Shining threads

Shining threads

Thursday 30 December 2010

Cycling with one leg

A fellow I know spends his days cycling with one leg.

He has one eye and stares intently at the goings on of the world.

He lost his other eye in a game of football. He tripped over and another player smashed their boot into his face. Goodbye right eye.

But he has both legs. So far.

After the accident a curious thing happened. Clearly not just his eyesight was affected but he stopped using the whole of the right side of his body.

He eats with one hand. Smells with one nostril. Hears with one ear (curious rhyme). And cycles with one leg.

Life has become considerably harder work since the accident but it is not because he is bloody minded that he proceeds this way, but he is just following a certain logic that the damage to his brain dictates.

I think he's hopping mad. But we have a drink every now and then, getting legless together in the pub, and my gaze fixes on his beady left eye, widened by the booze, bursting with love, and I forgive him his eccentricity.

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