DO you want to know what the fashionable young man about town is wearing these days?

How about knee length white surgical stockings, shorts, crutches and a seven inch scar...

Senior Son has been in hospital again. Has it stopped him going out on the razz? Of course it hasn't.

This hospital stay was for knee reconstruction, to sort out the spectacular mess he made of himself when skiing five years ago. Three times he went skiing. Twice he came home in plaster. The last incident put paid not only to skiing, but also to rugby, football and most other sports.

They couldn't do anything about it then because he was still growing. Now he's 6ft 5ins they think he might have stopped. Hope so - as it was, they could only just fit him on the hospital trolley and their little bed-top exercise machine.

His father, his friends and I gathered round his hospital bed, bringing gifts and distractions of differing natures. He did not look well.

Still, they let him out early, four days after the op. Getting in and out of the car was a major logistical exercise and he collapsed on the sofa like Elizabeth Barratt Browning. The stairs were transformed into Everest. Getting up them was difficult. Getting down them was a triumph. As he'd stood, nervous and hesitant at the top, I had visions of him spending the next six months upstairs.

But he is made of sterner stuff. Anyway, you can't get Sky on the TV sets upstairs. Sky Sport was just the incentive he needed to launch himself down to the sitting room. Thank you Rupert Murdoch for your contribution to my son's recovery.

Once he was down and back on the sofa, I hovered anxiously with painkillers and pillows. It looked as though it was going to be a long haul.

Ha!

The next day he hopped upstairs for a shower, tugged on some clean surgical stockings, squashed himself and his crutches into a friend's car and went out to the pub. Only for an hour or so, and mainly on soft drinks. But it was a start.

The knee-length stockings and shorts looked, I thought, rather dashing. Sort of Beach Boys meets It Ain't Half Hot Mum. Could start a trend - apart from that grisly scar in between.

A few days later he hopped out to his car, took it down the lane, did five emergency stops with no problem and announced that he could drive again.

As he pointed out, I had driven the very next day after an admittedly minor knee op. But still, in that argument, I didn't have a leg to stand on.

So now - with a few hospital interruptions - life has returned to its normal routine. He whizzes around in his car, with his crutches propped on the passenger seat. The area around the sofa is a sea of newspapers, magazines, drinks, snacks and general chaos.

He'll be on crutches for a few more weeks yet. There's a lot of physio to come and a lot of work in the gym. But by Christmas, says the consultant, he should be as good as new.

"That's good, " says Senior Son happily, "Then I can go skiing again in the New Year."

Unfortunately, there is yet no surgery that re-constructs common sense...

Published: 24/07/2002