I accidentally in your base

I know, I know, I said I wasn't going to be on here, but I thought you might like to see today's post:

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*wanders off again*

Dear Denny
 
The opponent's Solicitors have now come back with a gross offer of £115,000.00 in full and final settlement of your claim.

[...]

Roughly translated:
GAME OVER

YOU WIN

I've sent my instructions to accept the offer.

Dear Mr de la Haye

Re: ACCIDENT ON  : 17 JUNE 2003 

Further to my telephone messages today the other party's solicitors have 
made an offer in full and final settlement of your claim.  The total offer 
is a gross sum of £100,000.00 on a full liability basis.

[...]

My solicitor has recommended that I counter-offer to settle at a higher amount, so there's probably still a week or so of negotiations to go, but... the end is in sight! About bloody time. And they've accepted full liability, which was always the sticking point for me.

Just got email from my solicitor with court dates. Pre-trial review (estimated 30 minutes duration) on the morning of 20 June 2007. Trial (estimated 1 day duration) on 11 July 2007.

It's entirely possible that I'll lose the court date to another case - apparently they double book the courtroom on the grounds that a lot of cases settle at the last minute, and I'm the second choice for this day. If the first choice case goes ahead (which seems likely, it's probably a second choice case from another day) then they send me a new date and I'll be first choice for that day. Not sure what timeframe that is in, I'm now quite worried about it ending up with me going into court on one of the days that I want to be at Glade. :-\

It's still possible that my case will settle out of court at the last minute, but the other side seem quite intent on it all being my fault so far, so I'm guessing it's going to go ahead.

I'm not sure how I feel about the whole thing right now. Nervous that the judge won't see the truth of what happened, I suppose. I'm not too worried about the legal wranglings over how much money I should get, but I'm going to be really really upset if the judge doesn't find the other guy 100% liable.

To the gym again this evening. It was kind of easy really. Didn't try to overdo anything, as I pushed myself a bit hard on Saturday and was worried about the backlash (which was less than I was expecting, but still, no point in being silly twice in one week). Zoomed through my whole programme up to the last couple of things, where I got a bit derailed by something unexpected - not a physical slump, but an emotional one. The reason? A couple on the exercise mats to the right of where I was using the shoulder press machine, discussing my leg rather audibly:

Her: "Eww, that's horrible!"
Him: "Eh? Oh! Yeah, bit stomach-turning."

Thanks very much for that. You only 'had' to look at it for a few minutes, I have to live with it every day. Bastards.

I was actually surprised by how much that upset me. Made getting the last couple of sets done a bit hard going, but I soldiered through them and then drove home with a certain amount of um, flair. Shiny car with loud stereo make everything better :)


Things I will be posting periodic reminders about:
Twitter - let all your friends know what you're up to via SMS.
Circus on the Circus - a circus skills event near my flat.

I've invited my kid brother to come down and stay on the weekend of the latter. He lives in Norfolk, is 18 this year (omg! I am teh old!!) and is better at every circus toy we have in common, plus he can do a few more too. Flash git. :)

http://community.livejournal.com/uk_bikers/292863.html

I wants it.

I guess this is a good sign, as far as my state of mind is concerned.

Forgot to mention, I got another letter this week from my lawyer, following up from the one I mentioned last month. She says the judge has apparently granted the request for a full judgement in my favour, as the case has now been transferred to Croydon County Court for the compensation side of things to be settled. She adds that the opponent can still apply for this judgement to be "set aside", but so far it's looking good.

In other news, I thought I'd remind everyone of the remarkably practical meme that went around a while ago, encouraging everyone to post their contact details in a post titled 'Contact Details', and then put it in their LJ memories under (surprise surprise) 'Contact Details'. For bonus points, you can also link it from your userinfo with the link text 'Contact Details' (are you seeing a theme here?). Then if people want to contact you, they know where to look for the info.

A whole bunch of people on my friends list did this the last time it went around, and it was really useful for a while, but now my friends list seems to have expanded/shifted to cover a lot of people who don't seem to have heard of the idea - so there you go. Go do it :) Obviously you can post it public, friends only, or filtered, according to your personal privacy requirements... mine is filtered at present, although I keep meaning to split it into two posts, one with public stuff (mobile, personal email) and the other with filtered stuff (postal address, etc).

Back from hospital, Camden, and visiting bluecassandra. Leg is still attached, albeit it a little sore.

