Commuting on Crutches

Anyway, this is what I had written to post at lunch (before the fire!) -

Suffice it to say, commuting on crutches isn't much of a laugh...my knee is playing up again, started to get quite bad during yesterday afternoon, but by the time we had done the shopping, I had cooked supper and we were sat down to watch a movie I was in a considerable amount of discomfort...ended up struggling to up bed at about 9pm and proceeded to have rather a difficult night's sleep, at about 3am I gave in and took one of the strong pain killers I had been given when I had my suspected dislocated patella earlier in the year (only a couple of them left, but at least I did hang on to them), it's funny, but they don't actually stop the pain - I am still fully aware that I'm in agony, but they just sort of let you detech from the experience...good in a way, because you still know not to take the piss and walk around on it, but bad because it's quite diffucult to sleep, my only comfortable position for the knee is laying on my back, but my normal comfy sleeping position is on my right-hand side...all a bit annoying really...

So, with no little amount of trepadation I set off this morning (with crutches attached to arms) to attempt the journey in, unfortunately it just wasn't going to go smoothly, the car needed defrosting, then there was no parking space at the station, then Flyingpops needed a new train ticket (during which time we missed our normal train in to London), then Flyingpops spotted that the young lady had issued her the wrong ticket (thank goodness she checked it!) a weekly instead of a monthly one, so back to the end of the monday morning queue...bleugh...

Anyway, got to London Bridge okay in the end, and struggled down into the tube (escalators are interesting on crutches) and no-one felt inclinded to give me any extra space or consideration (just to make things easier) only to reach the entrance to the Jubilee Line to discover a *massive* crowd, at least 40 people deep (to which Flyingpops exclaimed immediately "Right, you're getting a cab") but I thought I would persist after spotting a wide entrance that looked suitable for my predicament just off to my left...I worked my way through the crowd uttering pleas and apologies until I reached it, but no guard was there to let me through, Flyingpops managed to find a member of staff and after only about 5 minutes pleading with him ("But he is on crutches, he can't make it all the way through that lot!") he begrudgingly opened the gate and I joined the slowly shuffling queue for the escalator (for some reason they had closed the other two and only one was operating), a few wobbly moments later I emerged onto the east bound platform, stood in the queue, and got on the first train (good), but no-one offered me their seat (bad)...

It was only at Canary Wharf that things started to look up, wide concourse, plenty of escalators, helpful staff ("You alright there mate?"), lifts between levels (even outside!), people in the office actually holding doors open for me, and then the exhausted collapse into my chair...

Only to have to do the whole jolly lot again tonight on the way home...I'm going to have no skin left on my hands! :(