Winklepickers were a bad choice...

After a traumatic, snow and ice filled escapade yesterday morning, which involved a terrifying bus journey through 6 inches of frozen precipitation and turned what is normally a 20 minute journey through the pleasant back streets of Leeds into a horrendous Scott of the Antarctic like trek through hell frozen over – I thought my return journey couldn’t be any worse. How wrong I was.

Leeds city centre at 5:30 pm was a slushy mass of back ice, frozen pavements and slippery side walks, which I negotiated mainly by slipping and sliding. I had an event free train journey home and the fun didn’t start until I disembarked at Horsforth. There, things started to get ‘interesting’.

There is a small incline to get off the platform onto the main road, which was completely frozen over. Foolishly, I had ignored the advice of my better half that morning to wear trainers and instead attempted to make the rise of the hill in my flat soled, low heeled, very pointy, freshly polished winkle pickers. I got perhaps 2/3rds of the way up dais slope before gravity took over. I came to a standstill, every muscle tensed, I knew that I was going to fall, it was inevitable, but I didn’t want to accept it. I could hear angry murmurs behind me as a queue began to form. Finally, I tried to turn my feet to the side in a vain attempt to try and dig my heels in. What resulted was one of those comedy falls, where I took 5 or 6 sliding steps in the same place, gradually become more and more horizontal before and slipping further and further before ending flat on my back spread eagled and slowly sliding down the hill. The contents of my briefcase, including a mouse I had pilfered from work and various Tupperware boxes, forks and spoons were scattered in the chaos. My arms, which I had been wildly flinging around trying to latch onto anything that would stop the fall, managed to fetch a sharp blow to the side of Lady who was queued up behind me. As she walked past me she looked down despairingly and said ‘you stupid idiot’ and shook her head. Already blind with rage at the embarrassment and idiocy of my shoe choice, I was now fully geared up to go completely ballistic and the stupid cow who had picked the wrong time to express her feelings.

I jumped to my feet and the sudden movement caused me to slide 3 or 4 feet back down the hill followed by a 180 degrees two footed fall that saw my legs end up above my head . By this time I could hear a ringing in my ears and laughter all around me. A kindly old man, in his 70’s and obviously sensible enough to wear walking boots, helped me to my feet and with the aid of his wife, physically pushed me up the slope…”Don’t try to take a step” he said, “we will slide you up”. There were grinning faces all around me. I only had eyes for the woman who had insulted me, who was a good 50 meters down the road by this point. I got to the top of the hill and set off at a run after thanking the kindly man profusely. I had taken 5 steps, ignoring his cries of “What about your Tupperware?” before gravity caught up with me again. This time I slipped forwards onto one knee and in quite a graceful way considering the circumstances, did a 6 foot curling slide down the pavement, coming to rest in a puddle of oily slush. Thoroughly humiliated, I shuffled back to the scene, by which point the old man’s wife had collected by damp briefcase and Tupperware that had been scattered around the hill. Thanking her, I called a taxi and beat a hasty retreat.

I’ll be keeping an eye out for that woman tonight, and this time I have trainers on.