It's a tall, tall world

Despite an absolute disbelief in omens, Paul Carter is beginning to wonder whether his middle name is really Damien

It’s a good job I don’t believe in omens. If I did I think I’d have already decided that I would be better off spending the next 12 months strapped to my bed, surviving by eating nothing but takeaway food that has been stuffed through my letterbox, preferably by someone wearing gloves.

This wouldn’t be some overly melodramatic reaction to the fact that our wages will soon be worth less than the Zimbabwean dollar either, or even to hide away from hordes of knife wielding gits roaming the streets, I’d be doing it to protect me from myself.

You see, as I’ve mentioned before, I have a tendency to fall over occasionally. Now these gravitational excursions usually occur in the small hours after one too many tequilas, but also have a habit of occurring in far more mundane circumstances such as taking out the rubbish or over-exuberantly making the bed.

This was evidenced only too well by the fact that I managed to start 2009 in quite spectacular circumstances by sprawling into a flower bed, a whole five minutes after getting up and leaving the house on New Year’s Day, leaving me decorated in large amounts of mud and sporting a very attractive cut on my arm.

I then had to rush for a train back to London, on which I had to sit for over an hour, resembling the bedraggled victim of a fox hunt.

Despite not believing in omens and putting it firmly down to bad luck and residual drunkenness, arriving back in the city did reinforce the notion that there are days when I think that the world is conspiring against small people like me.

I don’t mean in a constant, 24-7, ubiquitous kind of way, but I’m convinced that there are actual days of the year set aside in a secret calendar somewhere that you can only access if you happen to be over five foot six.

Without wishing to regale you with the complete succession of mundane trivialities that combine to make up my life, I feel I need to fully illustrate my pain.

After being forced to stand up on the tube on my ride home came the rucksack. In my face. Now, using the tube regularly when you’re at waist height like me is fraught with danger at the best of times. I’ve come to accept that dodging elbows, inhaling noxious gases, and (pretending I’m) averting my eyes from embarrassingly located bodily parts all come with the territory. It’s not ideal, but hey, it’s either that or the bus, and that’s even more terrifying. I finally got home looking and feeling like I’d just gone through an episode of Countryfile and that assault course at the end of the Krypton Factor in quick succession.

Still, home sweet home, I convinced myself that I was finally safe from the world, and could concentrate on putting my New Year’s resolutions into practice. At which point I switched on the light, and the bulb blew. Which I couldn’t reach to change. Fumbling in the dark, I then tripped over the step I have to keep in the hallway in order to reach the entry phone, getting mud and leaves onto the carpet in the process. I lay there in the dark, and told myself it was a good job I didn’t believe in omens. Happy New Year.