I had a fall recently. There’s a difference, of course, between falling and having a fall. A fall is neither here nor there. Children fall all the time. Athletes too. And as adults we have all, on occasion, fallen to the ground, laughed off the embarrassment, and waited for the bruising to heal.

This was different. Walking in the busy city centre, I passed a  pavement cafe on a narrow and already-bustling street. I failed to see a low bollard, and I tumbled head first over the obstruction and down to the ground.

Bugger.

I must have blacked out briefly because my next memory is of lying flat on my back staring at the sky, with an acute and immediate awareness that there was no way I was getting up. Bystanders couldn’t have been kinder. Calling an ambulance, staying with me, and even giving me a makeshift blanket – a rather nice jacket from Zara, I was told, though I was unable to move my head so I never saw it.

After that, the course of my life for the next 24 hours was set. Blue-lighted to the hospital. Hours of waiting on a trolley in a hospital corridor. And finally discharged home in the early hours with a supply of very powerful painkillers.

The bombshell came later, with the news that my shoulder was shattered beyond repair and I would need a total shoulder replacement.

Again, bugger.

Fast forward another week and I was at Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, undergoing my Pre-Op assessment and filling out a questionnaire full of questions like “on a scale of 1 to 10, how painful is your shoulder” and “how will you identify that your post-operative rehabilitation has been successful?”

Which takes me, finally, to how this story is relevant to a photo blog. Because my immediate thought was “will I be able to support my OM1 Mark II with Olympus 100-400mm lens when I’m doing bird photography”?

There are more obvious things I could have thought of. Would I be able to reach behind my back? Will I be able to drive? Will I be able to reach into my high-level kitchen cupboards? But no, my first thought was about a very specific camera/lens combination.

I guess photography is quite important to me.

Biographical note: I have a long physiotherapy journey ahead of me, and I don’t yet know the answer to my question about using my “big” camera. But I’m catching up with some of my photography buddies later this week, and the worst is behind me.