I have much to learn about living with disability: physiotherapy is demanding, and I struggle to find a way to sit comfortably on what remains of left buttock I have fallen over in the street. Another wrote: “My feelings about your illness are a bit like my reaction to the trauma suffered by the whale in the Thames.” When I came home, after a month in hospital, I hopped up the path to be greeted by a sign in the window: “Welcome home, Peg-leg.” Two weeks later, I still feel great, if tired. I have taken the children to school, attended a BBC party and eaten a meal in a restaurant. Was it in the bin? Which bin? Would the white bin be big enough? Once the news had been made public, I received a torrent of letters, calls and e-mails from listeners.

My favourite came from two members of the World at One audience: one said he had been deeply affected by my absence, rather as he had been by the withdrawal of the Routemaster bus. It made the absence less obvious, presumably reducing the psychological stress on patients and visitors After a while I asked for the pillow to be removed. I suppose this was the start of my coming to terms with my new condition Barbara and I fell into a jocular approach. She relayed with delight the comment of the man who came to fit the stair-lift “I love my job,” he said. “Everyone I meet is worse off than me.” And then there was the fascination of my children, who told everyone that Daddy’s leg had been removed with a VERY big pair of scissors. One conversation between the boys and their friends involved a lengthy debate over where the leg had gone. It took me a while to notice that the nurses always put a pillow under the sheets where the leg should have been.

Poor Barbara was left trying to give the boys a good time in unpromising circumstances – including a visit to a miserable, unshaven invalid in a hospital bed. It took a few days to establish a medication regime to restore my equilibrium And the missing leg? I wasn’t ready to look. It was hard enough learning to drag myself on to my side so the wound could be dressed. The experts say that these will gradually climb higher until they reach the stump, when the phantom will be laid to rest.