Bad Sunday


This morning I was woken at six by somebody calling me, dragging me up from my sleep. It wasn’t anyone, just he silent alarm on my phone, pulsing away, telling me it was time to get up and get some exercise. I rolled my bike out into the hall and into the lift, and then set off for an hour’s ride around the parks of Singapore.

I managed half an hour.

I don’t know quite what was wrong. My heart rate never exceeded 140bpm (which is low) and averaged less than 100 – a similar level of exertion to walking to the station. But it was a constant struggle, where nothing seemed to be working right. To ride into a headwind throughout the ride was particularly hardgoing for me. Or was I just weak? I got home, lay back down, woke up at 8:45 to find it was time we went trampolining.

We went to Amped, a trampoline park in River Valley that we went to two years ago with La Serpiente, when she got scared by all the big kids and packed it in after 15 minutes. She was much braver this time, jumping without hesitation into the foam pits and leaping around.

After about fifteen minutes, my wife called me over to another foam put, needing to be helped out. Because the foam pits are made of the same stretchy rubber floor as the trampolines, then covered with football-sized cubes of foam, I guessed she just needed help clambering out, but instead she’d landed badly and either sprained or strained or fractured her ankle. Whatever it is, she can’t put weight on it.

The kids were still gleeful so we let them bounce for the rest of the hour, then we had to enlist help carrying my wife down the stairs from the trampoline centre, and then took a taxi to Singapore General.

Sunday morning may be a good time to go to A&E as she was triaged and x-rayed and had a plaster cast within an hour. I then abandoned her, waiting for crutches, while I took the girls home, as they were starting to act out, a function of fatigue and the unfamiliar surrounds of the hospital. Destroyer, who had been jumping constantly for an hour, went to sleep on the way home, but La Serpiente cried and cried about how she missed her mummy, even after I fed her milk and put her to bed. Then she passed out cuddling me, about the same time as I fell asleep. Did I mention how knackered I’ve been feeling?

This is not a good week to get injured. I’m already struggling with my heel, and now both of us are limping. Collecting La Serpiente with crutches is not going to work, so we really have to hope it’s not a fracture, especially with the holiday in Europe coming up. So if I wasn’t stressed before, I really am now.

So I spent most of the afternoon yelling at La Serpiente, for doing things like lunging across the table and knocking all her dinner on the floor (because I made he mistake of giving her sister the Peppa Pig-branded plate, not her) and banging grumpily around the flat, aggravated by a lack of exercise and wishing I’d had more to eat and not sure why I feel so crummy this last two days. Maybe Monday will be better than this.


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