The straight-spined man wearing a morning-clean shirt in the afternoon with a black backpack over one shoulder looks like Dr Christian Jessen from Embarrassing Bodies, the Channel 4 TV show. I’m sitting next to the window of the pub and he’s striding healthily past from the train station. I picture him stopping for a pint and asking me about my body. I would show him the patch of missing hair on my knee ever since the surgery I had at 14 and the scar on my scrotum when some bloke’n his team operated on them when I was seven. I’d ask him why my hands are the size of my Dad’s but my wrists are only half the size of my Dad’s and why my shoulders are not as resilient. I’d ask if it’s normal to have a toe on a right angle and if it’s common for a body not to feel safe with the brain it has. He’d tell me he works for an insurance company in town and offer me a pork scratching.

© Carl Burkitt 2023