Wins and losses


This was my last Sunday with my family before they fly away and I don’t see them for a month, so I took Destroyer and La Serpiente out for pancakes, and after that went off climbing. Serving me right for this neglect of fatherly duties, my scooter skidded after I’d gone over a bit of wet tarmac, and I went over the bars, landing hard on my hands and my right knee. I’d only been going at walking pace, but a hard hit is a hard hit. I staggered into the mall, knee already seizing up, and realised I wouldn’t be going climbing when I couldn’t bend my left wrist or exert any force with my thumb. So instead, a second trip for me to A&E in less than six months.
From my limited sample of visits to A&E, arriving at 10:30am on a Sunday is better than 3:30am on a Monday. I got triaged in about 45 minutes, got to see a doctor and was xrayed in two hours, and I was limping out at 1:15. As I left, the screening and triage area was entirely filled with elderly people in wheelchairs, so I’d clearly timed things just right.

Blessed Grab doesn’t realise people might need to be picked up from the A&E department, so there’s no way in their app to specify that building. If you try, they default you to another building down the hill, which is great when you can’t put weight on your right leg. Luckily, another taxi arrived dropping people off as I was leaving, so I got to get in and go home.

I arrived just in time to accompany everyone to the swimming competition at Swish. As we approached, a few dots of rain spotted the windscreen of the car, but I assumed that would soon pass. Instead, we had a three hour thunderstorm, continual flashes of lightning and torrential rain preventing us using the outside pool.

Instead, they ran the races in the inside pool. Destroyer had three races, where she nearly finished first in each (although in a bit of gamesmanship, she tended to jump the start). Then we plied her with hot dogs while La Serpiente took her turn.

La Serpiente had two races, one against another girl and a relay race where she was the first of three girls against three boys. Her freestyle has really progressed as she came first in both. That got her a brace of gold medals, versus Destroyer’s three silvers.

I was so proud of our two little girls. We fed them whatever snacks we had left (cheesy popcorn that smells suspiciously like vomit) and then went home, Destroyer struggling to stay awake next to me.

At home, the two of them spun around, twirling their medals, until Destroyer caught La Serpiente in the face with one. La Serpiente broke down in tears and Destroyer immediately huddled down into her snail pose (child pose, to yoga aficionados) but was apparently too ashamed to apologise to her sister.

So I put the medals away, which produced a screaming tantrum she didn’t really recover from for the rest of the day. We fed them both dinner, then (as I’d promised her I would) I took La Serpiente to the Singapore Flyer to see some old friends.

There was a traffic jam around the Flyer so it took us half an hour to get there. It took our friends even longer, so we didn’t get into the Flyer until 7:30, by which point La Serpiente was pretty shattered. She seemed rather more interested in the tablet displays around the inside of the Flyer capsule than the views themselves. Great, when you’ve just spent $21 on her to have her play with a touchscreen.

Still, I gradually got her interested in the world outside (at night, when it’s not raining, it’s all very pretty) and then we left, getting a taxi home to find Destroyer already passed out. La Serpiente went down equally fast and then I had the evening to rest and recuperate, mourning my lost ability to grip with my left hand and hoping tomorrow to be better.

So, some good things, some bad ones. On we go…


2 responses to “Wins and losses”

  1. So very proud of my two aquatic grandchildren. But sad that you took a tumble. Hope you get better soon. xxx

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