So I decided to start the year by breaking myself. At the end of a rare week off, I thought the family could do with one last hurrah of festive merriment together – ice skating! What could possibly go wrong with a few gentle laps of the rink? I could teach the boy a thing or two with my amazing pirouetting skills!
Cut to one hour later and I'm sat in A&E, cradling a broken wrist and bruised ego, feeling thoroughly sorry for myself. Ten minutes in the waiting area – just enough time to flick through a battered 2014 issue of Horse & Hound – and I go straight in to see the doctor.
Following a quick dose of gamma radiation, he shows me my x-ray, pointing out an embarrassingly small chip of bone floating about in the grey mass of hand; insignificant enough that he has to draw a circle around it in case I can't see it (I can't see it). As I explain my graceless escapade, he chuckles along – oh what japes! – and then launches into the small talk, asking about my day job. I'm not great at explaining how/where/why I work at the best of times, so just I mutter some vague self-deprecations and say penguin a lot.
I feel a bit silly talking about my relatively insignificant profession – he mends lives while I drag words and pictures around a rectangle – but he laps it up, apparently fascinated by the ins and outs of book design. Okay, always good to meet a fan, maybe I should get my phone out and talk him through my portfolio and … oh I get it. He's nodding along, politely feigning interest and maintaining conversation to distract me from the fact he's yanking my wrist every which way. As he smilingly contorts me into various agonising positions (some of which I'm not sure were even possible pre-accident and are possibly some kind of deliberate karmic punishment), he continues asking me about my craft.
What he doesn't say, but is almost certainly thinking: You have the bone density of a sparrow. Maybe leave your desk once in a while and do some proper exercise, not just the occasional attempt at a triple axel after watching I, Tonya one time. Frankly I'm amazed you're not shattered all over. Spend five minutes with Joe Wicks every now and then at the very least. Please.
And: You'll have to carry on without the safety net of sick pay. And you don't have income protection for this sort of incident, do you? You were just blithely going along, assuming you could spend your entire professional life without incident, weren't you? The welfare of your family depends entirely upon you being able to push a little arrow around on your computer for money, but apparently that's less important than making sure you're financially covered in case your Playstation breaks down. Food gathered in Red Dead Redemption will not feed you, DO YOU KNOW THIS?
Furthermore: What if some random pandemic completely knocks the work off your desk and clogs the hospitals indefinitely? Will this careless injury be dealt with as efficiently? Will I want to be dealing with your latest pratfall? Your livelihood depends upon you NOT BEING HERE WITH ME. Why aren't you prepared for this, funny little book man?
He makes some good unspoken points. I leave with a pathetic latex thing wrapped around my wrist, a new feeling of professional precariousness hanging over me. For the next couple of months I'm a painkiller-addled left-handed designer. I'll cope. As long as the rest of the year goes without incident, I'll be fine.