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‘Honestly, you couldn’t have met a nicer guy,’ said Willie, shaking his head.

Mostly we were innocent, life’s fallen jesters. Cycling and sports injuries were common. Cog was a mountain biker from down south who’d gone over the handlebars on a boys’ biking weekend in Scotland. He was semi-dazed and nauseated by tramadol. I remembered its ghastly nausea-inducing and head-fugging qualities. Taking tramadol, you were in the world but not of it. Pretty soon Cog transferred back down south, still looking grey and confused.

Tourette was a middle-aged man who had had a stroke that damaged his speech, long before a car accident broke his back: he was in a wheelchair and came to the gym but could only shout ‘Fuck Off!’ or ‘Pish!’ Again, his ability to swear endured, although his brain had closed down more sophisticated speech circuitry. Tourette looked like Waldorf from the Muppets, his mouth set in a determined upside-down U. Despite appearances, he was very cheerful and seemed to enjoy amusing the rest of us by cursing inappropriately. Spatula, the chef who’d broken his back in a drug-addled suicide attempt off a cliff, befriended him, and the two of them sat outside and smoked, mostly in silence but for the cursing. Spatula could stand, and mobilise a little, and could have improved, but he stopped coming to the gym and the rules were strict. If you didn’t buy into rehab, you had to leave.