You Have Not a Leg to Stand On Read Free Page A

in Swahili, could they please tell her the way to the hospital. They started to explain while coming towards the car. They bent down to look in. On seeing two girls by themselves, they both made a grab for the door handles trying to get in. My wife had the presence of mind to have already engaged the car in first gear. She surged forward, the two of them running after the car. Quite by chance, not far ahead, hardly daring to slow down, they spotted a small sign pointing to the hospital. The relief was short lived, as you now know what she was about to encounter.
    It must have been around 2 am when there was nothing else to be heard, nothing else to be told and nothing else to be done. They were overcome with tiredness, but there was nowhere to go. The hospital had no spare beds. They remained sitting beside my bed in upright hospital chairs trying to get through the night. In the morning, my wife came with me, in Peter’s Range Rover and Fiona drove the car back to the farm.
    The everyday routine of hospital life quickly took over. Rolled from my front to my back, and stretched-out, with weights under my chin, and pulled by the ankles in the vain hope the spinal cord would have space for healing. Our friend Jill ran a little nursery school in Karen, an area named after Karen Blixen, who wrote ‘Out of Africa’. During a painting class she asked all the children to paint pictures for a dear friend of hers who was in hospital and needed cheering up. She arrived the following afternoon with piles of paintings which she proceeded to stick on all the walls and on the ceiling. One very complicated one on the floor, which I could analyse while rolled on my front. I’m sure this sort of therapy could be very therapeutic for anyone in my situation. Just by chance, and not that I knew at the time, one of those pictures was painted by a tiny tot called Natasha Kaplinski. Years later this close friend was staying with us in our barn in England. While idly watching the news one day, she said with utter amazement, ‘Natasha Kaplinski, how on earth can that be?’
    Meantime, my poor little wife was having a harrowing time. She was with me every waking hour, and being ferried back and forth to Peter and Jo’s house, by kind, gentle, caring friends. Jo was waiting each night ready with a warm drink and a sleeping pill.
    Kind, caring, gentle Fiona, slept in the next bed, to be with her when she suddenly awoke with crowding fears of unknown things to come. As far as my wife was concerned our life had ended. What on earth would we do now? Was it feasible to stay in Kenya? What would we do in England? The structure of our life had fallen apart. To add to this catastrophe, she had a telephone call from her brother to say her father had just died from colon cancer. The only way of coping with a horrific set of circumstances such as this is to think short term. Broken back? Stoke Mandeville. How to get there? Waiting list? Yes, of course. My Brother-in-law, in Kenya, was a doctor and had qualified with a friend who was at present at Roehampton Hospital in Richmond outside London. They were famous for treating the limbless but had less experience with paraplegia, but accepted me to see how I’d get on. I didn’t get on very well, but it was while there, at Roehampton, we had an enormous change in our fortune. We met a woman called Marriott White.
    Marriott’s husband was paraplegic and had recently died. Her house in Notting Hill Gate was converted for him. So instead of moving, she decided to let it to people in wheelchairs from abroad. Talk about fitting the bill! We went for the weekend and stayed with her for five years.
    I did go to Stoke Mandeville Hospital for five months, and what I was taught there was invaluable. I’ll expand upon that episode later.

Bangalore
    It was when living with Marriott we decided to go back to Kenya for a while, to be with my parents. It was on this first visit after the