Off-kilter chronicles cont...

So my off-kilter week continues. The day draws to a close and I'm rushing for the train- 1 minute until my train arrives. I'm stomping the footpath like there's no tomorrow. When I get to the escalator there's a guy standing in the middle of the step- I can't get past:

"Scuse me please" I pant

"Oh yes, okay!" he muffles and shuffles to the left.

I don't know how I was walking or what I did but somehow my foot twists and I find myself on the way to airborne and on the way to face first into the escalator steps.

"Omg" I hear a lady gasp.

"Oh dear oh dear" I hear the man I was trying to sidle past, say.

My non-existent reflexes kick in and somehow I grab the black rubber side guard. My legs shudder into the splits across three steps. My calf scrapes down the corner of the stairs. The hand that grabs the side guard is also holding my little Harrods bag which is housing 2 books: "Eat Pray Love" as well as "The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work." The former falls out and into the gap between the side guard and the wall. It's stubbornly wedged. I watch it go past as I try and regain my footing. The man who I was trying to past gets to the bottom before me and keeps trying to go up the going down escalators to retrieve my book:

"No, no, I'll go up and come back down again and push it down with my other book!" I say

He nods and agrees and the book is retrieved. I tell him it's not his fault, it's mine- I'm famous for my dodgy sense of balance and he smiles and hopes I'm okay.

As I stumble to the train my legs are all jittery, bouncing around because of all the adrenaline pumping through me. Then everything starts to hurt. I stretch my opaque stockings to see if there's been any damage and I can see a three pronged gash down my shin.

Thank god for my stockings, is all I can say. Imagine if it'd been summer and I was wearing nothing but a skirt!