As Brad and Rob know, my weekly Sunday game of football is utterly non-negotiable - I will not miss it for something as trivial as guests coming to visit. Row was offered the chance to have a sleep in and catch up with us later, but she decided to come along for a giggle.

I wasn't playing particularly well when a loose ball broke free. Completely unmarked, I attempted to control the ball with my right when I suddenly lost balance, turning very hard on my left ankle. I heard a crack on the way down and my ankle was already the size of a tennis ball.

Strangely, there was no pain. The only pain I was experiencing was the thought that my mountain-walking trip to Poland in two weeks was not going to happen, and even Mont Blanc in September was improbable. And that was rather significant and made me cry.

Got driven to the hospital by a friend, accompanied by the wonderful Row, who got to wheel me around the hospital in a wheelchair. By this point I had banished the idea of not having mountain fun for the foreseeable future to the back of my head and was enjoying being treated like a lord.

Got the X-ray done remarkably quicky and the news was mostly good - no breaks or fractures, but the ankle was far too swollen to be properly examined. The doc reckoned that it's either a really bad sprain, in which case I'll be grand in two weeks, or it's tendon damage, which will need an operation.
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So the only option left available to us was to take a taxi home and drink booze and watch Peep Show. Which we did. Bloody hell, Peep Show is the greatest. When we had watched all of Series 5, we went back to Series 1. Eventually though, it was just too much to take so we played a hard-fought game of Scrabble. I don't want to talk about the result, except to say the QI is NOT A WORD, ROW! NO! And it turned a nine-point victory for me into a two-point mugging. Growl.

Still, shouldn't complain, I was supplied with beer and cool packs for my ankle all afternoon. I felt guilty about it until the Scrabble incident. ;)

Then, of course, more football. We were joined by some buddies, who thoughtfully brought along food for the housebound folk. We had earlier made a short foray to my local doner shop, widely recognised as the best in the whole world, but it was such bloody hard work with crutches that we took a decadent taxi back. On the way to the doner shop, I got to wave my crutch at a car filled with Spaniards - they were beeping at the Italian colours that we had covered ourselves with. Crutch waving is excellent. Made me feel like the grumpy old man I can't wait to be.

The result? Well, I don't want to talk about that one either. Suffice to say that if Luca Toni was really the pregnant giraffe he appears to be, he would have been put down long ago for SEVERE USELESSNESS. I felt that I would have been more effective, even with an ankle the size of San Marino. Oh, and AJ, the TV was saved by the fact that I was utterly immobile. ;)

So this morning, we had a well-deserved sleep in before commencing breakfast. It had begun as a co-operative operation, but my wobbliness and clumsiness soon banished me to a seat at the table. I think everyone benefitted from this, the scrambled egg with tomatoes and zucchino turned out very satisfyingly.

I armed Row with a guidebook and an itinerary, including the amazing chocolate shop of Fassbender and Rausch. Row assured me that if she doesn't return, it's because she died and went to chocolate heaven. I'm sure blogland will forgive me if I inadvertantly sent one of our best bloggers to her death.

After much pottering around, I headed out to see a nearby orthopedic doctor. Arriving to the surgery bathed in sweat (it's hot and crutches suck), I was upset to find that doctors are on strike for the next week. What fucking marvellous timing, assholes.

So here I am. Bored. Better get used to it; I'm going to be immobile for a while.