Taking a running jump

Gash in head

There are those times in life, lying flat on your back in Wetherspoon’s with blood leaking from you head, when you think perhaps you shouldn’t have attempted to jump down those stairs.

Admittedly, these times are probably quite rare.

The circumstances leading up to this event are not really of interest, but suffice to say at around 10 o’clock on Friday night I was sat enjoying my beer “upstairs” in Winchester’s ‘spoons. For those of you who haven’t been to the Old Gaol House, when I say upstairs I mean 2 stairs.

Events conspired such that I no longer wanted to be upstairs but needed to be downstairs in a short space of time. So, whilst running, I encountered the stairs and felt the quickest way to tackle them was a short jump.

Looking up from my position on the floor, the kindly chap at the table next to the foot of the stairs inquired as to my being OK. I rapidly surmised that there must have been a step in the roof. Arse. At this stage I figured I just had a bruise, but when taking my hands from my head, I observed not a small amount of blood.

As I was cleaning myself up in the toilet, the manager came in and asked if I was OK, and if I’d been drinking. At first I was a little offended at the implication that my accident was related to my drinking. That might sound odd, but I’m reasonably happy that I’m clumsy enough when sober to do something so dumb; I don’t think the beer was a major factor. As it happens, he told me has was going to offer paracetamol but thought beer + paracetamol wasn’t a good combination. Fair enough.

With the bleeding not stopping and the worst headache I’ve ever had rapidly invading, the decision was made to go to A&E; about 10 minutes walk. We made it there at about 10:30, and was triaged at about 11:00. The nurse asked the obvious question: what have you done?

How do you answer that?

Well… I.. Uhh.. Jumped into the ceiling…

It sounds pretty dumb, but I couldn’t think of a better way to phrase it. Seems the nurse couldn’t, either, as she pretty much wrote it down verbatim on the form. She did laugh at it though

The nurse asked if I’d taken any painkillers, and I mentioned the offer from the manager of the ‘spoons. She asked how much I’d had to drink, and then wrote it down on the form. Had 4 pints.

No context.

And this is what bothers me most about the whole experience. I don’t mind making a tit of myself, I can cope with a bit of superglue in my hair and a banging headache. But those 3 words on the form, I’m fairly sure mean I’ve contributed to the alcohol-related incident statistics. And as I mentioned before, I really don’t think the alcohol was relevant.

4 pints of beer over 4 hours, including a curry for tea, is not exactly heavy drinking. Without that context though, the form just reads “Jumped into ceiling, had 4 pints”. The last thing I want is to provide ammunition for the statistics manipulation that goes in daily in Britain’s excuse for media.

Next time I see some story about the increase in alcohol-related incidents, I will experience a little more sadness.

Oh well, at least the superglue used to close my head up makes it look like I have semen in my hair.