Did you have any serious accidents as a child?

No, as a child I didn't break any bones or even have anything that needed stiches. I do remember one spectacular fall off a fallen and slippery tree trunk that I was balancing/walking on,where I ripped my thigh on a protruding branch and pedalled home, bleeding, on my tricycle - so I must have been quite young. That was in Whitley Bay.... when I got home my Mum took a horrified look, I remember her face, and as she cleaned me up she said 'You'll be scarred for life'.

It made a huge impression on my young self and in fact she was right, I can still see the long faint scar from that wound. Another nasty flesh wound was when I was trying to climb over a fence to get out of a farmer's field. Sadly, the fence was partly barbed wire and it broke as I climbed over, ripping a gash behind my knee. I was taken to the doctor and tho' it didn't need stitches, I had it dressed and was put on a course of antibiotics.

Antibiotics were relatively new back then and that made quite an impression on me. It seemed like I was being prescribed a miracle and very exclusive medication. I have just remembered that I did have stitches once, when I got my right pinkie finger crushed on the hockey field. My mum was summonsed to the school and took me in a taxi to the local hospital in Whitley Bay, where they stitched up and dressed the mangled pulp.

I eventually lost the nail and, to this day, the tip of the pinkie and the nail are a different shape and size to that on the left. When I was older, about fifteen, and should have known better, a friend and I took out my brother's homemade go-kart. I totally lost control going down a slope, of course it had no brakes, and deliberately steered into a wall to stop the kart. My legs were stretched out in front of me.

My feet were first and hit the wall followed by the front edge of the gokart into the back of my left leg. I nearly passed out with the pain and shock but I suppose I was lucky not to break anything,and developed the most spectacular bruising on the back of my leg. The brusing eventually resolved but I was left with a permanent duck egg sized hard lump just above my achilles tendon. It was eventually diagnosed as a 'calcified hematoma' and for some reason our doctor thought it would help to cast it, so I hobbled around with a below knee cast for six weeks.

It made no difference at all. When I was a physio student, I had one of the surgeons at King's College Hospital look at it and he surgically removed it. That meant an over night in hospital and again I still have the scar and no sensation there, but at least not the weird shaped leg that I had.