You Have Not a Leg to Stand On Read Online Free PDF Page A

felt it was probably the implant showing its age, and needing to be replaced.
    If only it were that simple. Not only was the lump cancerous, a CT scan revealed it had metastasized, spread through the lymph system and throughout her lungs. By now we were punch-drunk. We could only listen to the oncologists with their strategy of how they would endeavour to treat it.
    The drug therapy she was given immediately has so far been very successful, and reduced the size of the tumours in her lungs from peas to pinpricks. She has a CT scan and ultrasound every four months to follow progress.
    So, instead of just sitting at home, nervously waiting for results every four months, we made one of the best decisions we’ve ever made; to go on a four-month cruise right around the world. Our little ship was called the Saga Ruby. We fell in love with that little ship, its crew and all its passengers. We visited thirty-six different countries over one hundred and fifteen days. As far afield as Tahiti and Bora Bora in the South Pacific and Beijing in the winter in the North Pacific. We walked on the Great Wall of China; my Pusher pushing me along. We wheeled right through the Forbidden City, a sight no one could ever forget, we were driven all about Beijing in a London taxi. We were taken to a Chinese play, where we sat in the audience at our own table, with drinks and little eats, and the actors moved and sang in high staccato. Dramatic and really quite touching.
    We were taken to the Temple of Heaven. It was on the way there we had an experience I will always cherish. It’s difficult to explain how moving it was. Our London taxi was parked on the edge of one of the few Beijing City parks through which we had to wheel to get to the Temple of Heaven itself. At the bottom of the long flight of steps up, was a large, open-sided, old stone courtyard, with covered stone passages along the sides. It was along these passages that like-minded, elderly Chinese would gather in the late afternoon, in groups of people with similar interests. Playing cards, playing chess, mahjong, discussion, singing, opera or operetta, men and women, all muffled up against the cold. We wandered slowly through them, from group to group, watching or taking photographs. No one took any notice of us; we might as well have been invisible. It wasn’t a performance, it was just what they did, every evening, it was beautiful, and I’ll never forget it.
    At the end of a very long and intriguing, memorable day, we were taken to the most sumptuous hotel imaginable. Then at six o’clock in the morning the following day, without time to enjoy the lovely hotel, we were driven back the hundred miles, to our beautiful ship. Our butler was waiting for us at the cabin door and said, ‘Welcome home.’
    ***
    Another time, a long time before we found our lovely ship, a long time before beginning to find our way again, or even thinking there might be a way again. We were sitting on a blindingly white shimmering beach, overlooking the Indian Ocean, on the Kenyan coast, about a hundred miles south of Mombasa. The tide was at its lowest, you could smell the damp sand and the wet seaweed, and in the distance you could hear the line of white surf crashing on exposed coral reef.
    I was in my wheelchair, my wife was on one side and a great friend, whom I’d been at preparatory school with years before, was on the other. He said, ‘Let’s go for a swim.’ I said, ‘That’ll be great when the tide comes in.’ He said, ‘No now.’ Before I could answer he picked me up in his arms and ran into the shallow water. Instead of putting me down in one of the hundreds of knee-deep little pools, he went on running. My little wife was running behind, she couldn’t keep up. We clambered on to the exposed reef. Even Gwynne’s knees began to buckle. He charged through the white surf and quickly into the deep blue water. I floated out of his arms,