Vulnerable ...

...in two senses. Every 'step' is an opportunity to fall over, every jolt of the bus as I find my seat a potential further fracture. I am also laid wide open, ultra visible for people to make assumptions or ask direct questions. I haven't yet mastered the art of crutching and talking at the same time. 

Mostly I experience how kind people are. This is London. The busy intersection of Warren St and Euston Rd - a young woman stops me and adjusts my crutches. We take the bus together. The common response to broken limbs, hobbling on crutches, undiagnosed injuries is to laugh before sympathizing. Jocularity at the prat fall. That is the only reasonable reaction, to an experience so emotional it must be dismissed by laughter. The young woman's eyes glint with tears as she tells me about her own experiences as a pre-pubescent - a year on crutches with a damaged hip. Her life still divided into before and after. I remember that a lot of writers had similiar experiences of being withdrawn from the world for part of their early years. Roald Dahl I mention, perhaps inaccurately. Roald Dahl wrote cool stories, we agree.