September has come and gone in a colourful blur, bringing us a supermoon, changes in the weather (not for the better), temperature and the length of the days but no real changes in the house, unfortunately.

Yet October had just begun when we stripped one room of woodchip wallpaper, admittedly it was the box room – the smallest in the house but it took us less than a day, and was easier than I was expecting. We did make a start on the artex ceiling but soon discovered what a messy and awkward job it was going to be, so we’ve bought some masks and some better goggles and shall make another attempt at some point.

The rooms upstairs are all decorated in the same style;  woodchip wallpaper, magnolia paint on the top, border around the halfway point and a colour featured in the boarder painted on the bottom half of the walls. They are all quite dated and the box room had the added feature of little painted teddy bears over all of the walls and the doors of the built in cupboard.

We went away for a long weekend starting on the 9th October, to a Center Parcs with my parents and cocker spaniel ; Tally. We were checked in on Friday after a short stop off in Street beforehand and had to check out Monday morning. On Sunday we were all going to catch the land train to our evening reservation in the on site Indian restaurant. Paul and I had been out for a swim and were going to meet my parents back at the lodge before heading out.  It was our last cycle for the holiday and I was relieved as Paul and I set off, however after only a few meters, our bikes got too close together and caused us to crash.

We aren’t entirely sure exactly how it happened or what happened but the collision caused us both to come off our bikes, me first and then Paul landing on top of me. I was lucky enough to escape without a scratch, bruise or even a hair out of place but Paul was not so fortunate.

Paul’s shouting caused a member of staff to come to our rescue and his wrist looked as though it had been dislocated. We were eventually driven to our lodge by security and my mother kindly drove us to a hospital; the first of which was unable to help, and sent us onto the next.

It took us 3 hours from the accident to reach a hospital that could help Paul and after the first x-rays the prognosis didn’t look too good. Paul had shattered his radius and a fragment of bone was pressing on his nerve causing a pins and needles sensation in his hand.  They had to act quickly so as to avoid any permanent damage and performed a biers block (a process which involved using a tourniquet to cut off the blood supply to Paul’s arm, injection of anaesthetic to the same arm and once he couldn’t feel it they had two doctors manipulate his bones into the right place by ‘playing tug of war’ with his arm).

When I was watching I couldn’t help but compare the way they were moving his arm to the moment in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets when Harry’s bones are removed accidentally and he is able to bend his limb unnaturally. Paul isn’t squeamish (he assures me) but it was probably best that he didn’t see that part.

From October to December 2015in X-rays (with the addition of the pre-break x-ray from another trip to A&E we had in May)

He has since been referred to our local hospital and we’ve been in and out of Orthapedics a lot recently. We worked out that he’d had nine x-rays in eight days. Paul had surgery last week after his x-rays revealed that his bones had moved and twisted out of place.

All in all it was actually quite a nice weekend away, and it was a shame how it ended, it does mean though that even less decorating will get done now that Paul is essentially useless.