This would have been easy enough a few years ago. (Such a statement might imply that there was a time when I was not deteriorating, and I assume this must have been the case, but the truth is I have no memory of it, this time before my deterioration. Which is not to say that I have no memory of this time at all. What I mean is that I have no memory of how it was to have a body which was not in decline, which was not curling in on itself in a way that has led to the one I inhabit today, where any degree of uncurling – which is to say any reversal of the curling process – seems frankly implausible. Which would appear to beg a further question; was there a time when my body was on the advance, bettering itself, progressing towards a peak from which any further progress could only mean reversal, and deterioration? I can only assume that there was, and that this is what was happening before, during the time of which my memory fails. After all, things do not stand still where bodies are concerned, they must be moving one way or the other, they must be on the rise or the fall, it is their nature. If I cannot remember the rise, it must have been a long time ago, before the various elements of the fall arose to fill the space in my memory. I remember a kind of rise; growing out of my clothes, achieving a dusting of adolescent hair and that suchlike, but it seems to me that my body ...