HALFLING: A FAREWELL TO LEGS - Part 16

The latest in the series about my collapse, surgery and subsequent life in a wheelchair, and the attitude of society towards the disabled - not quite humans, but 'Halflings‘.

In his excellent book When Did You Last See Your Father? Blake Morrison writes that the mark of truly being an adult is not when you first change your baby’s nappy, but when you first change your parent’s nappy. I’ve always thought that it comes when there’s no one left but you who has to take a pet to the vet for that final act of love; I wrote in the Spectator in 2015 ‘I walked to a taxi in the early morning rain, carrying my ancient, adored cat Sox to the vet for the last time. I’d always wanted to feel ‘grown up’ even as a ten-year-old, and there are few things which make you realise that your ambition has been achieved more than being the one who must take a much-loved pet to be put out of its pain.’

Another less tear-jerking mark of adult-hood is when receiving post ceases to be a source of excitement; I remember those precious postcards from those un-met pen-pals in the 1960s, when chain-letters were a source of wonder rather than worry. Now the hiss of mail on the mat evokes in me Dorothy Parker’s response, on hearing the telephone, ‘What fresh hell is this?’