Good evening. Here is the forecast for the week ahead, brought to you not by satellite or computer modelling, but by my left knee, which has worked unpaid since I turned forty and is now the most reliable thing I own.
Monday
A dull ache by mid-morning, suggesting low pressure from the west. Rain by Wednesday. The weather app says sunny. The app is funded by billions. The knee is funded by ibuprofen. The knee is right.
Tuesday
Stiffness on the stairs, and a single loud click on the fourth step. Forecasters read this as a cold front. Doctors read it as “at your age.”
I used to have a body. Now I have a regional weather station with a mortgage and no warranty.
Wednesday
Rain, as predicted. Heavy. The knee is smug. When I say “my knee said this would happen,” younger colleagues look at me the way you’d look at a fortune teller in a car park. They’ll get one too. Nobody tells them.
Thursday
Bright spells. The knee is quiet. I forget it, jog for a bus, and am reminded in full by the third stride. The bus leaves. The driver saw. The driver didn’t stop. Nobody stops for you after forty.
Friday
High pressure. Warm. The knee feels fantastic. I kneel down in the garden. Getting down goes beautifully. Getting up requires a garden chair, a shed door, and a noise like a camel being told bad news.
The Weekend
Uncertain. Partly cloudy, with a fifty percent chance of me saying “it’s going to rain, I can feel it,” and a hundred percent chance of nobody listening until it does, and then still not.
A Word From the Knee
I asked the knee if it had anything to add. It clicked once. I took that as an invoice for the football, the bad trainers, and the slide across a wet dancefloor at a wedding. The couple divorced. The knee did not forgive.
It’s earned the right to complain. It’s the senior member of the household now. It’ll be the first part to go and the last to stop mentioning it.
That’s all. Bring an umbrella. Trust the knee. The rest of you is already following its lead.