Fall guy

A playground tumble can do you good | spiked

This week, Tom Mullarkey, chief executive of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA), warned against wrapping children in cotton wool. The head of a charity that normally raises the red flag about children having accidents made a very sensible comment: ‘A skinned knee or a twisted ankle in a challenging and exciting play environment is not only acceptable, it is a positive necessity to educate our children and to prepare them for a complex, dangerous world.’

This has a particular resonance for me this evening as I am, myself, nursing the first skinned knee for fifty years. Yes, after just one glass of Merlot (sorry Miles) my foot got caught in one of Aberdeen's poxy pavement holes (almost as numerous as the potholes in Aberdeen's shitty roads) and I went over like a culled walrus, all 16 fucking stone of me, onto the road and into the path of oncoming traffic. Fortunately it wasn't late enough in the evening for any of the drivers to be too pissed to avoid me and I survived without getting my head flattened under the weels of a souped up Subaru. Not that any passers by bothered to delay themselves long enough to offer any assistance. This is Aberdeen, after all, and it's just not the done thing up here to actually help anyone. Jeezus, it's an uphill battle to get any of these miserable bastards to even talk to you.  (Unless they're asking if you've got any spare change, that is). Bah!