As it is Fifty Years Ago to the day. Nearly to the hour. I think surgery was at 11:00 am; then it is from this day and that moment, as the ‘lead is poured onto my face’ by the anaesthetist in an orthopaedic theatre, that we descend into that memory.
Think of the week, the days before and the days after, so Saturday 12th April to Saturday 19th April as an orange—an entity. We are taking a surgeon’s scalpel to the week. We cut through the skin, but until we taste the juice, we don’t know what day it is or when it will leak out juice. When it does, the juice is a sharp, delicious, instantly remembered moment – going under anaesthetic for the first time, “like lead being poured over my face.”
And then, to start the memory, I’m not sinking; I’m in mid-flight, on snow, Isola 2000, French Alpes Maritimes to be exact, and I’m about to land badly on the back of my ‘ski evolutif’ skis.
Out of control, picking up speed, I have to dodge a metal post; I try to turn, try to keep my legs together as if I am on a sledge, but my left leg pulls away, buries itself in a bank of snow, and the binding does not break to release my leg. Instead, my leg breaks.
I tumble. Thankfully, I’m still attached to my leg. But it looks like I’ve hit my Action Man with an axe. My leg, not yet painful, is ‘skew-whiff.’ And so that week, of pain, pills, ambulances, trolleys, flights delayed, an overdose, and surgery delayed, began, fifty years ago, to the minute. Let’s count it in shortly after 11:00am. Counting backwards from ten, nine, eight … and were away. We’re off.
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