x ray specs

Spent the afternoon and evening with Dave and Lisa yesterday – Dave is now officially really really cool, as he is part-robot. Or at least, he has a metal pin in his arm after an impressive snowboarding injury sustained in France last week. Cue much cooing over his X-rays and hospital photos (“that’s my drip”). It reminded me of going to see the solar eclipse with my lovely cousins in the mid-nineties. Everyone trekked up to Alexandra Palace, with just a few people armed with the specialty glasses you needed to look at the sun. I treated this stipulation, then, with careful disdain, although I’ve since met enough people who complained of after-effects to know that it ain’t a good idea to look at the sun, after all. On this occasion there weren’t many glasses about, but a good few people had thought to bring their old X-rays, and were peering at the eclipse through them. It had the odd effect of looking like a spontaneous meeting of North London’s hypochondriacs, comparing injuries. Dave’s X-rays show a clean snap in his upper arm, like a broken bamboo cane. He has to rest his arm for six weeks. During this time, I will be harder than him, and can challenge him to arm wrestles whenever I like.