My Segway accident and why helmets spell disaster for me

I spent two days last week going back and forth to my local hospital (which was excellent, by the way) because of a suspected fracture – an injury sustained by my recent Segway accident.

How did this happen, I hear you cry? Surely riding a Segway is just like riding an electronic scooter with two wheels?

Hah. That’s what I thought. But no. No it flaming well isn’t.

For a start, these things are heavy, and you have to manoeuvre them, which isn’t as easy as it looks. Your normal instinct is to want to turn your body with the Segway, but you have to remain very still, and not crouch down (NEVER CROUCH DOWN), because that tips the balance. They also move surprisingly fast.

At first I was doing OK, I really was. But then something happened. Suddenly there were lots of parents and kids dressed as Disney princesses everywhere, turning out from the local production of Disney on Ice.

And that’s when the wobbling started, because my natural instinct as a mum is to always put kids first, and to try to keep them out of harm’s way, particularly from  a big heavy motorised bike thing.

Which is what I tried to do. Unfortunately, as I tried to avoid the small princesses and their parents the bike decided to go a different way from the the rest of my body, with the result that it flew out from under me. I crashed to the pavement (sidewalk), hitting my head, bruising my legs and taking most of the impact on my left arm, which started spouting blood at an alarming rate, all over my clothes. At that point I started to feel very woozy.

My lovely friend who was with me gave me some first-class first aid, and once the shock had subsided, I could laugh about it. The pain, however, was another thing entirely, hence the hospital visits this week, where it emerged that I probably have a tiny fracture as a result of the Segway accident, but because it’s so internal there’s nothing they can do.

Fortunately I was wearing a helmet – but in future I’ll remember, that as with the incident in St Lucia with the quad bike and the chickens, every time I put on a helmet, disaster strikes.