Some of them knew me and looked somewhat startled to see me disguised as a patient in a dressing gown with a leg in plaster. Most of them stopped and commiserated and laughed with me at my bad luck. One of them, a particularly pompous physician, stopped for a moment and looked surprised. ‘Fracture dislocation of the left ankle,’ I said. ‘Oh dear,’ he said in a very prim voice, as though he disapproved of the vulgar way in which, by allowing my leg to be broken, I had become a mere patient, and he quickly returned to his room.
