It’s six years since I wrote in The Spectator about my broken right ankle, humiliatingly sustained when I slipped while arguing with a swimming-pool attendant in a French ski resort. The joke among British patients in the hospital in Grenoble, all of them with much worse injuries than mine, was that it was better to stay where we were, where staff knew about broken bones and where there was a comfortable hostel for patients’ relatives, rather than return to the bosom of the NHS where we might catch MRSA.
Well, now I’ve broken my left ankle and this time I had no choice. My motor scooter skidded on slippery cobbles outside the Ritzy Cinema in Brixton and crushed my foot. No one else was involved. Indeed, passers-by were extremely helpful. One man picked me up, while another put the bike back on its stand and they each offered to call an ambulance, or to accompany me to hospital.
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