Free Flying Free by Nigel Farage Page A

pains and wriggling things in chest and bowels? Check. And the dead leg because you’ve been lying on it for too long? Check.
    I was mildly surprised that the leg was in that position, though.
    Perhaps above all, my mouth was causing me distress. This was in part, I was to discover, because all my teeth had been knocked loose. It was also in part because I had had a very hot curry and a great deal of drink last night and nil by mouth thereafter, leaving my mouth feeling like Queen Nefertiti’s gusset.
    I opened my eyes. Only one opened. The other appeared to be buried beneath a lot of upholstery which had not been there before.
    The monocular view explained a certain amount, which was nice.
    The explanation wasn’t.
    *
    No, the reason for the daft little fantasy section above is simply that that was what was playing in my head in quiet moments over the next three months, during which I was occasionally visited, occasionally fed semolina(for a long time the only solid food permitted to pass my lips) and spent much of the time fretting.
    First I fretted because they thought that I would lose my left leg which was pretty much pulverised to north and to south. If they saved it, they said, I might just be able to walk – well, OK, hobble – short distances, but even that would take a long time.
    I fretted because I was not at work. Billions were being made, and not by me.
    I fretted because I could neither laugh nor cry because of the broken ribs, nor turn over and curl up in a foetal position because my left leg was raised high above me. My recovery position was that of a chorus girl in Pompeii when the lava hit.
    I fretted because of tinnitus which continued after the orchestra had left and continues to this day. Though some may dissent, the doctors assure me that my graceless landing on the kerb had caused no enduring brain-damage once the cuts were healed and the swelling went down. The echoes, however, persist. Dwarves mine for gold in there, and occasionally whistle happy diatonic tunes…
    Above all, I fretted because of the Halford Hewitt.
    It is given to few fully to understand the intensity of that fretting. Only sixty-four schools play in the matchplay foursomes tournament for the Halford Hewitt Cup, which takes place at the Royal Cinque Ports and Royal St George’s (known to all simply as ‘Deal’ and ‘Sandwich’) every April. Others wait poignantly outside, their privileged noses pressed against the pane, yearning in vain for admission.
    As for us whose schools are eligible, we spend the winters doing sit-ups and playing solo surreptitious rounds of golf in the freezing dusks or dawns in hope of the call from our Captains. If that call does not come, we conclude that our active lives are done, don slippers and lay in supplies of Viagra and cadet Country Cousins.
    I was hoping to play for Dulwich this year. Instead, I was in traction mumbling on semolina. I resented this.
    The funeral scene was just light relief from all this fretting. At first I blamed all the mourners (and particularly Vanessa) for being so insincere.Slowly, however, the ridiculous notion percolated through to me that perhaps I was missing something, that I might have given a little more of myself to my endeavours to date, that perhaps I wanted more from life before the next car hit me.
    It was only a thought, but it was a new one on me…
    It was a good thing that I had generous friends with a better line in medicines than the doctors. They saw no reason to bring mere grapes, skins, pips, stalks and all, when they could bring them already stripped down and distilled to their very essences. They brought them in quantity. I was soon providing medicinal cheer to the other poor sods in my ward, more hopeful than confident that I was helping them rather than killing them but, as ever, allowing them to make that decision for themselves.
    What? I am meant to have renounced my wicked ways and become an ascetic saint overnight because of a mere