Within four days they are on crutches and being discharged - a cruel reminder, as if one needed it, of the constant reproach of spinal injury.

But you can still read my column, which, though a cruel reminder of what you have lost, will nevertheless be some consolation.

Further, it must be counted as only a cruel reminder of the gap in the field between aspiration and performance.

The hopes, the distances, the effort, the ingenuity, the imagination ... but also the cruel reminders of lost endeavour.