Thursday, November 18, 2010

Wet Leaves


I’d never considered leaves dangerous before around two weeks ago when I went straight on my arse down Parsonage Road.
The street leads to my house from Withington and is by it's very nature leafy. This in itself is nothing strange.
In fact, many of our country’s streets are lined with silent deciduous sentinels, patiently enduring the temperamental seasons, accepting fair and foul without complaint.
Autumn arrives and most trees die. I mean, not die, but they look like death. Dark and skeletal they become; lifeless, featureless husks, old as the year itself.
At their feet they shed their summer coat, by which I mean of course, their leaves. (deadly leaves?)
Wet autumn leaves remind me of the cornflakes in the bottom of your bowl, all stuck together, soggy and deeply unappealing.
The pavement along Parsonage Road is poorly maintained and my footwear was in hindsight completely inappropriate.
The Fred Perry pumps had been purchased enthusiastically, but were not intended as a working man’s shoe, and the feeble grids on the sole had capitulated long ago.
Surprisingly, considering I’m very tall and have a centre of gravity where most people’s head belongs, I don’t fall over often, and so it came as a huge shock to me.
As my right foot planted on a sideways incline in the uneven pathway, it lost all friction thanks to the aqueous foliage, and sliced violently across my left foot, taking that with it as it flew skywards and thus sending the opposite end of my body hurtling towards earth.
I’d been carrying shopping…
I landed on my right flank, my left hand and my right elbow all at once. My immediate thought was, “My tomatoes are on the floor,” but then I realised I was bleeding profusely from a cut on my hand.
The bleeding hand grabbed the tomatoes, and with my good hand clutching both shopping bags I hauled myself to my feet.
I HAD been seen. “Are you alright?” said this guy, a young guy, probably a student. He’d tell his flatmates about it when he got home and they’d have a laugh at my expense. That’s okay.
“Fine, thanks,” I replied, raising the bleeding hand a little in acknowledgement.
I wasn’t fine, I was in a lot of pain. Not like a woman in labour, or a soldier, but in a normal, everyday kind of a way. On the everyday pain scale it was an eight out of ten.
There’s nothing he could do about that though. Maybe give me a friendly hug or something, but that would have been awkward.
I stumbled the short distance home. I’ve got some new work shoes now, and I treat wet leaves like ice, bending my knees and walking slowly across them or walking on the road in order to avoid them altogether.
If you see me acting strangely around wet leaves, or cornflakes, hopefully you’ll be sympathetic.