You only have two, and it has been my experience recently that while you can get by with one good one for a while, two good knees are preferable. Trust me on this.

All those foolish things you did when young and vigorous? Well, they’re going to come back and haunt you when you’re older and less springy. There’s no talking to the idiocy of youth, however, and I’m sure I wouldn’t have listened two seconds had someone warned me. We’re all bullet-proof and immortal until we reach our forties, and little can be done to stop that train.

I had my knee surgery on Friday, and there’s more to such a thing than I’d imagined. On paper, it sounds cut and dried, but I didn’t have my scope on paper. I had it in the hospital like everyone else. Unlike everyone else, it seems I tend to wake up once put down. This happened once before during a carpal tunnel surgery, but that’s a funny story and involves me – in medias res – illuminating the surgeon on the finer points of correct procedure. I woke up in recovery to a gaggle of laughing nurses and other amused onlookers.

Luckily, I don’t remember much about waking up during Friday’s knee surgery. It appears I woke more than once, however, and they really put the anaesthesia to me. The result was a tricky 48 hours of scoline pain. I don’t wish that on my worst enemy. It’s right up there with labor pain, except everywhere – I couldn’t get out of a chair or even hold a pen.

All that’s over now and soon I expect to be better than new. Better than before all that damage I did back in my late teens and early twenties, anyway, when I was limber and bullet-proof.