On wounded knee a screen is shattered

Cracking a screen

I have never had a cracked screen on my mobile phone, probably because I have been careful or just because the phones themselves are quite durable.

I remember commenting to certain friends who cannot resist an iToy that I have never seen an iPhone without a cracked screen, they must be a design feature and there is a business that thrives on replacing screens.

Yet, I have come to that experience and it happened last night, though there is much of a story to tell before we get to that episode. A few days before, I walked into a shop where I had been eyeing a pair of boots but had not decided whether they were for me.

Sizing my foot

On this particular day, the shop had three boots on display and for the very first time, it is strange to walk into a shop and find that the shoes where all the same size and that size is my size. There doesn’t seem to be a good standard measure for shoe sizes, though, on the law of averages, we can settle for Size 12 UK or 46 EU, though I have seen Size 13 UK fitting like Size 12.

When I went shopping for trainers a few months ago, I noticed that shoe sizes could be arbitrary when for a particular brand I was shod with Size 19, that was scary. My feet are long, they are not big and so the pejorative of Big Foot or Sasquatch is just what it is, pejorative.

Shoes matter especially from a childhood where my feet outgrew my shoes before I had worn them in and long before they were replaced, I suffered a lot, so the comfort of good fitting shoes is the banishment of childhood trauma.

Courtesy of Weinbrenner Shoe Company

Fitting the parts

These Undercover boots are no more on the market, sturdy 14-hole boots that demand a new way of lacing them, offering the comfort of ankle support, though not the easiest to slip on or take off. I had not worn them in when I decided to wear them for a journey without a spare pair of footwear.

My first tentative steps were adjusting to the weight of the shoes, the feeling at the shin where I have to pull the tongue to ensure the laces are a bit taut rather than loose, the shaft high up on my leg giving me a clunky feel to a plodding walk until I was well-adjusted to the newness of it all.

The collar is snug, the hem of my trouser leg will slip over the boot and yet when wearing a tracksuit, the track bottoms can be tucked right into the collar, giving a rather militaristic look to things.

Falling on hands and knee

In any case, I had just finished looking at my phone and since I was about to cross the road, I held the phone in my right hand, noticed that the cars had stopped and I crossed. Just as I absentmindedly mounted the pavement or thought I had, I really had not cleared the height either out of getting adjusted to the outsole, I tripped and almost as if I was in a drunken stupor, fell forwards breaking my fall more with my right hand than my left hand.

My left knee hit the ground hard and I was not down for long as my next step as a lady ask if I was OK was to get up and continue walking, thanking the lady for her concern whilst somewhat dazzled by the unexpected accident.

It was then that I looked at my phone and noticed the screen had cracked, it had taken the brunt of breaking my fall. The phone was not damaged beyond repair but I immediately saw that the pattern security lock was not as responsive that I had to change to a PIN code instead.

Nursing my wounds

When I got back to my hotel, I pulled off the boots, took off my trousers and my poor knee was both grazed and bruised, it had bled a bit and it hurt too. I cleaned the wounds but had not first aid kit to tend it. I wrapped tissue paper round my knee, fixed on a towel like a bandage and went to bed until the morning when I would get some antiseptic cream and plasters for my knee.

As my mobile phone is not a popular brand, the screen cannot be easily replaced except if I acquire one off eBay, the intention to replace my phone that I have vacillated about for months has now been forced upon me.

Invariably, I cannot say if it was the boot or plain clumsiness that caused my fall, it happened and that is the tale of the broken screen on bleeding knee.

Spring forward, fall backward

No tick-tock clocks here

All my clocks and none with a tick-tick sound have been touched, once again we become the masters of time with those in night clubs being short-changed an hour and sleepy I finding out that I am waking up early.

It is Summer and time too – we’ve had too long a winter, too cold a season; now is the time of the sun and hopefully some warmth too.

Much as I have never really grown used to this phenomenon of shifting times by reason of my body not agreeing with this aberration of the numbered hour, I have tried to deal with it as best I can.

Bizarre adjustments

My clocks change somewhere in the afternoon on Saturday and from then on I try to believe the time is steady and no abrupt things have happened, most importantly, my microwave oven tells the time – she has been in service for 15 years and she still does my TV dinners in the statutory 5 minutes or 4 since she produces thousand watt waves – Sharp she is and a triple-act pony to boot.

The computers will do themselves and for saving almost 1,500 Euros, I have to adjust my watch manually, else it would also manage the days and dates aligned to their respective months with a leap into the longer year.

Spring leaps into Autumnal falls

The mnemonic to remember of daylight saving is so American I would really like not to remember but it is still the best way to know what to do – like a gazelle, I spring forward and like a log I fall back – more appropriately, it is, Spring forward : Fall backward.

What goes forwards and backwards is the hour, spring we all know above and below the tropics, the fall is traditionally what we know as autumn, we referring to those of us who speak English as opposed to that which needs to be qualified for differentiation.

The computers and my mobile phone automatically spring forward and you can guess, a good few people are going to be late to church with their sleepy excuses.

Meanwhile, I should exhaust my last hour of hibernation because it is really now – Summer Time.