Before I begin, a half-arsed apology. Seemingly every time I tap out a blog these days it's to explain which personal disaster or health issue has been impacting my ability to write and post reviews, and though I'd love to claim otherwise, this one is going to be no different. Maybe it's just an inevitable side effect of getting old, or maybe I've had the luck hugged out of me by one of those people from Juan Carlos Fresnadillo's Intacto, a film reference that I'm sure will only make sense to a select few. And when I'm smacked by a physical malfunction these days, its impact on my life tends to be far more dramatic than it would have been in my younger days. The latest one, though… well that could happen to anyone at any age and with similar results. Even, as it turns out, to individuals who whose fame far exceeds any I will ever have.

It all began when I received a text message from my doctor informing me that there was something potentially problematic with a recent routine blood test, and that in six weeks I need to have a second test to either confirm or dismiss the anomaly. It may well prove to be nothing of consequence but might also require further investigation that may ultimately lead to hospital treatment. I won't know for sure until I have that second blood test, which now is only a fortnight away. With that on my mind, I went for my evening swim, where I met up with my partner and broke the news, quickly realising my mistake when I had to then spend some time convincing her not to worry as the whole thing might be a false alarm. Nonetheless, I'll admit to being just a little stressed by it all, and maybe a little distracted as a result. This may well be relevant to what happened next.

I then headed home on my trusty cycle, various iterations of which have been my sole mode of transport for all but the longest of journeys since I was in my late teens. The roads that night were pleasingly quiet, but as I headed towards one of the town's more problematic roundabouts I elected to move from the road and onto the adjacent cycle path. If you're wondering why I wasn't on the path from the start it's because it's not a proper cycle path at all. Years ago, our local council secured EU funding to add cycle paths to the main road leading in and out of town. Rather than build proper segregated paths, the council simply painted a line down the middle of the poorly maintained footpaths, together with a few painted logos of a cycle that have long since been worn down abstract blobs. One of these paths runs outside two local schools, and confusingly the cycle path portion switches sides halfway down the road, resulting in pedestrians and cyclists on both sides of the path trying comically to avoid banging into each other. They also contain a selection of sudden dips and weird bumps that it's best to avoid whilst travelling at any speed. I thus tend to avoid them and ride on the road instead. But I really don't like that roundabout, especially when you have to make a right turn, which usually sees me refused entry into the right-hand lane by agitated drivers who then then cut me up when I elect to stay on the left instead. So onto the cycle path I reluctantly went.

Except I didn't. It's a now famous complaint that potholes are a major problem on British roads – primarily due to cutbacks in government funding to local councils, I should note – and some of the potholes on the roads in my home town are spectacularly large. These can give a car driver a discomforting bump if they hit them, but can throw an unwary cyclist sharply to the ground, so I make a point of steering around these and keep a mental note of where the worst ones are. Perhaps because it was night, perhaps because I was still a little distracted by that earlier text, this time I failed to spot the danger, and as I went to join the cycle path, my front wheel slipped into a small but – for cyclists, at least – seriously problematic and trench-like dip in the tarmac, locking it suddenly in place as my body began the turn and became an instant victim to centrifugal force. I went down. Hard. They say that your life flashes before you when you think you're going to die, but the only thought I had time for as a I plummeted downward was, "This is really going to hurt," and as soon as I hit the ground I knew I'd really injured myself. My left leg and my ribs were in serious pain, and there was blood all over my right hand where the flesh had been gouged away by the gravelly road surface. Despite the theoretical protection offered by a jacket and trousers, I'd also scraped flesh from my left elbow and knee. When I staggered to my feet I was actually groaning in pain like a wounded animal. All I then wanted to do was get home.

By some miracle, the bike itself was largely undamaged (like the bodyguard who takes a bullet to protect his employer, I bravely cushioned its fall), and I managed to crawl back onto it and slowly make my way home. Having been a cyclist for most of my long life, I know the procedure when you take such a fall and immediately set about cleaning up and disinfecting all of the cuts and abrasions, then checking for obvious signs of broken or cracked ribs. The fact that I was able to cycle home at all, despite the considerable pain that I was in, seemed to rule out a broken leg or hip. In that respect, I was lucky, as my many years of cycling have built up the muscles in my legs to the point where they are as solid as tree trucks if I tense them, and it became clear that they that took the brunt of the fall and ultimately cushioned the bone. Once I'd cleaned myself up and swallowed some strong pain killers, I plonked myself on my sofa and remotely conversed with a distant friend, which helped to distract me from the pain until the medication had dulled it enough for me to grab a little sleep.

By a small stroke of luck – well, bad luck when you consider the plans I originally had – I'd already booked the next week off as part of my annual leave, but instead of house repairs and decorating I spent the time wincing in pain and attempting to focus on a review that ended up taking me another two weeks to complete. After a couple of days, the initial angry purple bruise on my thigh spread to cover the entire top half of my left leg, the sight of which even gave me a start, and I was the one who'd taken the tumble. I was going to post I picture here to illustrate my words, but it occurred to me that some react badly to imagery of injuries, often for understandably personal reasons. For that reason I've stuck it on a separate page, so if you do want to see the extent of the initial bruising, click here.

