Just one big leg-pull

Be careful what you ask Paul Carter, you just might get more than you bargained for as an answer

Do you mind if I ask you a question?” Whenever I hear that phrase, my heart tends to sink a little. It’s something that I’m asked the majority of times by taxi drivers, although it has come from various sources and situations, some more appropriate than others. I dread hearing it because it inevitably follows with a variant of “so what happened to you then?”

This isn’t a new development – in fact I’ve spoken in this very column before about people pestering me with personal questions about me. What’s changed is that recently people have started proffering their own suggestions before I get the chance to answer. “Was it Iraq?”, a cabbie asked me the other day.

This always makes me laugh. The very notion of me being anywhere near brave or gallant enough to be a soldier is ridiculous, I’m a career coward.

People always tell me I should just tell them to butt-out and not be so rude, but to be honest I’m not one who particularly likes confrontation – I am, after all, a pacifist (there’s that cowardice again, just in a poncier form). Think of it as self-preservation.

However, it did get me thinking about how I used to have a lot more fun with my impairment back in the old days, and how I would turn it to my advantage.

Back in our University days, my friend and I used to play a “game” that we found quite hilarious, particularly while travelling on public transport. We’d make sure we were sitting opposite each other, and would make no attempt to communicate, so as people wouldn’t know we were travelling together. After a few minutes said friend would suddenly look at me agog and point, to which I’d respond by looking at my arms and legs and reacting with terror, purely to horrify the rest of the travelling public. I’d some­times scream too for added effect. Maybe you had to be there, but we used to find it devilishly funny.

I used to wear full-length prosthetic legs at school, but changed into the smaller versions I wear now at lunchtime, in order to be able to run around with the agility of a legless Peter Crouch. This meant I usually had to leave my legs somewhere until I had to change back.

Terrifying the younger children became a favourite pastime, by placing them sticking out from a bin, under a bed, and, my personal favourite, sitting on top of a cupboard.

Now obviously, as a respected journalist (ha!) and upstanding member of the community, I would never indulge in such churlish and childish behaviour these days. Not whilst sober anyway. Never. Honest.

Who said not having legs can’t be fun? Anyway, I’m off to give a bus driver a heart attack. Toodle pip.