Three years ago, I posted this on IG stories from an NHS hospital room in London after what I had optimistically assumed was a fairly straightforward ankle fracture. It was not, as some of you may remember 🤪
What followed was about three weeks of chaos, morphine, sleep deprivation, panic, fluorescent lighting and the realisation that the phrase “you’ll be back on your feet in no time” can sometimes be complete fiction. I was bed ridden for months and had to wear a boot for about a year before I could walk vaguely confidently without it.
My body has never really been the same since. I still take painkillers. I still do physio. I still rotate in bed at night like a rotisserie chicken trying to find a position that doesn’t annoy at least one limb.
But it also changed me in ways that probably weren’t entirely bad. Chronic pain has a way of stripping away certain illusions and I think I’ve become less glib, less impatient and more aware of how many people are quietly carrying around things you can’t see.
It has also made me absurdly grateful for tiny victories. A decent walk. A good night’s sleep. Getting downstairs normally. Cancelling fewer plans because your body has decided to stage a coup.
Mostly, it just forced me to recalibrate. I have stopped taking ordinary physical things for granted and have developed an intense emotional relationship with supportive footwear. Which, honestly, is not a sentence I ever imagined writing.
In his greatest work, published 150 years ago, Darwin destroyed our metaphysical status in an instant. Adrian Woolfson on how Charles Darwin humbled mankind, in this week’s NS.
Thank you @diego.mallo for this beauty ♥️ 🩷
David Attenborough is 100 years old and still seems more alert, curious and alive to the world than plenty of people half his age. He’s like the planet’s calmest, most softly spoken lighthouse 🌿
Years ago, we emailed him at the New Statesman to ask if he’d take part in a guest edit. Back came the reply, in its entirety: “No.”
Perfect. No greeting, no sign-off, no cushioning whatsoever. Just one word, dispatched with the confidence of a man who’s probably never once worried about email etiquette and I hope, never will.
🖼️: @ryanmcamis
Andrew Marr has reviewed a semi-fictional account predicting how a future Reform government would unfold in this week’s NS. He says it is thrilling – and chilling. I don’t think I could read even a fictional account of this possibility but I’m very glad that @paulcopyrightdavis agreed to illustrate it. I think he needed a lie down after all the to-ing and fro-ing I made him do but he’s captured this abomination of a man rather brilliantly I think 👏
Link in my story
Is it still cool to be Jay McInerney? @finnmcredmond finds out in this week’s NS.
Thank you to @theatraff for taking just the set of portraits I was hoping for 👌
