You Can't Have Your Cake And Eat It

Now, if I enticed you to look at this blog because of the lovely pictures of cake, I urge you to look well away now if you are eating cake.  Or eating anything for that matter.

In the interests of providing a full and frank account of the ‘healthy eating plan’ (kids  - no, it’s not a diet), I thought I would share the lows. One of the lows has been refusing cake today at the MacMillan Coffee Morning/Afternoon, although I may allow myself a treat later.  I brought back home cakes for the family, and I suspect they may make me eat one. Or two. Hell, it’s Friday.

The other low (which is nothing compared to the torture of refusing cake!) is an account of my injuries over the last few weeks.

By far the worst injury, believe it or not, was the fish bone I swallowed last weekend. Oh. My. Giddy Aunt. It hurt.  I had a lovely piece of stuffed trout on my plate and I felt a scratch down my throat like I’d swallowed a nail! A nail I tell you!

As with most fish bones throat scratches (from extensive reading on the subject), I thought the bone was still there, and without giving too much detail that makes me sound like something you’d see on a porn site – I used a stick of celery and a torch to try and look/dislodge the offending, erm, bone.

Three days.  Three days it took for the pain to subside. Yep, those warnings saying “there may be small bones in this item” are actually true. No longer will I ever criticise anyone for being overly cautious when it comes to fish.  Lesson learned.

Speaking of lessons learned, I still haven’t learnt my lesson when it comes to proper, hard-core, exercise injuries.  Gone are the days when I first started running and would hobble into work because yet again, I’d gone back to exercise too early following a repetitive calf injury.  But if I had to tell you of one injury that stays, I can simply sum it up in one single word.

Toes.

I have come to realise that battered and bruised toenails are a fact of long distance running and thankfully, as a woman*, I can apply liberal quantities of nail polish to hide the disgusting sight.  Because, it is disgusting, and I apologise now if you have lost the contents of your stomach. For those avid followers of mine who may want to offer advice, please note, I have tried all manner of solutions from seeing a podiatrist, wrapping up the toes and investing in some serious running shoes.  These toes are actually in better nick than last year.  That’s thanks to buying a larger size running shoe.

So that’s running.  But what about swimming, I hear you ask?  How can you be injured from swimming? Shall I do my one word answer again? Ok!

Walls.

In fairness, it wasn’t just the walls in this case.  The lovely ladies I swim with did tell me last time they went swimming that they had taken off their wedding rings just in case they hit me again.  Nice.  And I’m not blaming anyone here by the way – when you’ve been hit three times by other swimmers in the pool, you start to realise that maybe the wonky swimming lies with you.

And that’s it.  Which isn’t bad really, considering that any muscle injury would put me out of commission for weeks. If I had to sum up the worst injury ever, it was when running through a car park a few years ago.  My legs met a hanging metal chain which you couldn’t see in the dark, and luckily (to protect my lovely face of course!) I managed to whack up my arms just in time to protect my head.  My arms, thighs and elbows took the brunt of the impact on concrete, and even to this day, I think I probably fractured my elbow which gets sore after serious amounts of long distance freestyle swimming.

On that cheerful note (!), I’ll leave you all for now to enjoy the weekend! And personal injury lawyers if you’re reading this… don’t bother getting in touch.

Follow me @JWilbyPalmer

*men should never wear nail polish.