Once upon a time in the not-too-distant past, I banged my elbow. It was one of those little knocks you barely notice at the time, think will be fine in a day or so and forget about. In fact, I cannot even recall exactly what I was doing at the time to get that little knock on the elbow. I suspect it might have been man-handling the bicycle somewhere but I’m not sure. Now, that was about six weeks ago and it is still bloody sore. Bloody sore enough to make lifting a pint of cow from the fridge a tricky exercise. Even breaking a Kit-Kat into four fingers is challenging, that’s how serious it’s become. Any lengthy cycling and kick scooting sessions are off the menu for now. Suffice to say that any plans for going turf-crazy this round for that elusive 500,000 point personal target has been shelved, for now, at least.
So, wondering what I’ve done to myself, I consulted the Internet, as you do. After weeding through all the usual nonsense and disregarding all the big scary Latin words, eventually found what looked to be the problem. Seems I’ve bashed my elbow exactly at the point where the muscle and tendon attach to the bone. And the healing time, anything between 3 weeks to 6 months. So, you won’t be seeing many turf blogs for a while where bicycles and kick scooters have a starring role. I’m at the point now where I’m trying to decide if I should visit the doctor or just give it time to heal. Such is life. At least I can still go turf-walking.
And that is one of the reasons why, today, I’m wandering around Dalhousie Castle on foot taking the occasional zone or two. Actually, I’m short on time and there’s a reason for that. At 7.30 am this morning a typical flat-bed Ford Transit builder’s van, complete with a brace of regulation orange cement mixers, plastic barrel of builder’s tools and some suspicious items under a blue tarpaulin, arrived at the front door to disgorge two burly builders. This was wholly unexpected. Yes, we are getting a porch built but not until the 21st.
After exchanging greetings, and me placing myself upwind to avoid the cigarette smoke, they asked if the skip had arrived. Now, being fairly certain that I would have noticed a skip arriving, I scanned around anyway, even turned out my pockets just in case and shook my head. Should have been here first thing, apparently. Anyway, numerous phone calls ensued and said skip should arrive this afternoon, probably after 1.00 pm, not before but you never know. Bugger all we can do here, they stated, and buggered off back to Fife for another job. So, that’s why I’m short of time for turfing. Someone needs to direct Mr Skippy where to drop his load. The builders will be back tomorrow. Personally, I’d rather spend the money on a Porsche with a bit of poke rather than a pokey wee porch. Would probably be cheaper as well, and considerably more fun.
And that means little, if any, turfing during builders’ hours for the next few weeks, as I’ll be watching them like a hawk. Having worked for twenty years in the construction industry as a quantity surveyor, I know a fair good few of the tricks in the Builder’s Book of How to Get Away with Doing as Little as Possible. But that still leaves the evenings, and the nights, for turfing. Back soon.
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