Gravel on the road

I am surprisingly upset by the news of Christopher Reeve’s death. I remember being in a dark paint-peeled bar in New York with Dorothy the night they wheeled him out for the 1996 Academy Awards. She yelled out, “YOU ARE ONE SICK NATION” and, apart from being incredibly embarrassed by her outburst, I didn’t think I cared either way.

But it seems I do.

Part of it is the tragedy that someone with such influence, so determined to walk again and who had campaigned tirelessly for stem cell research has just suddenly gone. Maybe all he ever did was give false hope to a load of people with SCI and his passing is just the cold light of day on a sad, quiet Monday morning.

There’s a chill wind here in London today. It has blown the top layer of rubbish off the bins’ weekend overflows, nudging cartons and bottles and bags down streets in a happy, grubby dance. Songs from Real Gone are still chugging and clanging through my mind like a train of demonic echoes.

Our trying-for-a-baby appointment came through from Barts. We will be attending the Centre for Reproductive Medicine on November 29th. The address of that wing of the hospital is, rather alarmingly, ‘Little Britain’. Apparently the health authority does not fund fertility treatment so they have sent us a list of 'general costs' for our 'attention'. Almost everything on the list sounds like it has come from the future. Transvaginal ultrasound scan. Follicle tracking. Semen cryopreservation (annual storage fee £134). And frankly, it is all a bit avian. Egg collection under sedation. Assisted hatching.

There is no charge for counselling.