All those with a chronic illness know all too well the tedium of constant hospital visits. On Monday I had a follow up on an ankle injury I sustained back in 2022 – this was the appointment I was on my way to in Dec when I crashed my bloody car.

Anyway, it reminded me of a previous visit to the RUH in Bath because my Mum came with me and did again this time. The previous appointment was for an MRI and as always I drove (I don’t make a good passenger, although I have no choice at the moment!) So after an uneventful drive there we parked up in the very impressive, although still slightly too small by way of number of spaces, dedicated disabled parking area. A great idea if you ask me, keeping you out of the way of the general parking chaos and you can walk/wheel straight onto the walkway to the hospital without needing to cross any roads or encounter any traffic at all. Much less stressful ☺️

Parked up and out mum jumps to get my wheelchair from the boot (I can do this myself but who am I to stand in the way of her helpfulness?!) she wheels it round to my open door, applies the brakes and disappears off back to close the car boot. I lean out in my usual fashion to transfer to my trusty chair only the brakes weren’t quite applied as she or I thought… chair promptly wheels away, with me following face first in almost slow motion “Mum! Mum! MUUUUM!!!” I hit the deck in a very ungainly fashion, legs following out of the car behind me, with a mild thud and a very unmild “FOR FUCKS SAKE!!!” I have a big gob and a loud voice so I obviously attracted the attention of several people, not least the very kind lady helping a relative out of the adjacent car. She came running round to help, although I was half up by this point, grateful it wasn’t raining! But being close to the ground I immediately noticed her shoes, she had the most fabulous pair of boots on, so naturally that was the first thing out of my mouth. “Ooh what lovely boots!” This was also an attempt at deflecting attention from my earlier potty-mouthed exclamation 😳 which seemed to work, compliment delivered and accepted with a smile, after all I didn’t want her thinking I was some awful commoner that screams obscenities in carparks! Drama over we went our separate ways with no further incidents only to bump into “lovely boots lady” again later on in the hospital. Thankfully no mention of my outburst was made, just smiles and hello’s. No doubt I’m sure she’d have mentioned it to her relative or someone else given my loud, foul mouth but hey ho, it seemed to brighten her day to hear how amazing her boots were!