AN AFFRONT

A hospital dispatch, and some answers to your questions.

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Right at the beginning of one of my favourite plays, Chekhov’s The Seagull, the character of Medvedenko asks the maudlin Masha, “why do you always wear black?” She replies, “I’m in mourning for my life.” As far as I can remember, we never really find out what life exactly she is in mourning for, but it is a line that has resonated with me a lot lately, being in mourning for one’s life: it haunts me, as a piece of music can sometimes.

I once had a full and enjoyable life, and then one day I had an accident, and that life was over. But I didn’t quite die; I almost did. As I lay on my head in Rome, on a wooden floor in a pool of blood, with Isabella crouched down beside me, I felt death coming for me - I believed I had just a few breaths left, and I remember feeling enraged that I had to die in this ignoble way, when I was quite keen to carry on living, and there were plenty things I still wanted to do. It was an affront, I wasn’t ready, that was what annoyed me. I thought of my dear friend Roger Michelle, who was younger than me, who not long ago went to bed and failed to wake up in the morning.