Nightswimming, walls and snow – a recipe for disaster

My recent posts have been reasonably serious and about running so I thought I’d lighten the mood a bit this week. I mentioned a few posts back that I’m incredibly injury prone and that I have some cracking stories (quite literally) about mishaps when I was younger.  

Given it has been snowing a lot recently I’ve included two below that are related to the piste. And that’s not including the highlight of last weekend’s run – namely being chased up a road by a dog, which then jumped up at me so many times I slipped over on the ice and bashed my bad knee. Anyway, the snow-related ones are a bit later on. First up is the now infamous accident which explains how my nickname from certain friends changed overnight from ‘Woody’ to ‘One-eye’.

Nightswimming, deserves a quiet night

Picture the scene. I was 17 years old and had just played my second game of senior men’s football. We’d won 2-1 and I’d set them both up, playing right-mid in those days. After the game we all decamped to the bar where they awarded me the man of the match award. Unfortunately for me, the man of the match award consisted of a killer pint (lager, cider, spirits etc) and I was hoisted up onto a chair to down it. As a new club member, I was only too keen to oblige.

The night was still young, we had a few more, and then a group of us headed into town where we carried on drinking with some friends. I met my girlfriend at the time a bit later and at closing decided that rather than stick her in a taxi, I’d walk her home despite being in no fit state to do so. We stopped at a bridge over the canal where we always used to hang out, and all seemed well in the world...

It was at about this point that I drunkenly fell straight over the railings on the bridge and went face first into the canal. About an eight foot drop. I sort of put my hands out, but with barely a foot of water and plenty of rocks on the canal bed, it was a pretty futile gesture and it was my face that broke the fall. Or to be more precise, my left eye. Before I’d even scrabbled around to get to my feet, my eye was completely shut, swelled up to the size of an apple, and pouring out with blood.

Eventually I managed to drag myself out of the water and up the grass bank. Fortunately my mate’s Skinny and Ebod live not 50 yards from the bridge so I staggered to their house and rang the doorbell. Imagine their dad Paul’s surprise when he answered it, at about midnight, to the sight of me looking like I’d been attacked, eye completely closed, covered in blood and soaked to the bone. I still refute it this to this day, but Paul always tells the story that my only words to him were ‘I feel ill’!  

I fell straight over the green railings head-first into the canal...

I spent the next four days in hospital waiting for the swelling to go down before they could even touch it to see the extent of the damage. I was told I was having a general anaesthetic which calmed the nerves, but as I was rolled into theatre I was told it was going to be a local as they needed me to tell them what I could see.

As they stuck a four inch needle straight into the corner of my swollen eye, the nurse noticed from my wrist tag that her sister was my next door neighbour. She kindly tried to take my mind off of it by asking if my cat Charlie was still rogering her cat. I can’t remember exactly what my answer was, but as much as I loved Charlie, he really wasn’t top of my thoughts at that precise moment. I can safely say that the needle into a red-raw eye was the most painful experience I’ve ever had – but when they opened the eye up was definitely the scariest. My good eye was staring straight up at the theatre lights, whereas my bad one was limply looking straight down across my chest. Not ideal, and a slight realisation that it was obviously pretty serious. 

I could go on for hours about that story, as I haven’t even mentioned the operation to put it right again. But in the interests of time, the upshot of it was that:

a)     I had to have 17 stitches in and around my eye

b)    I had to have an operation to insert a plastic bone underneath my eye to replace the one I’d shattered when I landed on it

c)     I spent the next two years having blurred vision out of the extremes of my left eye, whilst the two were trying to get in sync again

d)    I couldn’t play football or drive for a couple of years either (no more man of the match awards)

e)     I couldn’t walk into the Lock Keepers pub in Stroud for years without someone putting on Nightswimming by REM

Now it’s at about this point that I should be telling you how I learnt from my mistakes, and that I realised I wasn’t infallible, but unfortunately that isn’t the case with teenage boys...

Going out with a bang, literally

Having spent the best part of four months of the final year of my A-Levels in and out of hospital with my dodgy eye, I wanted to make sure I enjoyed the last day of Sixth Form. As is the tradition, everyone went for a few lunchtime beers with the teachers at the local pub. When that had finished, we did a pub crawl into town before ending up in The Retreat. After a lovely night with the friends we all promised to keep in touch with (obviously!), I walked out of the pub with my mate Toby. And that is as much as I can remember for the next ten minutes. Why I hear you ask?

Let’s just say that The Retreat has a nice Cotswold stone wall directly opposite, and that in my inebriated state I may have tripped down the step and fallen head-first into it. When I came around, I had a blanket over me and everyone from the pub was staring out of the windows to see if I was ok. The ambulance came but I thought I would be in too much trouble from another trip to hospital, so I managed to convince them I was ok by reciting the menu of the local kebab house. Not content with calling it a night after my encounter with the wall, I then went on to a party.

