An Unexpected End to Altitude16.
Check Ignition and may God’s love be with You.
pop quiz: the lyric above is from what song and artist? clue: a legend in every sense takes us to space.
Quite unexpectedly, Stephen K Amos, Jamili Maddox and Katherine Ryan were among the highlights of Altitude16 for me. Why ‘unexpectedly’? Well I best explain…
Put simply Stephen, Jamili and Katherine did excellent and hilarious shows. I had only seen them before on TV panels shows or heard them on Radio 4, so I wasn’t sure what their stand-up routines would be like. Freed from the constraints of watersheds and PC gone wrong, they were able to ‘let rip’. They discussed all the things that interest, frustrate or intrigue them and wrap them into material that was sharp and very funny.
In the fairly intimate surroundings of the Europahaus they were also able to engage with the whole audience, relax and appear to be just talking to us: Excellent.
What happened next was even more unexpected. Thursday morning, out for a bit of gentle skiing, took a route along a track, not paying too much attention and just tumbled over. Went to get up and thought “Ouch, my arm hurts”. Managed to get up, but thought I better get it looked at as I was having difficulty lifting my arm or putting any weight on it.
Is There a Doctor in the House?
So, I skied down the mountain and found myself a Doctor. Typical of Austria, within 10 minutes of arriving I had had an X-ray and the results were on the screen: Not good! I had smashed, quite literally smashed, the shoulder joint of my right arm into several pieces; the advice was I needed to go to hospital!
Within 20 minutes of arriving at the hospital I had had an MRI. The good news was that it appeared that I hadn’t damaged muscles, tendons and whatever else is under the skin. The bad news, I had smashed my bone and it needed fixing. A few minutes later I was in a hospital bed awaiting surgery. A couple of hours later still, I was back in the hospital bed, feeling rather groggy and with a titanium plate in my shoulder.
Everything is Funny at Altitude16.
As they had given me a general anaesthetic they wanted to keep me overnight. This meant I would miss Thursday and Friday nights at Altitude16 and headliners Sean Lock and John Bishop.
See my other Altitude posts or check out the Altitude Festival’s website and Facebook page for the latest line-up and booking information for the next Altitude.
