Ah, Carefree Ambulation, Wherefore Art Thou Absent?
I have an injured knee and can hardly walk…
A fortnight ago, I was crouching down low on an icy cold winter morning, reaching for logs stored underneath a barbecue chimney. On twisting around and standing up, I felt a painful sensation in my knee but had no immediate, long-lasting discomfort. The following day I was able to join in a 90-minute family stroll around a hilly town.
Two weeks later, I could hardly walk.
I recently heard the writer, Hanif Kureishi, speaking on the radio about his condition following a freak fall from a chair while on holiday in Italy.
He is fully conscious and able to speak and think fluently but has no control over any of his limbs. He is currently being cared for round the clock at a clinic. If he wants to scratch his head, he has to ask a nurse to do it for him.
He looks at people walking about and finds it miraculous, not knowing if he will ever be able to do so again. His body, he says, is now just a piece of meat. He is only able to continue writing by dictating words to his son, explaining that he has to visualise complete sentences in his mind as if they have been typed onto a screen before he can verbalise them.