My abiding memory of that story was turning up at cricket the next day with a headache that I’ve never experienced the like of before or ever since. And, I am also ashamed to say, to this day I never told my parents about this as I was worried about how much trouble I would be in! As they’re reading this, they obviously will now though, so sorry Mum!

The kamikaze run

About a year after these two incidents, it snowed heavily in Stroud. And there are few better times to live in the Five Valleys than when you’re an adrenaline fuelled teenager surrounded with snow and too many hills to know what to do with. So we made our way up to Rodborough Common to have a bash at a bit of sledging.

Rodborough Common is pretty steep by most people’s standards. Which is why every other punter was enjoying themselves going down the main bit which is plenty steep enough. But for a teenager and his friends, the main bit was, well, what can we say, a ‘bit soft’. So we moved away from the crowd and decided to go down what I would term as the kamikaze bit.

When it came to my turn, I hopped on without batting an eyelid. I proceeded to fly down the hill and everything was going brilliantly until I got a bit too close to the road at the bottom. I just about managed to bail off of the sledge in time, but the momentum of flying down the hill at breakneck speed meant I couldn’t stop before the 5ft drop onto the hard, concrete road below. Fortunately I managed to protect my head, but my shoulder took the brunt of the fall. I gingerly got to my feet to the sound of laughing and cheering at the top of the slope.

My initial thought was ‘that hurts’, but after shouting for some help that wasn’t forthcoming, I couldn’t do anything other than head back up the slope to my friends. And as I trudged back up, I didn’t know what was worse – the pain of carrying the sledge or that it was impossible to maintain balance, so I had to break my fall with my other arm once every 10 seconds or so. After copping a load of flak for not hurrying up, I got no sympathy whatsoever and was given yet more abuse for wimping out of having another go.  It wasn’t until I showed the x-ray of my shattered collarbone in the pub a day later that my reputation was restored.

Was für eine schöne Aussicht (What a lovely view)

Unfortunately my relationship with the snow hasn’t got any better with age. I went snowboarding with my mate Scott in 2004. I remember it well because I was in training for the marathon at the time.

We arrived at Alpe D’Huez and immediately went out for a few liveners. Those few liveners ended up in a nightclub until 3am so when we got up the next morning I was feeling a wee bit hungover. Having missed the chance to book lessons (I’d never been before) Scott managed to convince me that if I jumped on the lift with him and his mates I’d be alright. So against my better judgement I foolishly agreed.

We got to the chair lift and Scott jumped on with his mates – there wasn’t room for me so I got on the next one with a lovely German couple.  I wasn’t paying any attention as I was admiring the scenery and getting some nice air in to my lungs to clear my head. So when I came to get off, I noticed Scott gesticulating wildly but I didn’t know what about. I had both feet facing directly forward, as you would if you didn’t have a snowboard attached to your leg. Ouch! I felt the snap as my ankle buckled all around me.

I thought it couldn’t be that bad, so I tried it anyway but I couldn’t control the board as I was in agony. As I said, I’d never been snowboarding before so with Scott and his mates long gone, I spotted a ski-lift in the distance and thought that was my best route down. I limped off towards it and was soon waist deep in snow having moved off of the main run. I persevered which took ages, but finally felt relieved when I got there. Relieved until I asked and found out it was going to the neighbouring village, rather than Alpe D’Huez. So I had to turn around and wade back through the snow, each step making it ten times worse before getting back to the chair lift and heading down the mountain.

Being a bloke, I thought I’d buy an ankle support, some painkillers, rest it for a couple of days and it would be fine.  I tried it again (at a lesson this time) and thought it was on the mend. So I went off with Scott and had a couple of runs and all seemed well in the world. Unfortunately for me, as you progress you start to go a bit quicker, and I was soon careering down the mountain with a badly damaged ankle that couldn’t cope with the stress of turning. Needless to say I stacked it quite spectacularly and let out a huge scream as I felt my ligaments tear.

All in, I think that holiday cost me the best part of £1,500 for about an hour and a half’s boarding. And it prevented me from doing the marathon. And kept me out of all sport for four months. But on the bright side, I did actually really enjoy it, especially as I got to paraglide straight off of the side of Alpe D’Huez, which was pretty good fun. I also got my revenge on Scott by guilting him out to the early hours each night to the point where he had to quit boarding on the last day through exhaustion and heart palpitations.

So as you can see, I have a pretty reasonable history in injuries and stupidity. The good news is I haven’t even told you the half of it yet. So at a later date I’ll tell you about some of my cricket and football related ones, and why my thumb doesn’t work anymore! 

And I’m telling you this because…
I’m running the 2012 London Marathon for the Hertfordshire Community Foundation (HCF).

If you feel inclined to sponsor me to help the Hertfordshire Community Foundation continue their great work, you can do so here:  http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/BenWood2