A Right Pain In The Neck

Image: Chiropractic Life

In my last blog entry (From Fireballs To Snowballs – Dec 9th), I was quoted as saying the following:

I’m as bored talking about the snow and ice as I am having to walk about in it so I’ll say no more. Unless, that is, I should fall arse over tit again and jar my coccyx again (as I did last week in Prince Street), in order to inject some slapstick humour into the blog. Then and only then.

Well, didn’t I just go ahead and speak too soon. On Thursday night, after working late into the evening to deal with an urgent incident, it really did become a first class case of famous last words. At some point during the day the big thaw kicked in across theCentral Belt; the snow and ice began to melt, pouring water off roofs in some cases, but making the packed ice along the length of pavements throughout the capital and beyond, extremely slippery and rock-hard underfoot.

I left the office with a colleague and as we worked our way along the pavement she slipped. I paused to make sure she wasn’t going to fall – she was okay, so we readied to move further along towards the main road. The next thing I knew my back had met with the pavement with a spine-shuddering thud, throwing back my head in the process, which cracked skull first into the ice.

Everything went silent and black. A tingling sensation grew louder from the back of my head and filled my ears with a high-pitched numbness, that sounded like a broken speaker in a vacuum. Then I heard my colleague shouting at me to get up – she’d got a fright and was worried I was going to stay down, and wanted to make sure I could still stand. I stood up and immediately felt the pain filling my head.

On inspection, the back of my head seemed fine, it was the pain was inside my head that was causing me discomfort. It was like having a splitting headache through my entire head, as though someone was clattering a hammer around and bouncing it off the inside of my skull. I made it to a taxi and headed home, felt very tired and went to bed without eating, my appetite having disappeared round about the same time bone met ice.

The next day I felt a bit woosy but made it to work. The headaceh was still there but not quite as bad as it was the night before. The first aider in the team said it was probably mild concussion so I left early and headed home.

The real pain, though, was in my neck. No matter what direction I moved my head, my neck sang out in agony. The process of lying down or getting up was sore, and if my neck tensed in any way, the pain shot up into the back of my head. Not the best thing, perhaps, to have on my way to the Shed Seven Christmas Party on Saturday night!

But don’t worry dear readers, when I met my sister on Saturday morning I advised her I probably wouldn’t be in the mosh pit for that night’s gig, and she would probably have to enjoy the mayhem on her own. Several beers and a few whisky chasers later, though, and you know as well as I do that was never going to happen, right?

This was the first time (other than a Madness trip to Newcastle over a decade ago) that my sister and I have actually travelled away to a gig. The venue was the Glen Pavilion in Dunfermline, which involved a train ride, an overnight stay in a hotel and a treacherous walk through Pitencreiff Park  in the middle of the night to get there.

Shed Seven were magnificent. It was perhaps not the best choice of venue – too small, dodgy security and ill-prepared bar staff for a gig of such magnitude – but somehow it made it a bit of an experience. It was intimate and crazy and had a good-natured feel about it. The band were superb, making the best out of a shaky venue (it was a bit like having an indie band play at your old school for a reunion), and blowing the place apart.

As mentioned already, I never stayed at the side or the back and got stuck right in there (not as much as my sister who is a die-hard Shed fan), which allowed me to take the risk of removing my iPhone to take some pictures and vids.

The best of my little movies from Saturday came in the form of an awesome little video that illustrates the mayhem of the mosh pit when singer, Rick Witter, launched himself into the crowd (my sister getting her hands all over him AND singing some lines into his mic) before finishing up with their massive hit, Chasing Rainbows. Enjoy.
[Click here to view on YouTube if you cannot see the video below]

CHRISTMAS DEALS

Get 20% off all my poetry books – FRINGE FANTASTIC, POOLSIDE POETRY, SILLY POEMS FOR WEE PEOPLE VOL.2 – when you order from my website at www.colingalbraith.co.uk. Simply quote BEREMARKABLE305 at checkout. Valid until 31 Dec 2010.

Get 25% off STELLA, my spy novella with a twist, when you order the e-book from the publisher’s website at www.eternalperss.biz. Simply quote 612JMZN67VZX at checkout.

Grab issue 24 of Open Wide Magazine for only £1 (one British pound) and you can read my short story, LETTING GO. It’s well worth it!