Nine Lives.   A Personal Essay.

You can include going into a Hospice for a fortnight as using up one of our 'nine lives' I suppose?  If you come out again, which I did, or I wouldn't be writing and you wouldn't be reading.  I know it's cats who proverbially have 'nine lives', being resilient and surviving all that fur ball coughing, trying to go to the toilet and the always near fatal cat flu.   Averaging it out I should think most living creatures have some escapes from death.  Unfortunately, the unlucky will succumb to the first mischance, even cats, and bring the average down.

How many 'lives' for a human then?  We have many advantages over cats, i.e. intensive care and seat belts,  cats are tough and I'll make us even.  'Nine Lives.'

Being born. That's one gone. It's natural I know, and the miracle design of women does it, but it has always worried me to death and I'll knock off one life for it.

Falling out of the cot, pram, off the table or draining board, nappyless. We must have got bumps which were all kissed better.  By the laws of fate, chance and mischance that rule us, not all bumps are kissed away and we knock off a life for surviving all those.  That's two lives gone.

Toddling, Oh Dear.  If we don't remember it ourselves, we can see it happening now to the newest generation. The child grabbed just before it explores the road. Pulled back from too close contact with the ducks. A catechism of leaving the car door handles alone. Learning not to crash off the swings and roundabouts in the park onto the concrete. We may also have been fond of eating things, dirt, marbles, money, anything except cabbage.  A toddlers life is a charmed life, and a good thing too, but we might have disappeared from view at this stage, for the reasons stated, and have used another life.  That's three gone.

First School is fairly safe.  This is the 'playing out' stage, when we really start to discover the big world, but are not too aware of the dangers of it's rites of passage. Where's a wall to walk along the top of? Where's a tree to climb? Where's a higher one? Where's the matches in the 'camp' made of hay bales? Where's the steep hill and the brakeless bike? Where's the water? We'll learn to swim soon.   Personally, 'playing out' with two nine year olds like myself, years ago, throwing stones into a lake from a bridge with no parapet, I fell in.   Here comes luck....The parapet stones had been pushed into the water, my feet could just touch them. I was four feet tall and the water was one face less. I climbed out but I must make a firm mark to cross out one more life for that.  Four lives gone and I'm not even ten.

Big school.  It seems like the bullies might murder you at playtime, but they don't.  This is a low risk time so we can leave our unused lives alone and place them at risk again when the internal combustion engine enters our lives.   In my case, old motorcycles, poor brakes, more nerve or stupidity than skill or experience and I spend some time falling off them.  The falling off was, by chance alone, away from the oncoming Ford Zodiac, or Bus, or into the ditch instead of the bridge arch. Could easily have been killed three or four times but I'll knock off only one life, that's five.

Courting and cars came together, both entered into with a blinding of intelligence. This is fairly normal with the courting but my cars were not driven very safely. I know it now.  Then, in a car that would hardly go at all I judged overtaking distances at about a quarter of what I deemed necessary twenty years later.  I was lucky, or everybody swerved, but knock off a life for that. Six.

Young married life, testing but not too dangerous to life. No money for scuba-diving off the dangerous reefs of Zanzibar.  A weekend in a misty caravan by the sea , that's all.  The sea.....again this is a personal item which is a deadly life risker in my case. We all have such specialities, yours may be allergy to peanuts, blind spot in the left eye, or sun-stroke, any of these may knock off one of your nine lives.  Mine is the sea. Cold sea, and I have never been in any sea that was not cold, despite unfailing re-assurances to the contrary.  All I can say is that one person's warm is another's cold.  I have special blood capillaries, near the skin, nearly outside.  If water is cold enough to start them off, and I believe it's a hair trigger, all my blood comes and gets a freezing and takes the good news back to the heart which slows down to about sixteen and makes me lie behind a sand dune, grey in the face with the black curtains flapping.   We are hard to teach. I've tried this phenomena a number of times over the years to see if I've 'grown out of it'.  Having quite recently fallen, grey, out of a chair in Majorca after an unseasonable dip in the pool. (It's lovely and warm.)  I won't grow out of it now. At a conservative estimate it's one life gone. That is seven.

All our lives we are at risk from outside agencies. God forbid an indiscriminate and unknown murderer. On the pavement, a driver, a heart attack, complete accident.  In an airplane. Fire in the Theatre. Terrorist bombs. Wind blows the chimney down onto your bed. Dreadful thoughts. With average luck none of these will happen to us, though they must happen to someone. Life can be long and we're sticking our neck out for years so we will knock off a life for for the bad luck, no fault of your own demise. Eight.

I started this essay be reference to my recent stay in a Hospice. Illness is a major factor of our 'nine lives' and can use them up like billy-ho.  Cancer is trying to cross one of my lives off.  I am out of the Hospice, 'signed off' for now and how lucky is that! But I must knock off another life for it, and that's nine.

Be re-assured, nine is a purely arbitrary number. We're still here to dodge number ten, eleven,twelve and so ad finitum.