spy by myself for that long.

It wasn’t until around 3am it dawned on me that the ambulances I was watching sail past me, at one or two per hour, were adding significant amounts of waiting time to the walking wounded who were sitting in the waiting room.

10 hours after we’d arrived I finally got the ‘Going in to see a doctor’ text.

I could have driven home at any time, but you just know that text would have arrived moments after I’d walked through the door, so I stayed. I watched an urban fox stroll across a busy city centre hospital car park, as if he owned the place, I imagined practising my wheelchair racing with the one abandoned half a dozen parking spaces down and I watched drunk people walk, very slowly, towards A&E, all the time wondering if I should get out of the car to warn them of the at least 6 hour wait (I didn’t…it was 4am after all).

According to the doc if we’d have timed this event for the evening before we’d have been out of there in 2 hours…sigh.

So for only the 3rd time in my life I stayed up literally all night. The other times were when I was travelling, once home from Disneyland Paris and once home from Chicago. This time was more stressful.

Tuesday: Home at 8:30am. Shower, coffee, bowl of cereal then back out to dog-sit for an hour or two. We didn’t tell The Kid what had happened until later. We’re not big fans of drama in this house so, rightly or wrongly, we like things to have settled down and been resolved before we share news of this sort. I decided I wanted to stay awake all day to ensure I’d get some proper sleep tonight so there was no napping on the sofa with the dog.

Wednesday: The Big Brave Soldier seems to be doing alright, although his stitches are in a place that cannot be dressed so there’s lots of nagging from me about keeping things clean and dry, which is probably more painful than the injury itself.

I sent a quote for 50 knitted breasts to a London based part of the NHS. Even though they kept us waiting 10 hours I still love them and I’d really enjoy making loads of boobs for them.

Thursday: One very faint silver lining to Monday evenings events is that there cannot be any DIY done, so we pootled down the motorways with various items, including the kitchen sink, in the back of the car. We dropped them off, checked the place and picked up post, then immediately set off and pootled back home. No need to take anything off sale on Etsy, which set my mind at rest a bit.

Friday: Still tired. I sleep VERY badly at the best of times so missing an entire night was never going to help, but lounging on the sofa, watching bad telly and knitting isn’t too strenuous so I’ll cope.

Saturday: Early morning drop off with the courier as I sold my first Rothko inspired cushion and I wanted to get it posted out as soon as I could. I’m not sure if it’s a Christmas gift, but I don’t want to take chances.

I finally caved in and added some festive cheer to the living room with a garland around the fireplace…and that’s the lot…no more of this nonsense.

Sunday: Fog and mist all day today (and yesterday). It makes the outside look both mysterious and uninviting, so I stayed in and ate roasted chestnuts whilst knitting more gloves, all the while thanking my lucky stars for the NHS.