Earlier this year, I lived out one of my mum’s worst nightmares. It happened in an instant. I had cycled to the cinema to meet a friend, and while we were watching the film, the weather outside turned stormy. The wind gusts, I thought, would blow me home effortlessly. The ride lasted less than two minutes.
At the first corner – a sharp, wet lefthander – my front wheel slid violently, jackknifing my bike into the tarmac. I don’t remember the impact. All I remember is being scraped off the floor by three men with panicked expressions, who kept asking me if I was OK. Proudly, I shooed them away, but the throbbing in my face, the pain in my wrist, and the general dizziness I felt made it clear to me that I was not, in fact, OK.
The nurse in A&E helped me piece together the crash. My left cheek had hit the road, hard, and was now as flat as the tarmac it had bounced off. A CT scan confirmed three fractures in my face, plus a broken wrist, and I was booked
