Casing the joint

It's quite a while since Body started complaining about me. She's lived in her house for nearly 25 years and it was when she was scrambling over the newly built rock garden, that first year, that she says she noticed me stab her in the back.

I didn't mean to. I'm one of her main supporters, aren't I? Hip, that's me.  One of the world’s great movers.

Body's main complaints, recently, have been about Knee; in fact about both of them. Over the past four years they've seen more X rays than Superman's glasses. On Knee's account, Body has been knocked out while a lady surgeon of terrifyingly direct character snipped a little hole and poked a mini camera inside while she trimmed off ragged cartilage and washed out floating bits of bone. Afterwards Body said she didn't know why she bothered having it done, and maybe there was already too much wear for that bit of snipping to make much difference. Rather like painting over the wallpaper when you know that the plaster underneath is damp and crumbling.

She put up with it.

When Body had to use a stick to walk from the car park to the office her pride was badly dented. She laid the problem in front of the family doctor, who referred her to a hospital specialist. Body says that the hospital that the NHS system wanted her to go to was 40 miles away and full of bad memories, and the nearest – and friendliest – only 17. It wasn't that the nearest didn't do orthopedics; it did: Body's other half had had a stainless steel hip implant there only six months before. It was just that the NHS database hadn't been instructed to let on, to mere humans, that knee operations actually took place there. Remove the word Knee from the search criteria and up came the hospital name, smiling and ready to please.

Body trundled along there last December, between Christmas and New Year. Her retired doctor friend has been telling her tales about her sister who decided it was cheaper and faster to go to France for a wrist operation, but in fact the English hospital system has turned out to be populated with far more exotic breeds than mere Frenchmen. The first consultant was Mr E, whose name suggested he was Egyptian.

To be fair, it was not because of his nationality that Mr E didn't become Body's favourite surgeon. He declared that he did not operate on persons over a certain Body Mass Index. Body was so mad at being told to lose weight that she didn't feel a thing for the rest of the day, but she nearly drove under an oncoming car on the way home; which would have put us all out of business.

She seemed to manage to lose the weight all right though. Six months later, returning to the hospital, she met the sweet softly spoken Irish Mr F. Body thought he was lovely, with his jokes about John Wayne Legs and his apology for the curtness of Mr E, but I wasn't so sure; he agreed that Knee and Co were guilty but he also cast aspersions on my supporting role and had me X-rayed. Me! And on account of his rather exclusive preference for knees, he passed the responsibility on to Mr S who was a “hip replacement machine”. I trembled, but Body didn't seem to notice; once again the anxiety of hospital attendance had generated enough adrenalin to offset our joint attempts at pain.

Another six weeks, and Body paraded us once more but not, after all, for Mr S. His junior representative, Mr H, appeared to be Greek. (So far she hasn't met an English consultant.) Mr H agreed that Knees looked very guilty, but Body reminded him he was supposed to be investigating ME. You can go off people, can't you? Mr H apologised and went to read Body's notes, then summoned Mr R. He was probably Indian. Mr R attempted to manipulate me into positions I haven't adopted for two decades and remarked that I was very stiff. Well so would you be if you were accused of being the root of all evil. I pointed out that I didn't hurt Body at all – it was Knee who caused all the trouble. But Mr R refused to be distracted. And after some discussion, judgement was passed.

I have been sentenced to decapitation. They tell me coolly that it might be either a complete head and shoulders job, or a skim off the top like peeling a hard boiled egg – not that it will matter to me. They'll replace me and all my bearing surfaces with soulless steel.

I've got two weeks before sentence is carried out. But I'll get my own back, starting tonight. I'll really give Body something to complain of. Now that I've been found guilty, I've nothing to lose.