I have had my first personal run-in with the British A&E - Accident & Emergency, the UK's ER.
Friday night, I somehow managed to slip down the stairs coming down from the loft to put Iorwerth to bed. I slammed my left foot so hard into the wall that my little toe was cut nearly to the bone.
Blood, a very alert five-year-old, and a bit of concerned investigation later, Eamonn drove me to Ealing Hospital to get it checked out.
The nurse practitioner took one look at my toe, cocked his head to one side, and said "huh. What are we gonna do with that?"
Not the easiest of locations to patch up - there's no real way to get in their for stitches, it's a place that is constantly pulled on whenever walking happens, etc.
In the end I got glued and steri-stripped up and told to keep the bandages present and dry for five days.
So, here's me on a weekend confined to bed with my foot up catching up on lots of rest and writing.
We aren't sure whether the toe is also broken - from the swelling and external bruising, it seems quite possible something is also wrong internally. But again, there's really nothing they can do except bandage and keep off it, so we didn't even bother with an x-ray.
In positive news, I was in and out of the hospital in just an hour on a Friday night, and the process was friendly and easy. Go, NHS!
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