Pac man, the new job, and the two broken toes

While I was visiting the faaabulous Victor in Beijing (a trip I will blog as soon as I can keep my eyes open for long enough to write about it), I got an offer for a job I could not refuse. I didn't apply for it, I wasn't looking for it, but it just landed on me in the middle of the financial implosion of the rest of the planet, with amazing working conditions and an impossible to turn down paycheck. And so, I said yes.

I came back and immediately started obsessing about it, until I realised that every single new job I have ever started has come with a bout of illness attached so that my first day in a new office is usually spent in pain/coughing/on the toilet. The first day (tomorrow) slowly approached, but my tonsils seemed fine, my stomach too, and I started to think that maybe I had broken the curse.

Happy to have escaped my destiny, I promptly went to the roof to make some room for the 50 odd people who were to come over on Saturday night for a "Celebrities in the 80s" party. I do love a bit of fancy dress. Mr Krusty was out, but that has never stopped me from doing anything before, so I lifted the heavy outdoor table (made of ceramic? or concrete? or stone? I don't know... but it's heavy) and it kindly detached from its base and landed square on my foot, smashing into several pieces in the process.

I ran around the roof in pain, screaming obscenities as I realised that we didn't have a table for the night's festivities, without worrying too much about the foot. But the pain didn't go away. Krusty came back (after a telephone conversation to him in the shop he was in which roughly went, me: "Krusty, I think I have broken my foot", him: "I know! Aren't these cheeses amazing?") and as he played the website for me that took you through the steps to test whether you had any broken bones, a cloud of doom shifted over my head. Here was the feared medical condition that would marr my first day in the new job. Damnit.

I rushed to hospital, had an x-ray, was told that I had broken two toes, and then I was informed that it was Saturday night, and the hospital simply does not do casting, splintering, or even crutches on Saturday night, I would simply have to come back on Monday during office hours... I started screaming (literally), until a rugby man with a leg at a 90 degree angle from his body came in to be told the same thing. I decided my toes weren't that bad after all.

I hobbled home, stepped into the Macgyver splint that Krusty had made me with a towel, an aluminium lasagna tray, and a roll of cellotape, and then hung the cherries around my neck to join my fellow fancy dressers in our collective costume: the pac man game.

I looked the exact opposite of elegant, felt the exact opposite of fit and healthy, but I had a simply amazing night in the company of Billy Idol, Cindy Lauper, Miss Piggy, and Popeye. A classic night.

And tomorrow I start my new adventure at the hospital, to get a splint. At least it's less embarrassing than a stomach bug...