Viva Brighton Issue #62 April 2018

COLUMN
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Amy Holtz
The truth is, I’m a Minnesotan
‘There’s worse trouble at
sea.’ This is what the lady
on the news is saying as she
shovels snow off her car
and I look down at my lame
arm in a cast and think,
‘Hmm. Maybe she’s right.’
So, yeah, like so many
graceless ten-year-olds
before me, I’ve broken
my arm. This is a peculiar
cross for a person my age
to bear. You don’t often see
people like me, at my age, hunched over and
wandering about in a calico sling with a grubby,
two-finger gun permanently unholstered in a
kind of demented cowboy threat.
How did I manage it? Well, let’s just say it was
a freak beach volleyball accident, the likes of
which have never been seen before, and are
unlikely be replicated. I felt very sorry for
myself – sorry that my once strong, capable
hand is now a forlorn shadow-puppet of its
former self, defiant in its uselessness – just like
the public toilets on The Level. ‘It’s not my
fault I don’t work,’ they seem to say. ‘You did
this to me!’
Each day is a lesson. If you’re lucky to have
the use of both hands, have you ever tried
brushing your teeth with the wrong one?
It’s an hour-long circus of frothy frustration.
Doors are fun, as are keys. Food in a jar?
Forget it. Even mittens and gloves – whose
sole purpose in life is to lovingly caress your
frigid digits – want no part of this clumsy,
entombed catastrophe. And from the moment
my arm disappeared beneath a grey huff of
plaster, I’ve been having a recurring fever
dream about scratching,
clawing it out, free into
the air, with my weak,
inferior fingers. But
there’s one bright spot
to being off my bike for
the time being, because
it’s hard to absorb what’s
going on when your eyes
are always glued to the
bumper of a commuter’s
meandering BMW. Huge
chunks of my day are
now spent outdoors. A ritual trudge through
Preston Park, through the misunderstood
artery of Elder Place. Fighting the swirl of
wind and, I blink, snow, as it whips past City
College. Negotiating the cobbled camber of
Kensington Gardens, dodging the icicles that
dangle above.
These are unprecedented times and every mile
I walk, catching the eye of passersby, is telling
of them. Frailty is our future and I see now
how quickly we look away as soon as we spy
it – across the coffee shop, lumbering along
the pavement. When people see me coming,
there’s an almost imperceptible twist of the
lips, an involuntary shudder.
But it’s not just me they turn from. I’ve got
a broken arm, but I still have my bed, some
walls, snacks, a long paintbrush to slide into
the gap between my withering limb and its
exoskeleton, rummaging to find the source of
the most excruciating itches ever encountered.
I am lucky, because it’s still cold outside and
some of our neighbours have no homes, no
beds, no food.
There’s much worse trouble at sea.
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