Haiku 3: Ashford Hospital

 

---

I feel closer now

to the people from Ashford

here asking for help

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This haiku is from my first day here in Ashford, spending my evening at the hospital after falling on my ankle in the afternoon. It was during the climbing activity, but the funny thing is I wasn’t actually doing the climbing, I was just leisurely walking down to watch other people climb and tripped on the edge of the pavement. Pathetic as this was, thought best to get it checked out as it was swollen to the size of an orange and I’m about to go away for 4 weeks. The lovely Joan and Lieve came along with me to the hospital and I am oh so grateful for all they did for me that night. Two incredible women. Long story short, after 4.5 hours in the waiting room they never got round to seeing me – the nurse and GP finished their shift and that was that… what a night!

After a few days of hobbling, my ankle’s now turned from a lovely sky blue to burgundy/violet and I’m starting to see shades of yellow coming in. Lovely. I’m sure it’s just sprained. One good thing about the waiting room experience was briefly meeting all these people from Ashford. There was the woman with a piece of wood sticking all the way through her foot, the man with the knee twisted the wrong way, the woman whose dog had bitten out a chunk of her arm while she was watching the telly... and yet their sense of humour was still intact. Almost everyone had that wicked, dark sense of humour – one thing I love so much about the UK. Keeping each other company in a waiting room brings its own kind of unity, and I was glad to see this glimpse of Kent.

 

Anyway, I should talk more about Ashford. It's been brilliant - I've enjoyed it more than I thought I would! We’re all leaving for Spain tomorrow morning (well, tonight, 2.45am) – these few days have flown by in one sense, but it also feels like a week since I left Cardiff. Everyone is wonderful – it's been such a pleasure to start getting to know the group. We’re a bunch of people all different in our own ways, but already we seem to have been gelled together by this experience.

I am ready to get stuck in, and I’m oh so nervous. I feel like I can’t piece together what the classes will look like in Spain, what me teaching them will look like, until I’m there – so for now, not much to say – we’re walking into fog! But I have a feeling this month is going to be a good one.

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