In many ways I had been fortunate to be offered it. I’d been asked to be part of a research project to start hand transplants in the UK, after some successes with the treatment in France and the United States. But, since my operation, it was now being offered only to those with a double hand amputation.

According to my surgeon, it was something to do with the risk/benefit ratio. There was not only the immediate risk to life of nonessential major surgery, there was also the risk—and the cost—of lifelong anti-rejection medication, something that reduces the patient’s immune response, making them more susceptible to possible life-threatening infections such as sepsis and Covid-19, or even simple pneumonia and flu.

The medical number crunchers had decided that the benefit from gaining a second hand, if you already had one, was not worth the risks. I’m not sure I agreed with them, but, so far, I have been happily free of any infection worse than the common cold.

I have seen film of some people born without arms, many of whom can do amazing things using their feet—there is even a professional concert soloist who plays the French horn using the toes on his left foot to control the valves—but there are so many actions that need two hands—actions that most of us take for granted.

You can certainly eat one-handed, but you can’t cut up your steak. Shoes can go on one-handed, but the laces won’t get tied. You can hold scissors in one hand, but who holds the thing you are cutting? And as for knotting a tie, zipping up the front of a waterproof jacket, uncorking a bottle of wine, or playing the violin, forget it. Even drawing a straight line on paper with a pencil and ruler is bimanual.

Whereas I had never been able to play the violin, I could now do all the other things once again. Indeed, the day I could tie my own shoelaces, twenty months after my transplant, was the day I realised that my post-surgery physiotherapy was complete.

But was it really worth it?

Did the risk/benefit calculation take into account the fact that one’s wife might leave you because she felt she was being touched up by a stranger?

The phone in my pocket rang.

I grabbed at it, thinking it might be Marina having second thoughts, but I didn’t recognise the number displayed on the screen.

I answered it anyway.

‘Is that Sid Halley?’ asked a voice in a rather squeaky northern accent.

‘Who wants to know?’ I responded blandly in my usual manner to cold callers.

‘Ah, Sid, it is you. I’d know your voice anywhere.’

‘Who is this?’ I asked.

‘It’s Gary. Gary Bremner.’

A name from my past. We had once been jockeys together. Fierce competitors rather than really firm friends.

‘Hi, Gary. Long time no see.’