I've just had a lovely phone call with our coach, asking how I was feeling now over 24 hours after the injury, that he was pleased that I chose to stay with the group on Saturday when I could have easily gone home given that I was no longer training, and that I kept my spirits high for the good of our esprit d'équipe. This gives me untold joy. It's natural that most of the time I feel quite left out; I've well and truly accepted that fact and so enjoy even more the conversations which I take full part in, when I make people laugh and when I am properly integrated.
So when I've been sitting at the side with ice and a heavily strapped ankle, I've felt even more the outsider. The players have been brilliant, they are a very very tolerant and positive bunch. I sometimes imagine a foreigner like me in Scotland and how they'd be treated. I, for one, would probably get very frustrated with the bumbling foreigner. But then again, the english language doesn't give words genders so the opportunities for slipping up are infinitely fewer.
Getting a sympathetic phone call asking for an update, reassuring me that there are several matches left in our season and that I will be a part of them is the sort of thing that makes my evening, distracting my attention from staring down the bed at a soggy bag of frozen carrots leaking onto my fresh sheets and occasionally healing my ankle with their questionably orange, reassuringly cooling properties...
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