I bet the title of this makes you want to burst into Sting's redention of "Legal alien in New York" and if you are a legal alien- particularly a south african one living in london at that, the following lines might ring true to you...
I started my blog calling myself "girl about town and country"- accounting for my current mobility status, i think "girl about town" would even be pushing it. I am a girl confined to the stretch of the Fulham palace road between Hammersmith and Fulham broadway tube stations.. my stints of town traveling are limited to the grimy seats on the 295 bus that curteously and not so timeously carries me from my working to my living destinations. My pitiful and routinely boring travels are due to the fact that i have recently managed to fracture the 4th metatarsal in my foot- this is a rather peculiar (yet essential) bone lurking between the toes and the ankle and according to my orthopaedic surgeon is prone to stress fractures.
Now- I am asking myself what exactly have i done since my arrival here that has predisposed my decrepid old foot to a stress fracture??? I was hoping that since i had shed at least half of my "puppy fat" acquired in Austria that my body should be fast approaching a state of health. I am certainly a good few stone lighter (this is an english measure for weight that us alien Safas have not quite grasped) and so should theorectically be able to move around with equalled amounts of stealth and strength... Alas! the minial amounts of walking, running and pilates i have done since my arrival on Mud island have rendered me disabled!!! how frustrating... to think that in one's persuit of an adonis morphology, one acquires broken bones and a depression matching Romeo's on learning of the death of his beloved Juliette.
So I have been tossed about in the NHS like a leaf in hurricane and finally after much misdiagnosis (the crabby nurse at Charing Cross hospital told me to ditch me crutches) have finally been told about the real status of my ill-fated foot. So I am a legal alien- dealing with a grossly incompetent health system and quite without my usual support structures (mum with cups of tea, dad with words of sometimes annoyingly apt wisdom). Still trying to figure out what is the best tube to take to get to Bank, what it means when the traffic lights flash orange and what crisps are.... figuring all this out with a 15kg moonboot (however many stone that is) bolted to my right foot is no easy chore. So here's to growing up in the real world, legal, illegal.... challenging nontheless
I started my blog calling myself "girl about town and country"- accounting for my current mobility status, i think "girl about town" would even be pushing it. I am a girl confined to the stretch of the Fulham palace road between Hammersmith and Fulham broadway tube stations.. my stints of town traveling are limited to the grimy seats on the 295 bus that curteously and not so timeously carries me from my working to my living destinations. My pitiful and routinely boring travels are due to the fact that i have recently managed to fracture the 4th metatarsal in my foot- this is a rather peculiar (yet essential) bone lurking between the toes and the ankle and according to my orthopaedic surgeon is prone to stress fractures.
Now- I am asking myself what exactly have i done since my arrival here that has predisposed my decrepid old foot to a stress fracture??? I was hoping that since i had shed at least half of my "puppy fat" acquired in Austria that my body should be fast approaching a state of health. I am certainly a good few stone lighter (this is an english measure for weight that us alien Safas have not quite grasped) and so should theorectically be able to move around with equalled amounts of stealth and strength... Alas! the minial amounts of walking, running and pilates i have done since my arrival on Mud island have rendered me disabled!!! how frustrating... to think that in one's persuit of an adonis morphology, one acquires broken bones and a depression matching Romeo's on learning of the death of his beloved Juliette.
So I have been tossed about in the NHS like a leaf in hurricane and finally after much misdiagnosis (the crabby nurse at Charing Cross hospital told me to ditch me crutches) have finally been told about the real status of my ill-fated foot. So I am a legal alien- dealing with a grossly incompetent health system and quite without my usual support structures (mum with cups of tea, dad with words of sometimes annoyingly apt wisdom). Still trying to figure out what is the best tube to take to get to Bank, what it means when the traffic lights flash orange and what crisps are.... figuring all this out with a 15kg moonboot (however many stone that is) bolted to my right foot is no easy chore. So here's to growing up in the real world, legal, illegal.... challenging nontheless
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