On Falling
New Year’s Day, 2022. As I leave my block of flats, my downstairs neighbour, buttocks contoured in his dressing gown, steps out for a smoke, unselfconscious. Halfway to the station, coming in my direction, a girl in flapping PJ bottoms and an oversized T-shirt, is trying out new blades in the middle of the road, sod the traffic, but there isn’t actually any. She’s making fair progress, some static, followed by some fluidity, hair blowing around her face. Leaving the skater behind, I arrive at the station, stamp up the stairs of resonating concrete to the bridge then down onto the platform with a rucksack of swimming gear. I can hear something. From the end of the DLR platform comes a sound, a keening, and as I get nearer, a figure, unaware of any onlooker, slumps to her knees, surrendering apparently to sorrow, or abandonment or some other anguish. The keening continues. From my vantage point all I can see is the vulnerable crown of the head, fine hair partially dyed pink with darker roots. White lacy tights, slightly torn, delicate knees. Then, I notice the exposed arms, finely cross hatched, the past work of a razor. Standing a metre or so away, I say ‘Hello’. Then I say it again. Later, I realise my voice sounds as if I am addressing a beloved child. The head is slowly raised and a pale narrow face emerges. When she takes in the source of the voice I wonder what there is for her to see. As a protection for wet hair I am wearing a bobble hat, and a mask covers half my face. With remarkable control, the girl, who is actually a young woman, levitates from the concrete, and stands for a moment. I am sorry to see you are so upset, I say. Is there anything I can do? The same beloved-child voice. She says No and turns to walk away but before she does she tells me: You are beautiful. Then there is a catch in her voice, an opening, and the keening returns. I watch her progress up the steps, and after she is gone, the injured sound hangs in the air.
…
Three days later as I flew to work on the first day back, I too fell to earth. Seconds after exchanging a smile with a woman at the bus stop for no other reason than sharing a species, an uneven paving slab brought me down. Instantly the woman was at my side, offering me her hand. I noticed she was wearing a lanyard and had perfect teeth. I patted myself down and then pulled up the loose work trousers I wear in the library: abrasions on the knees; the elbows could wait for later. I was wearing a large overcoat of my mums that I kept when we were clearing her wardrobe, and it had offered me considerable protection. My hand showed a graze. The adrenalin got me on my way again, but before I set off the young woman looked me directly in the eyes as if it were the most serious of missions and told me I must avoid falling again. I told her I was wearing my mum’s coat and just as I had seen the British juduko, Kayla Harris do, in the 2012 Olympics, to honour her dead mother when she won gold, I brought my hands together and looked to the sky.
An event which results in a person coming to rest inadvertently on the ground or other lower level.
WHO definition of a fall
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