Real life | 11 August 2016

The builder boyfriend colicked for a week after eating a falafel kebab as he and I sat up all night with the colicking pony.

And unlike the colicking pony, who was attended to by the vet and given intravenous Buscopan, the colicking builder boyfriend moaned and groaned in agony, untreated. If he had a GP he couldn’t remember who or where it was. He has not sought any kind of healthcare, nor seen the inside of a hospital, since a gang of thugs broke both his arms when he was a ten-year-old boy growing up on the mean streets of Balham. (That was the real Balham, before the independent hipster cafés came with their nut-milk lattes and sustainable sourdough fritters garnished with locally foraged pea-shoots.)

In the time I have known him, the builder b has smashed bones, cut and bruised himself from head to foot, and most memorably, knocked himself out when a garage door fell on top of him, ricocheted upwards and then smashed back down on his head a second time as he tried to stand up.

For the next few weeks he didn’t know what day it was. But he always has the same answer when I suggest he sees a doctor. ‘What for?’

‘Oh, I don’t know. Let’s see. Your middle finger is sticking out at a very funny angle. If you have it taped up it might heal straight and you won’t get arthritis in the joint.’

‘Rubbish, it’s fine. It matches the other one now.’ Because of course he has another grotesquely bent finger on the other hand. You can’t argue with him. It is pointless worrying. And in any case, I have enough to worry about with the horses.

The very minute one recovers from a bout of something baffling, it is a golden rule that the other one will succumb to illness or injury.