The children return to school tomorrow morning after 2 weeks of holidays. As usual, these periods are quite slack at the Street Photography perspective for me because I try to spend more time with them and I have fewer opportunities to go roaming in the streets of Saint-Denis. No way to hang out in the streets after work. I go straight home to find them. We nevertheless decided to go and spend a few days on the west coast of the island to enjoy the beach. I had booked at the last minute, an apartment with sea view and a large swimming pool in the residence. Looks like Heaven will you tell me ?
Do you remember the movie “The Groundhog Day”? A film released in the 90s starring Andie McDowell and Bill Murray, where Phil Connors (B. Murray) finds himself doomed to relive the same boring day of The Groundhog Day forever. It’s a bit of our life right now … We had been installed for less than an hour and the children wanted to enjoy the pool. An old-fashioned swimming pool with 1/3rd of the basin with water just above the knee and then a part where you can’t touch the bottom. They had been told not to dive, but jumping is not diving right? And bam, Ronan jumped where there wasn’t much water thinking there was … He screamed in pain holding his same leg that had been in a plaster not so long ago. it. He was screaming saying his leg was broken !
In a panic, we took him out of the pool. I quickly checked his leg and it didn’t look like the shin was (yet) broken. I asked him where it hurt and he showed me the heel. He had tapped hard on the heel and his ankle had swelled a bit and a redness was appearing. I wanted to go to the emergency, but in the end, I preferred to go to a doctor’s office which was open until midnight. It was 6:00 p.m. when we got there. Fortunately there was not much waiting but the doctor could not comment on his ankle. He had to do an X-ray to find out if there were any fractures in the heel or ankle … He made a small splint to relieve him. When he got back to the apartment, his head hurt more than anything else. It was a lot of emotions for him to deal with and the bad memories of his previous fracture were still very much alive and brought up things that were just starting to be digested.
The next day, the morning was devoted to radios and returning to the doctor’s office. He is doing quite well. No fracture (phew …), but surely a nice sprain. 3 more weeks with a splint … Cold bag to heal the hematoma and a splint to prevent the ankle from moving. Frankly it is painful for him because he has the impression of not getting out of it. A kid is made to run, jump and there he crawls a sprain after being immobilized for 6 weeks. He was just starting to walk normally after 3 weeks of physiotherapy and there it is. Note, we are glad that there is not another fracture. In the end, we can even consider ourselves happy at the time. It does not console much Gwen who had already experienced the “tibia/fibula fracture” episode as a second confinement. And to say that there he resumed for 3 more weeks
Well, let me reassure you right away, he’s getting better (and so are we!). He manages to walk, dragging his paw a little. We bought him high-top basketball shoes to keep his ankle secure. Besides, his ankle deflated and found a normal color. He is not yet running, but moves without any help. This mishap changed our stay at the beach somewhat. We tried to take advantage of these three days at the beach anyway so that Joachim did not feel that this unfortunate accident was going to ruin his holidays.
What about the photos ? Well, I’ve stayed at the apartment a lot with Ronan and the only two outings I’ve done with him were to meet my sister with the family at a restaurant and to the aquarium. It was not easy because I had to carry him, but it is also holidays for the crippled ! So I might as well tell you that I took very few photos. I just had a few minutes with Joachim at the beach and one evening at sunset time while I was out ordering for food. You have in this Blog, the summary of our three days spent at the beach ! You can see he’s smiling again and things are moving in the right direction. Otherwise, this year 2020 is really lame. Between the Covid-19, Ronan’s misfortunes … Roll on 2021. Finally, it couldn’t be worse? Could it ?
All the photographs were made with the Ricoh GRD4.
Poor Ronan. When I was a kid I dived into the shallow end of a swimming pool, what Ronan managed to do to his ankle I did to my teeth…lesson learned! I’m a big fan of that Black & White shot with the two of them (in a restaurant?). Always great to see you’re work Jeff, often it’s another lesson learned for me.
Street Photography has gone by the wayside for now, you’re not alone. We’re like the rest of Europe, in the grips of a second wave of COVID. Large parts of England are virtually in lockdown again. Doesn’t feel as though I’m being a dutiful citizen if I’m walking around the streets purely to take photos. Let’s hope 2021 is better for us all.
Things are getting out of control in France and they will decide tomorow what to do … Here on the island, it’s hard to say, we go from 50 to 70 Covid infected people per day. For the moment nothing has changed in our way of living. A lot of people in the streets, kids go to school, bars & restaurants open without restrictions. Things might change in a near future. I still have time to do some Street Photography before picking up kids from school. We already had two months off since january. If we have 2 more months of lockdown, I will do a blog with my best … 6 for 2020. It will be enough