Why have ten words when one is enough.  Here it is “arghhhhhhhh”. Each morning I
forget as my foot slides out of bed and finds  the floor that  blood will rush  downwards to feed the infection.  My foot erupts into a block of burning lava and I lie back on the bed chewing my  forearm so not to scream.  The day begins. I know the pain will subside so I stay their for thirty minutes waiting for my body to adjust  to the pain and  then limp around the apartment  like a wounded soldier and it strikes me that the wounded soldier has much more to deal with.

Eventually it subsides into a more manageable pain. Riding the bike is comparatively easy. At 8am I am at the doctors and by 10am I am diagnosed with a prescription for anti biotics.
But there isn’t time for the chemists. I get on my bike and   arrive at The Southbank for about 10.30am and at noon meet artistic director Jude Kelly.  It’s an enjoyable meeting and we agree to meet again.     I then bike it back across the Thames to Bush
House to meet  radio producer Claire Grove at 2pm. I’ve known Claire now for twenty years. From Bush house I bike it to Kings Cross station and get the 3.52  to
the beautiful  city of Cambridge.

Still haven’t been to the Chemist.  I arrive at The Hotel Felix which coincidentally is
right across the road from Phil and Helen’s place. Phil and Helen are a couple
whom I have had the pleasure of getting to know over nearly twenty years and
who  have kindly let me stay at their place when I have been in  Cambridge. The
pain in my foot is excruciating still and I am walking with  a pronounced limp.  

At 8.55pm  I arrive at the venue.  The reading is for one hour. I know I can’t physically move so I stand as close as possible to the microphone and talk and read poems.  It feels to me like a wonderful reading.  One hour of poems,  what a delight.   Afterwards  five  friends and I go out and eat some food and chat. We were at the pizza express which was once The Pitt club a gentlemens club for conservative drinkers.   It is one absolutely hilarious evening.  Phil and Mary come back to the hotel for a coffee and the night ends perfectly. A  rowdy bunch pour into the bar as we are walking out… “bladdy ‘ell” says one of them as he passes by “it’s blaady tiger woods”.  I catch what he said and turn, his blonde girlfriend is looking at me apologietically. 

I t reminds me of  when I went into Claridges once to see a man about a bbc radio interview.  He is a wine taster often seen on television. I knew him from Manchester.   He greeted me by bellowing “lemn sissay you black bastard”.  He’d had too many drinks
and thought that this in some way was a bonding moment.  Neither of the above have any class. We continued walking and after a couple of seconds  Phil summed up the fleeting moment  (which I thought only I had heard)  “dickhead”, he said. There are times when one
word between friends is enough.