The hospital was a bit of a faff... I got there and found out that I'd got really lucky - 10 minute wait to see the triage nurse, which was unexpectedly swift. Sadly the triage nurse decided that there was nothing wrong with my leg... "It's just red because it's healing". Uh, no. I was getting ready for a shouting match, because I wasn't inclined to leave without antibiotics, but he asked me to go and sit back in the waiting room while he referred me to 'another department'. I went and sat down expecting to be sat there for some considerable time, but in fact my arse had just about hit the seat when the door next to the triage room opened and a slightly flustered looking triage nurse reappeared with a doctor hovering at his shoulder. He called my name and I wandered over to be told that one of the A+E doctors would see me straight away... I got the distinct impression he'd just been roundly told off for trying to turn away someone with an infected surgical incision :)

The doctor took one look at the leg, sat me down, asked me to tell him the story which I did, then he glanced at it again and went and got a prescription pad. He also got a swab kit, and I had the fun of picking and poking at my leg until it produced some pus for him to send off for tests. He checked I wasn't allergic to anything, then wrote me out a prescription for not one but two types of antibiotic. He also drew around the inflamed patch on my leg with a biro and said "If the red patch is across that line in the morning, you come back here and we may have to admit you for a while and give you intravenous antibiotics". So I'm hoping it's going to get better overnight, because that was no fun the last time I had it done.

He gave my prescription to a nurse and asked her to sort it out, then he zoomed off to see another patient. It was there that the usual NHS efficiency kicked back in... I sat and watched said nurse put my prescription form down on a counter and then gossip to another nurse for over an hour. Eventually I hit on the plan of drumming my fingers loudly on a plastic chair until she gave up trying to talk to her friend and came over to do her job. Time spent in waiting room, 10 minutes. Time spent arguing with obtuse triage nurse, about 5 minutes. Time spent with doctor, less than 10 minutes. Time spent watching nurse gossip, over an hour. Time spent actually being issued with the prescribed medicines, less than 10 minutes. I could have been in and out of there in about half an hour if the nurse had done her job when she was asked to do it, but I suppose I should count myself lucky that I got out while it was still daylight, this being the NHS we're talking about. I had to pay for the medicine too, apparently the NHS has new rules about issuing stuff to outpatients in A+E now, you have to pay the prescription fee(s). Doesn't really bother me, as I'll just add it to my insurance claim.

So anyway, I have two sets of BIG antibiotic capsules to take, 3 times a day for one lot, and 4 times a day for the other.

Medicines in hand, I then limped up the road to the next tube station and waited for a tube to Camden. A mildly bizarre thing happened - at least, I've never seen it before - the tube came in and it was completely empty. Mid-afternoon on a Saturday, 4 stops up from the end of the line, not a single person on the entire train. It felt a bit twilight zone.

Oh yeah, I limped up the road unaided because when I was getting off the bus on my way to the hospital, there was a guy getting off at the same time as me who had totally fucked his knee up falling off a ladder, so I gave him the crutch I was carrying around in case of need - his need was clearly greater than mine. Did mean I had to suffer the rest of the day without my leaning post though, which was a bit ouchy in places.

In Camden I bought myself a shiny stick to play twirling games with... I went for a five foot staff in the end, on the advice of the guy who runs Oddballs. He said longer staffs are better for the kind of tricks I'm more interested in, slower and more controlled due to a little extra weight. I also bought a fairly silly looking white hat which has quite impressive head-cooling properties.

After Camden I wandered up to Archway to see bluecassandra's new house, which is a place of many levels. I think there are at least three or four stairs between every single room in the place, it's kind of fun and kind of annoying. Her boyfriend was good enough to feed me while I was there, which was nice of him.

And now I'm home again, and off to bed. Fingers crossed for no hospital visit/stay tomorrow...

Hello weekend, so very glad to see you.

Slept for a whole eight hours last night, which in the context of this week is a huge lay-in. Commuting is not agreeing with me. For some reason I've started having trouble getting to sleep again - I end up reading until 3am, which makes getting up for work just that little bit painful.

On Monday I put the deposit down on the new flat. On Tuesday I gave my notice on my current place. On Wednesday the lettings agency for the new place did a references check with my new employer, so hopefully I should hear back from them soon to confirm that I've got the place. If it all goes to plan I move into the new place on the 3rd July, and I leave this place on the 12th. This gives me two weeks (three weekends) to pack, a thought which terrifies me. I like unpacking (not that you'd guess it from the state of this place, which suffered initially from the state of my leg when I moved in, and then when I was well enough to do anything about it, from a lack of enthusiasm caused by it having been in a mess for so long already), but I hate packing. Oh well.

Today, in an effort to avoid the packing which I so clearly should be starting, I think I'll go to Camden and buy a staff from Oddballs. I've been messing around trying to learn staff tricks with pool cues and crutches for the last few months, so I've decided it's time I spent some money and got a new toy :) I'm not sure whether to go for a four foot or five foot staff though... I think maybe a four.

Oh, the very bottom of my incision has got a bit infected. This is quite scary, because if the infection spreads to the bone (currently sporting lots of nice entry holes where the screws used to be) then I can lose my leg. I'm not really sure what to do except keep cleaning it... if it gets much worse then I might pop into an A+E somewhere and get their advice. That's going to write off a whole day though, because they really keep you waiting when you're that far down the urgency list, so I'm currently hoping it'll sort itself out - it does seem to have got slightly better overnight.

Denny's Amazing Technicolour Leg...

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