Everything is going well and a career is emerging?
I thought so. After the first night of Hoffmann, my girlfriend Anna and I stayed with my sister and her husband in Glasgow. We planned to go on a short holiday in the North of Scotland before returning to London. Anna had booked a place for us to go to as a surprise.
We had rented a car and it was Grand National Day. I remember passing Loch Lomond and somewhere near The Bridge of Orchy we were talking about which horses to bet on if we could find a bookmaker’s, when I lost control of the car and we went off the road, spinning and rolling and ended up upside down with a burst petrol tank.
Fortunately, Anna was able to crawl out of the car, but I was trapped by my legs upside down amongst the pedals. I had to be cut out of the wreckage because the rescue services couldn’t use oxy-acetylene and apparently this took several hours. It’s actually a miracle that we both survived.
We ended up in Stirling Royal Infirmary, where we were put back together by Mr Sprunt – a brilliant orthopaedic surgeon. Both of my legs needed surgery, but I was told by the ward sister after the operation that it is possible that had it not been Mr. Sprunt operating that day, then the procedures might have been much more radical. It turned out that Mr. Sprunt was considered to be one of the best orthopaedic surgeons in Scotland and had learned his craft in the war. I owe him a great debt of gratitude.
Anna returned to London with her family and I spent the next month or so at the hospital in Stirling and then I was taken, with a nurse looking after me, on the overnight train to London and to Saint Bartholomew’s Hospital, where I spent most of the next nine months.
I may not have had ‘a leg to stand on’ for nearly a year, but with the support of nursing staff and rehabilitation at Passmore Edwards in Clacton, I returned to nearly normal mobility.
Nine months in a hospital ward, much of it in the same bed, gave me time to pause and rethink my life. Nevertheless, much of the time in Barts was quite pleasurable and fun – Barry Sheene, the motorbike racing star, was brought in one night and I got to know him quite well. In the summer the beds were pushed out into the sunshine round the fountain and friends used to visit.
In many ways it was returning to a ‘normal’ life after such a long period of institutionalisation that proved difficult.
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