Categories: uncategorized
Date: 08 February 2007 16:09:22
I walked into a door.
It probably would have hurt more if it hadn't been a glass door, but it would probably have been less surprising. The flat we were in had two glass doors - one which was always left open and which led into the hall, and the other which was the bathroom door. I've never really understood what sort of person would put a glass door in their bathroom, but that's what we had in that flat. Anyway, it wasn't that one that I walked into, which is perhaps just as well, because the only thing worse than a glass door on the bathroom would have been no door on the bathroom.
Anyway, it was a Sunday afternoon, and cold, and I was all alone in the flat, so I put the heating on a little bit and shut as many doors as I could. Which was fine until later when I went to go out and switched off all the lights and forgot about the unusually shut door and walked into it. I had, up to this time, always assumed you would feel a bump if you walked into any kind of door and that the door would bounce you back. It didn't. It just broke. In fact, I could almost have done the cartoon move of just walking through the door and carrying on had it not been for the noise of it breaking. Which was just as well, because it meant I stopped there and then to pick up the glass and mess and generally tidy up, even though I was heading out to try to get to church on time. Here's where my memory starts going funny. I recall there being a fair amount of blood, unsurprisingly. I recall changing my clothes for clean ones, and muttering about how what I'd been wearing would presumably be cut to pieces and blood-stained beyond repair, as I eventually left for church. (Carefully opening the door, not stepping through it despite the temptation - I was aware that my flatmates would probably return before I did).
And yet, when I later got around to checking out the clothes, I found a tiny cut - no more than a centimetre - on one leg, with just the tiniest line of blood along the cut, and no other marks whatsoever. And that wasn't the only bizarre thing that evening. Despite all the time I spent tidying up all the glass and changing and sorting myself out, I still got to church on time. Which makes it almost as if nothing untoward had happened at all. Did I dream the whole thing? Well, no, because I have clear recollections of sorting out the glaziers to fix the door and paying for the whole malarkey out of my non-existent reserves of cash. So it must just be that time stopped still.