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So I began my rehabilitation, trying to ride that ghastly non-compliant new horse which was my body; a terrible physical challenge that bucked and threw me contemptuously, time and time and time again. They had given me a wheelchair with the brand name Quickie and in it I learnt a new definition of slowness. My nails grew faster than my progress down the corridor. Somehow I had to learn to exist again; my arms had to learn to support and move me; my hands, the fingers now tightening, clawing into stumps like decrepit Trafalgar Square pigeons, had to learn how to hold a kettle or a toothbrush and bear the pain of the push rims of the wheels on my palms. I was given thick leather mitts, which fastened with Velcro and were specially designed for easy use by tetraplegics, to protect the skin (see photo ssss1). One day, trying to come back from the gym along the carpeted stretch of corridor – installed, sadistically but sensibly, to prepare us for real life – my arms gave up and the pile of the carpet steered me into the wall. I sat quietly weeping in frustration until a nurse took pity on me and pushed me off the carpet.