Matthew Parris: I’ve been living with a miracle for 60 years

This is probably the most self-indulgent column I’ve written. I hope not to make a habit of it. It’s an ode to — and something of a lament for — my own right arm.

I was six when I fell off a small cliff above a disused railway embankment in Nicosia, Cyprus. The blue bicycle I was wheeling was new: a birthday present and my first bike. A novice, I let the back wheel slip over the edge — and if you’re holding the handlebars and the back wheel slides, a bicycle moves in counter-intuitive ways. Mine pulled me with it. I refused to let go.

I came to in a heap, in the dust, bicycle beside me and blood everywhere. Two small Greek boys were staring at me in horror. I struggled to my feet. I could see now that there was something terribly wrong with my right arm, and I was half a mile from home and my whole impulsion was to get home. But I didn’t want to abandon the bike — I still remember that. I had to, and began trudging along the dusty track to our house — crying, I remember.

There was a trail of blood in the dust behind me. I remember that, but cannot remember inspecting my arm until I passed a Cypriot man on the road, who stared at me in great alarm (this was a time of terrorist attacks on the British in Cyprus) and all but ran away. Funny, after some 60 years I still remember which side of the road he passed me on. His fear sharpened mine.

Now I saw how bad it was. The elbow was a piece of meat in Grandpa’s butcher’s shop in Sydenham, a bloody mess with the white of a bone sticking through the flesh.