The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike) Part 1910 by Angharad Copyright © 2012 Angharad All Rights Reserved.

I watched Catherine chasing Bramble. The kitten could easily out run her but she didn’t, she let the toddler catch her pick her up, shove her in her dolly’s push chair before jumping out and starting the process again. Catherine squealed at her, then giggling began her pursuit afresh. Sisyphus and stones came to mind.

She was now over two years old, in fact heading for two and half. I’d stopped feeding her now, the milk had dried up and my boobs were back to normal–well not quite. They were bigger than they used to be and my nipples were very much bigger–not that Simon complained. She was often in cahoots with Stella’s pair of reprobates and the three of them, the notorious Toddler Gang, were famed for their acts of robbery and petty larceny together with occasional vandalism.

This was my fourth Black Berry, two of which had been flushed down the toilet by one of the three toddlers. Stella lost her iPod, it was chucked out of an upstairs window onto Daddy’s car, chipping the windscreen.

Puddin’ crashed her little bicycle into the fridge and buckled the wheel and dented the fridge door. The day she rode it down the stairs–I can see it now and still makes me feel ill–was probably the worst stunt.

The three of them had been playing quite nicely with their dolls, sharing a joint and couple of bottles of beer–like they do. Stella and I were busy trying to hang new curtains in Stella’s suite–remember she has a bedroom, bathroom and sitting room. She’d had the rooms redecorated and had ordered new curtains but needed help to put them up.

Jacquie had gone out for something so Stella and I were the only two adults in the house. The girls were playing happily as far as we knew and we were busy with the curtains which were proving a bigger job than they should have been. The rufflette tape, the strip of tape through which the hooks hold the curtain was poorly made and trying to get the hooks through was a real trial.

In the end I had to go and get an awl from my tool box to push through the tape. This of course was out in the workshop and took me several minutes to find. I shut up the workshop and was heading up the stairs when to my astonishment Puddin’ rode her bike to the top of the stairs on the landing. I didn’t even know it was upstairs, or in the house for that matter.

Although she was giving it some welly on the pedals on the front wheel, everything seemed to happen in slow motion as she took off from the top step and literally started to fly–mainly in a downwards direction.

I was possibly half way up when this happened and I shouted for Stella as I dived forwards trying to catch the squealing toddler who thought it was great fun. Her little trike banged down the stairs and I managed to snatch her just before she hit the banister rails on the outside of the staircase.

The trike crashed over my body as I stretched forward, the stairs hitting my breasts and hips and legs, while my arms and hands cradled the head and body of the three year old. I lay still as the trike continued its noisy journey down the stairs finally hitting the antique desk at the bottom with a clunk. Puddin’ was now shrieking her head off with fright and I was aware my head had hit one of the stair risers and was making me feel quite sick.

Stella rushed down the stairs and retrieved her precious child and I tried to pick myself up and do a damage assessment. Except I couldn’t move–something in my back had gone and I just lay there in severe pain not helped by the fact that the awl had stuck in my leg and blood was dribbling down the side of my jeans.

I let Stella try and calm down Pud before she came to help me. “C’mon, Cathy, up you get,” she urged, then she saw the blood on my jeans and the awl sticking out from the side of my leg. “Oops, we gotta situation,” she said like someone from a B movie.

“I can’t move,” I said suspecting I’d over stretched and pulled something in my back.

“I’ll get help,” she said and ran back down the stairs to phone. About ten agonising minutes later two paramedics arrived to assist me.

Between us Stella and I managed to say what had happened. I was lying prone with a nice bruise coming up on my cheek, blood still oozing from my leg and my back felt like I’d been stabbed with a very sharp knife–my feet were also tingling.

In what felt like hours, they immobilised my head with a collar, my chest with another corset like device and my legs with splints. Then they flipped me over onto a board and slid me down the stairs and lifted me onto a gurney and whipped me off to the hospital.

The duty trauma surgeon was my old friend Ken Nicholls. “What have you been up to?” he asked shaking his head.

“I fell up the stairs.”

“That’s better than falling down them.”

“Puddin’ was doing that, having done an Evel Kneivel off the top stair on her trike. I threw myself forward to catch her.”

“Well, as I don’t see any children here, I take it your diving catch was successful?”

“I suppose so, I don’t honesty know, the bump as I hit the stairs and the pain in my back has sort of distracted me.”

“Okay, we’ll do some X-rays and check you out.” So that was what happened. I had pulled some muscles in my back to which they applied ice packs. As far as they could tell, I hadn’t broken anything and I had a dressing on my right leg and the awl was handed back to me in a sealed specimen bag. “Exhibit A,” joked Ken as he handed me back my tool.

A little later a physio helped me to mobilise myself and I was well enough to be sent home by taxi awhile afterwards. The driver had to help me from the car, my back was so stiff and sore, and Stella helped me into the kitchen to sit in a wooden carver from where I hoped I could stand again later.

“How’s Pud?” I asked when I’d got myself safely ensconced in the chair.

“She’s fine, a bit shocked at first but she was more upset by the fact I locked her trike up in the garage than she was about her flying lesson. I told her that you’d hurt yourself trying to save her and she just laughed.”

“Next time I’ll wait for the bounce first.”

“How are you?” Stella asked me. Catherine had come rushing in and wanted to be picked up–only I couldn’t bend down to lift her.

“My back is hurting, so is my leg.”

“Mummy–blood,” she said poking my wound.

“Yes I know, sweetheart, please don’t poke it.”

“Mummy, hurty,” she poked again. With that Stella picked her up and plonked her on my lap. “Mummy, hurty–blood,” she said again, “Tish mend it.” Then she chuckled away to herself before poking my leg again. “Tish mend it.”