Broken leg and Lord Malvern

Perhaps it is the wet, cold weather which jogged this memory. When I was 15 I went to school at Lord Malvern in Salisbury. It was quite a modern school and was co-ed which was very pleasing. It was also, for some reason, very cosmopolitan. In my class there was Titiana (Italian), Manuel (Portuguese), Hettie (Dutch), a Hungarian girl and several other nationalities. Needless to say we were all European (White). We had a wonderful blue stripe blazer and some eccentric teachers. When Ian Smith declared independence from Britain we were told to sit out on the lawn where we solemnly listened on the school PA system. We all felt excited and were blissfully ignorant of what it was all about. Some of us in the school possibly died in the succeeding war - I don't really know as I left the school by the time I was 16.

In winter I was taking part in a rugby practise - my side the U15C or something like that were practising against another team. I ran past my opposing centre and our legs must have tangled in one of those freak accidents. I didn't even have the ball, for Pete's sake! I heard an almighty crack which wasn't just subjective because everyone on the field heard it and stopped in their tracks. I found myself on the ground and when I tried to move my right leg I felt the bones grating. No pain - but just because I had a sense of big damage I let out a yell. I was carried off the field and put in the teacher's car. No Emergency services in those days. He drove me to hospital while I held my leg together - if I let go it would bend in an alarming way.

I was left to wait on a wheelchair in a cold corridor for a long time until my parents arrived. I was still quite stoical and watched while a plaster cast all the way up to my pelvis was wrapped on. The doctor let it dry and then cut a slit saying quite laconically that it would swell quite a lot.

Swell it did and with it came lots of beating pain. Nobody even mentioned pain-killers, nor after 3 weeks of being bed-ridden did anybody mention physiotherapy. I actually had quite a good time reading - I read War and Peace I had a moment of glory when I arrived at school with my plaster cast and I became a practised hand with the wooden crutches.

I played Rugby the next season without a qualm so I must have recovered well enough.

That was 43 years ago. I suppose the medical basics were the same but I could have done with a few sessions of physio, I guess.