Low life

On the second day of the New Year, I rose, dressed, arranged myself on my crutches and hobbled down the road to the station. It was wonderful to be outside again. (Never give credence to ideas that occur to you indoors, said Nietzsche, which I think I’ll take as my New Year’s resolution.) At the station there was a handy ramp up to the ticket office that I’d barely noticed before, then a footbridge over the railway lines to platform two.

At London Bridge station I toppled off the train and stumped through the ticket barrier, down an escalator and along a subway to the Underground station, where I took a Jubilee line train to West Ham, then a District line train to Upton Park. I alighted here with less grace than the word implies, hopped up the stairs to the ticket barriers then propelled myself down Green Street to the Boleyn Ground. Home to Chelsea. (Like the Bantu pastoralist bewildered by the arrival of the settler, the railway line and the grocery store, I’ve turned to the old religion for spiritual and cultural reassurance — thus far with similarly catastrophic results.)

Crutches are a mixed blessing if you’ve got a cracked rib or two. When I got to the ground, I was spent. Captain Oates probably had more of a spring in his step as he passed through the tent-flap on that fateful night than I had as I pushed my way through the turnstile. But I was in. I was of the Elect. And nice and early for a change, too. My seat, when I found it, was in the back row of the upper tier. I took the last few steps on my hands and knees.