WHEN I was little more than a child, I was told by a man in a white coat that in later life, I would be much troubled by arthritis, lumbago and rheumatism.

A penchant for falling off things, being run over and having car and motor bike accidents had left me with a skeleton that was simply storing up troubles for my doddery dotage.

And I fear that pessimistic medic’s words may finally be coming true as my left leg has suddenly developed a worrying tendency to fold up like a carpenter‘s rule.

I was in the garden on Saturday morning, before the heavens opened, trying to claim the record for piloting the last lawnmower of autumn, when the leg went, and I was only saved from falling by the lawnmower handle.

I should perhaps make it clear that I wasn’t cutting the grass, but rather hoovering up other people‘s leaves. We have a single deciduous tree in the Hextol Towers gardens, but they are home to the sheddings of every tree for miles around.

I was also marvelling at the cruelty of nature, in that it is impossible to spot a heap of dog muck amongst the many thousands of leaves that carpet the lawn.

The dog is occasionally allowed to ablute in the front garden last thing at night and I mentally mark the spot where the deed has been done.

Time without number, I have gone out the next day with poop bag in hand, to find that the offending matter is nowhere to be found. No matter how assiduously I search, both visually and nasally, there is no sign, and I conclude a fox or some such creature has
indulged in a little nocturnal coprophagia.

Yet spark up the lawnmower to clear the leaves and it seems that the lawns of Hextol Towers have become the communal midden for every living creature in Northumberland, causing me to slalom round obstacles that were invisible ten minutes earlier.

It was this slaloming which aggravated my dicky knee and hip, leaving me a limping wreck by the end of the day, requiring liberal application of Fiery Jack, Sloan’s Liniment and Voltarol, as well as the injudicious popping of multiple pain-killing and anti-inflammatory pills.

I was soon in a drug-induced haze, reflecting on the innumerable scrapes I have got into over the years which have left me with the pelvic girdle of a rickets-ridden child chimney sweep.

Perhaps it was the game of street cricket I was playing around 1959, when I walked backwards into the road in the hope of pouching a skier from Eric Underwood in a game of street cricket, when I was struck by a heavily laden coal wagon, which in attempting to avoid me took out a telegraph pole and blacked out the estate for a week.

Raman Subba Row never had to put up with such distractions, I remember thinking - and I took the catch.

I was back in hospital again a few months later, when I foolishly put my trust in the Lord when following the local vicar’s Morris Minor out of a road junction on my new 11 plus bike - and was ploughed into by the motor bike and sidecar of an RAC patrolman, sailing many feet up into the air before landing on my hip.

I managed to get to about 14 before I was pitched over the handlebars of my bike when the brakes locked coming down a precipitous hill, but luckily landed on my head and the impact was cushioned by my long hair.

I survived another four years before being rammed amidships on my motor bike by a car, giving me my first trip in a blue light ambulance, and leaving my legs a sorry mess, my left thigh black from hip to knee where I landed from a great height before skidding down the road.

I was accident-free for years before being tempted to take part in a rally cross adventure at Lampton Lion Park, which predictably ended with me being involved in a 140mph head on crash, after which my unconscious body was cut out of the wreckage.

I woke up in my second blue light ambulance, with a stranger holding my hand and my underpants full of broken windscreen glass.

They were still pulling bits of glass out of eyebrows 10 years later, so a little hip trouble in later life is perhaps a small price to pay for being here at
all.