A FTER more than a year of hirpling around Hexham in various stages of agony, I am finally due to go under the surgeon’s knife this week.

I am not expecting miracles, for while the kindly medic has told me that while the mini-op may alleviate some of my pain, my left leg is no longer the finely- tuned machine it used to be. There are signs of wear and tear and general decay that he can do nothing about.

The old leg has served me well for six and a half decades, despite acquiring more cuts, scars and abrasions than an old tom cat. It has somehow never been broken, but it has certainly been in the wars since it first came to prominence in the Broken Cross County Primary School football team.

I was marginally less bad than most of the rest of a spectacularly bad team, with my one asset a mighty left foot, which could be relied on to boot the ball out of our penalty area to relieve the pressure for a few brief moments.

“Get the kid with the big left foot,” came the cry from rivals’ parents and games masters on the touchline, not content with the fact that their team was already leading by well into double figures.

A host of thigh high tackles would come whistling in, often when the ball was at the other end of the pitch, and these were from leather boots with nailed on studs, which often left me bloodied by the end of the day.

I gave as good as I got though, for my left foot wasn’t only good at kicking the ball, inducing many cries of: “Oooh, you dirty cropper ” – a term which appears to have dropped out of modern football parlance.

At grammar school I graduated to rugby, where one of the most dreaded fixtures was a trip to darkest Staffordshire to take on Cotton College, which I believe was a training centre for potential Catholic priests or monks.

The surroundings were certainly austere, and the after match feast of bread and jam frugal, but the wrath of God made itself felt on the rugby pitch, where the monks in waiting took it as their duty to kick lumps out of the Protestants.

The bath water always ran redder than a cardinal’s robes at Cotton, with my battered legs from the front row making a significant contribution.

Perhaps the worst lower limb injury came from a spectacular motor bike crash when my BSA 650 was side-swiped by a Cortina and I was catapulted high into the air before landing in an agonising tangle of mangled arms and legs.

The blue light ambulance was soon on the scene, and when the man asked where it hurt, I moaned: “ My leg, my leg …”

He busied himself with injections and Elastoplast while I rode the black sea of pain, and when I regained some measure of consciousness, I noted him looking proudly at the inflatable splint that encased my right leg from hip to ankle.

“Err, it’s the other leg which really hurts,” I told him meekly, and he was quite dischuffed.

In truth, both legs were a bit of a mushy mess, but largely thanks to the ministrations of Mrs Hextol, there was no lasting damage apart from a few scars.

I always thought that if I were to have knee trouble in later life, it would be my right knee, which had bothered me for decades.

I would have several bouts of what can only be described as severe toothache of the joint, where I would be wracked with agonising shooting pains which could only be alleviated by knotting my belt round it and pulling it tight.

It often hit me on aeroplane journeys, where I would be subjected to stares of the deepest suspicion as I was obliged to wriggle in the seat to remove the belt, and then strap it round my knee, while emitting grunts and groans and sweating profusely. I certainly wouldn’t have liked to have been sitting next to me.

The left knee only came into play when I was out with the dog one wet day and slipped on a muddy bank, causing my knee to flex agonisingly the wrong way against the joint.

After multiple X-rays and MRI scans over a period of over 12 months, it has finally been confirmed I have torn my meniscus, whatever that may be. I will let you know how I get on...