High life | 19 March 2011

I’ve got end-of-season blues. I know I say this every year, but this has been a particularly fun winter, with friends throwing goodbye parties, dinners and lunches since the beginning of March. My liver has done a Gaddafi and taken a brutal revenge on my body, and the right ankle is doing a Saif as I write; if I stand on it or, worse, try to walk, it feels like it’s going to feel when the ghastly Gaddafis get through with those opposing them.

I’ve had this lower leg problem for a year. About a month ago, I couldn’t stand it any longer and had an X-ray taken. The cartilage has done a Bin Laden and disappeared. Hence the pain as bone touches bone. And there was more news from the doctor. I’ve got crystals — not the good kind, but those that form because of congenital gout — and they are embedded where the cartilage once was. It was a very easy diagnosis to make. ‘If you want less pain stop eating rich foods and stop drinking anything except water,’ said the good Dr Mueller. That, of course, was unacceptable as my personality improves with drink, and at my advantaged age personality is all I’ve got left.

This is the bad news. The good is that I can take pain, as I’ve been suffering all my adult life at the hands of women who have used me in the most unethical manner imaginable, so I’ve learned not to cry uncle too soon. Up to a point, of course. When I do karate the pain is bad early on, then it goes away for a while, and comes back, like a horrible Gaddafi, with a vengeance after training is over.