Brighton, 1987
It was the first day of the spring term at what was then Brighton Polytechnic. It was my first year, so I was still keen, and I had spent the first couple of hours after lectures at the library on the Moulsecombe site.

I was feeling peckish, so headed over to the refectory at Mithras House, then from there I'd make the 3-4mile walk back to my halls of residence on the seafront. (Yes, Brighton fans, I was in Seafront Halls the night it fell down, but that's another story.)

That was the plan, anyway. I remember leaving the library. The next thing I remember was waking up groggy and in pain in a screened-off part of the A&E of the Brighton General. My roommates from halls, and one or two other pals, were there, while a junior doctor put stitches in my head. Apparently, I'd been run over.

My right thigh was in serious pain, but apparently it wasn't broken, though it certainly felt like it'd been hit by a car and later I had a bruise that went through all the colour of the rainbow from my beltine right down to the top of my calf. It still aches sometimes - usually when I think about the accident (so it's hurting now; I hope you b3tans all appreciate the sacrifice).

I had seventeen stitches in my head, just in my hairline, where my noggin had hit... I don't know what, and I was kept in overnight for observation because I'd been concussed. I found various sore spots and scrapes on myself in the next day or two.

That winter was very cold and snowy in Brighton, and the council didn't grit the pavements, so the usual treacherous paths that cause able-bodied to slip and slide and fall over were even more of a hazard to me, who could only limp for about three weeks afterwards. I fell over so often that my arse soon matched my thigh for colourful bruising.

After a couple of months I was mostly recovered, and I went into the police station; because I'd been knocked out, I'd lost most of my short term memory. I'd assumed I was hit at the bottom of Coombe Road, where I headed uphill to go up past the racecourse. But the constabule on duty told me I'd been hit on the Lewes Road by a "Hungarian professor from Sussex University". That's all they'd tell me, he said, because anything more might "prejudice the case".

What the case was, whose fault the accident was, whether the driver or any passengers were hurt, and all the other stuff I might have like to know - never mind today's obsession with compensation - have remained a mystery to this day. A couple of times since I've phoned Sussex Police or talked to lawyer friends out of curiosity, but the records are all buried in basements, it would cost money to dig them out, the window for compensation is long past, etc.

So I still don't know what happened.

Do any b3tans?

Not much of an injury, by this QOTW's standards, but it's the only hospital visit that I can remember. I was scalded as a toddler when I came into the kitchen from the garden carrying a really good stick I'd found, and managing to hook a boiling saucepan so that it emptied it's contents onto my lap and I spent about a month in a specialist burns unit. They did a good job, too because (apart from a small scar in an intimate place i.e. on my cockshaft) there's not a mark on me from that. But all I can remember of it is that they had murals with Magic Roundabout characters in them, and Dana's All Kinds Of Everything played almost constantly on hospital radio. I was 3, I think.
( shinyshinyscalp less a man, more a way of life, Mon 2 Aug 2010, 15:37, Reply)