I didn’t realise you all had such smutty minds!!! Well, we’re going back about 8 years. It was a pretty rough time for me, I’d just been told I was on the list for redundancy (I used to work in the energy trading division of TXU Europe which went spectacularly bankrupt) and the money was ok but I was dithering. Then DH, or DB as he was then, dumped me after we’d been together for a year and a bit. Two days later, the cash rich and impatient trading Director, upp’d the redundancy offer by an extra couple of months pay and I took it. I did a search on the most interesting place I could go to that Saturday without getting a visa, ideally one that would confirm independence and scare everyone (not a lot of straight thinking in this period). So I went to Egypt, the week the first gulf war broke out. There were a sprinkling of Russians, but pretty much only crazy brits there, everyone else had cancelled, so it was superb. Great holiday, wonderful people, no hassle at all and no upset stomach! I did a tour down the Nile on a boat, and then independently travelled back (on the night train, on my own, as I say, not thinking straight) and stayed a while longer in Cairo.
Anyway, when I was at the Valley of the Kings, we went on a donkey ride up to the valley, then back down to the boat. No harness, no saddle, no nothing. Just hair to hold onto, and I should note that I’ve not been on a horse for two decades at this point. So we go up this valley, and there’s a sheer drop to one side of 300 meters or so and I’m bricking it, frankly, but everyone keeps telling me that donkeys have the highest sense of self preservation and I shouldn’t worry. After what seems like hours, we finally get off the blasted things and look round. It’s great – if you ever feel like going, I highly recommend it. Then we got back on the donkeys at the visitor centre, and I was delighted to hear we weren’t going back over the hill, but round the valley road which was newly built.
I’d only been on about two minutes, when my donkey, who seemed to think he was the National winner, decided that he ought to be in his standard position of third in the ordering, so he jumped, caught his foot on something, tripped, I went over his head, turned in the air, landed pelvis smack on the new concrete road. Luckily my mini rucksack shot up and I didn’t crack my head. But my pelvis was in searing agony and I really thought I’d broken my back. It was excruciating. The lady behind me was a nurse from England and she thought the same and told me not to move at all. Then the Arabic-only speaking donkey boy starting pulling me up from the floor by my shoulder, and we were both screaming at him to **** off and leave me alone, and he kept doing it, and eventually we realised that there was a huge German tourist bus hurtling towards me not looking, chatting on his microphone and I’d better shift. So I did, screaming in pain. Then I got put – on my own- in a cab and I assumed I was going to hospital, but no, the taxi driver got out on the way back and had a fag and a coffee with his mates, before dropping me off at a hotel where the boat would come and get me. Still no doctor and I’m crying with pain by now. No one would help me (no one could understand me to be fair) so I just lay down on the cold marble floor as still as I could on my back until someone came (the hotel owner didn’t really like this but I can be terribly Imperious when hurt!). Eventually I got a doctor, who did rudimentary checks, gave me painkillers. Being a Muslim country, he didn’t tell me not to drink at the same time, so I did and was high as a kite for a week. Going back to panadol was horrid!
I think I permanently knocked my pelvis out of kilter, and all the muscles in my back have been overcompensating for the back right side for years, and so on. The muscles around the pelvis/ back joints are the worst, especially when I don’t exercise (and I’m going for a swim as soon as I’ve written this epic) So there you are, that’s the donkey and the bottom story, filthmeisters!!! Needless to say, I got back together with DH so it was all ok in the end. But do be careful on donkeys, they are the spawn of Beelzebub.