I’d not heard the question.
I’d been thinking about a tyre rolling down a hill.
“I’m asking if you’ve had a problem with high blood pressure before? With Hypertension?” repeats the nurse.
The tyre was no ordinary tyre. A titanic ring of reinforced rubber, it had likely come off a tractor or a digger, then been abandoned. We’d discovered it, my eleven-year-old school mates and I, on one of the generous stone and clay paths that run, like streaks of caramel sauce off a scoop of pistachio ice cream, from the top of Pitch Hill down to what is now the mountain-bike mecca of Peaslake village.
“Before? You mean I have a problem with my blood pressure now?”
“Well, your readings are high today, yes. Very high.”
It had taken all four us to turn the huge tyre, taller than we were, on its end, manoeuvre it into position, then release it down the steep two-hundred metre ramp. Accelerating at a prodigious rate, the weight and speed of the tyre keeping its line true despite the uneven terrain, ever greater hops, skips and jumps throwing up clouds of dark yellow dust and other debris until, to our whooped delight, it had crashed into the undergrowth lining the far side of a bend in the track, thudding with a “DUMPF” into the thick trunk of a mature pine.
“Any stress at work?”
“Plenty.”
“What about your diet? Are you eating properly?”
“Usually.”
“What does that mean?”
“Well sometimes I get lazy”. The previous day I’d had cereal for breakfast and dinner, a ham roll for lunch, salted peanuts, two lines of Dairy Milk and a bottle of Leffe while I watched that evening’s Champions League game.
As if by some devilish intervention, the moment we released the tyre for its second run, a mother and her young daughter had appeared from around the bend at the foot of the slope. They were laughing and chatting, oblivious to what was unfolding, the girl, probably just three or four, jabbering away excitedly.
Instantly pricked all over by thousands of hot and cold needles I’d watched the huge black tyre catapulting down the slope, pounding into the ground, gaining speed with every bounce, thundering towards the unsuspecting two-some.
One of us shouted out. Not me. I was frozen where I stood. Mummified. Only later did I realise I’d bitten my upper lip so hard it had bled.
Looking up, the mother had seen the giant tyre, now just thirty or so yards away, rising off the ground to meet her, coming directly at her and at the thing most precious in the world to her. Her jagged, haunting shriek had split the air like lightening.
“OK. Let’s take another reading and see what we get.” Says the nurse.
In that moment, as the catastrophe unrolled, and cut down by the mother’s cry, my eyes closed and I could see the future, understand the consequences of what we’d done, feel the aftershocks. Only a half-second of awareness and clarity, but one from which I could isolate and identify exactly what would be coming: the devastation, the denial, and the guilt.
“Try to relax if you can”. The armband squeezes my upper arm as the blood pressure monitor whirs feebly. I can feel the pulse in my arm, the rhythm track of life. It makes me uncomfortable. I’d rather not know what’s going on under the skin.
I hadn’t seen the end, my eyes shut fast. But there’d been the same crash and “VUMPH” as before. Then silence. Then crying. We hadn’t run away. We were good kids really. We knew we had to take our medicine. We’d run down the slope towards the mother and her child.
The mother was crying, her daughter was crying, we were crying. It had been a close escape for all of us, and we knew it.
Ten minutes later, and emptied of apologies, we’d left the mother and her little girl, and the tyre, and sprinted as fast as we could towards our friend’s house. Wanting to get as far away from the scene as quickly as possible, we only dropped to a walk when the burning in our lungs and legs meant we could run no more.
“Your readings are even higher this time.” Says the nurse. “I’ll need to get the doctor.”
Widespread Disruption 