In which the curse of Disreputable Dad’s dodgy centre of gravity strikes again
My poor Disreputable Dad’s taken yet another nasty tumble. He’s got quite a talent for comedic falls, my Dad. I wonder if he’s got some sort of dodgy centre of gravity (it could be the slight restaurant belly that’s doing it…). You may remember the case of the nuns and the travelator a while back - well, he’s had two more since then. During their honeymoon (I did try not to laugh at this one, but it IS quite amusing), he was telling me how he got up in the night (after several large ones - ‘you know how they like to cover the ice with Cointreau in the bar? Well I complained about something and got a free one too’), made a grab for the bathroom door handle, missed, and fell sideways into the bath. This would have been comedy gold on its own, had he not then made a grab for the tap in an effort to push himself upright, only succeeding in turning it on and showering himself with cold water.
This time, though, he was at the local cricket club, walking up some steps while engrossed in what was happening on the pitch. He lost his footing and managed to crack his chin, ribs AND somehow cut all the back of his hand.
‘Did anyone see you?’, I asked
‘No, I had a quick check and I got away with it’
That wasn’t quite the point I was trying to make - it was more did anyone see you so they could come and help you. What he actually did was pick himself up, stumble to his car, wrapping his hanky around the bits that were bleeding most, and manage to drive home, arriving bleeding and disheveled on the doorstep, much to his wife’s horror (‘he bled on the bloody car as well’).
So now he’s got a fetching blue bruise in the shape of a goatee across his chin, a very badly bruised ribcage, and a hand held together with stitches (he let me take this photo, by the way, because you’d never believe me about the ‘hipster facial hair’ bruise unless you saw it first hand).
‘It’s not too bad’, he said, whilst sipping his second glass of my favourite Villa Maria, ‘at least I can’t drive’.
Runs in the family - his sister keeps toppling over too, and I am not entirely convinced it is just the wine. That is what we have to look forward to!