In the week that followed, this bruise spread to the inside of my leg and down into the calf, but eventually began to fade. What appeared in its wake was almost as alarming, a swelling on the upper thigh the size of a basketball, one that was often very painful and hair-trigger tender to the touch. As someone who sleeps on his side and swaps intermittently between left and right, this presented a problem, as no matter how deeply I managed to sleep on my right side, the moments I dozily switched sides I was instantly woken by the pain it triggered. A bit concerned by all this, I finally decided that it was time that I sought some medical advice, and two days after logging for an appointment with my doctor, I got a call from the surgery reception telling me I had to go to the A&E department at the hospital in the neighbouring town. Not feeling great but not wanting to sit for hours in the A&E waiting trying to ignore angry drunks and screaming children, only then to be told I'd torn ligaments and would just have to give them time to heal, I elected not to go. Two days later, I woke up to the foolishness of that decision and got myself to the hospital after all. After an hour of waiting and a small bit of miscommunication about the nature of my injury that landed me with the wrong doctor, I was seen by a cheery and energetic nurse practitioner, who was quickly able to diagnose the swelling as a large haematoma. In order to confirm this, she asked the opinion of the very same doctor I had initially been sent to by mistake, and his reaction genuinely amused me. "Woah! Look at that!" he said in startled surprise on inspecting the swelling. "Have you named it yet?" He then informed me that the body will slowly reabsorb the sizeable amount of blood clotted in the tissue of the swollen thigh and that the swelling would eventually recede on its own. "It normally takes about six to eight weeks," he assured me, "though in your case it's likely to be more like ten."

Reassured that I now knew what was going on and that it was ultimately not that serious, I focussed on resting up and controlling the pain. Then, a few days later, my left foot swelled up and turned a deep red. What? I've still no idea if this was related to the accident, but I started to suspect that my body was rebelling against me for its own twisted amusement. Thankfully, over the course of the next few days both the swelling and the redness abated, but that's when the thumping headaches began. Now I should note that – the occasional walloping hangover aside – I'm someone who doesn't normally suffer from headaches at all, and this one was an absolute stonker, as if my brain was trying to expand its way out of my too-small skull. The thing is, it just would not stop. Strong pain killers would allow for a small period of temporary relief, but by the sixth day of feeling as if Darryl Revok was constantly scanning me from the adjacent room, the pain killers stopped having any effect.

I thus gave in and booked yet another appointment with my GP. This time I was seen the following day. Tests confirmed that this was unlikely the result of any serious head damage caused by the fall, and I've now been scheduled for further blood tests to check for a couple of rare conditions that could be – but probably aren't – responsible. Whether the headaches are connected to the fall, to my recent vision issues, or even to the neuroma in my inner ear responsible for my deafening tinnitus remains at this point frustratingly unclear. Either way, I dutifully followed the good doctor's advice on how to treat the symptoms, and over the days that followed the pain thankfully eased. It's still there even now but is nothing like what I was experiencing the previous week, and the first morning I woke without a pounding head I could have kissed the earth beneath me in gratitude. Thinking about it now, there's a good chance I did.

As you can imagine, the impact of all this on my work life, my home life, and most importantly my work for Cine Outsider has been considerable. I'd just started on my review of the Radiance two-disc release of Bandits of Orgosolo when I was rugby-tackled by malicious asphalt, and the resulting pain, strong medication and brain-busting headaches have meant that this single review has taken me a ludicrous three weeks to complete, as I've only been able to work for brief periods on days when my head was clear enough to focus. As far as my health is concerned, this really has been a year to remember, and we're only just over halfway through it as I type. I still have to wait for the results of the blood tests, and maybe, just maybe, it's significant that I'm booked in to have them done on the morning that this bloody awful government will hopefully have been kicked out of office and into political oblivion. By the following Monday I will know whether I can relax about the message that started it all. If the news is bad, well I'll deal with that as it comes, and at least I'll have the content sorted for the next blog decided as well.

In the meantime, my recovery appears to be slowly but steadily progressing. I'm constantly tired, but the headaches have considerably eased, and while the bulge on my thigh that I still haven't given a name remains tender and has yet to start shrinking, it's nowhere near as painful as it initially was. I'm thus mentally back up to full speed and will be working on several reviews of new and upcoming disc releases in the coming weeks, whilst simultaneously working my way through an already month-old Indicator box set whose first two titles have had me completely hooked, which means that that review is going to be a long 'un. I've also, for the first time after decades of cycling without one, finally bought a cycle helmet, which I now wear whenever I venture out on two wheels. I may look a bit daft (nothing against cycle helmets, I just have one of those faces that looks silly in headgear of any description), but I've become acutely aware of how much more serious that fall would have been had my exposed head made as sharp contact with the concrete as my thigh clearly did. As if I needed a further prompt, I discovered that famously sweary celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay also took a serious fall on his cycle just a few days after I had mine. In a publicly posted video, he showed off a whopping bruise on his abdomen that is every bit as spectacular and even angrier than the one on my thigh. He also insisted that the fact he was wearing a helmet ultimately saved his life. Message received, as it should be by us all. It's a dangerous world, often for unexpected and unpredictable reasons. In the words of Sgt. Esterhaus from Hill Street Blues, let's be careful out there.

You can watch Gordon Ramsay's short video here: https://youtu.be/ipE6bLsg4tI?feature=shared