Son of Budleigh returns to tell a story
Raw and solipsistic as only teenagers can be, I was an immature 17-year-old when the doctors diagnosed possible TB and carved out bits of my spine. It turned out to be osteomylitis but the result was the same: a spinal fusion followed by three months of lying flat on my back in a plaster cast. The event, coming from out of the blue, should have made me older and wiser. But it obviously didn't because not so long after leaving hospital it was teenage crazy bravado wanting to test the surgeon's work which inspired me to hitch-hike to Iran. I remember sending him a postcard from Teheran. Possibly out of gratitude but probably there was a bit of the adolescent "Aren't I clever?" showing off in the gesture. I thought of my confused teenage years when I read that a guest speaker at Budleigh's Literary Festival, the journalist Alex Wade http://alexwade.com/ had also recently had to undergo spinal fusion following a diagnosis of cervical myelopathy. And then, as if t...