Ode to my big toenail (right foot)

Oh, badminton! Your gods are cruel. In the six years I have been training for marathons, not once was I required to sacrifice my body parts to the altar of running. But my best toenail - my favourite - is lost to me after just three weeks of courting. It's still hanging in there by a thin strip of skin where the edge of the nail is tenaciously clinging to the bed. But if I wave my foot around, the nail flaps in the breeze. It can't hang on for long. I think I could pull it out with little resistance. When I prise it up, I am able to glimpse beneath what human eyes should never see: a tender, infant shadow nail. It's as fragile and soft as a naked turtle, and quite as grotesque. I wonder what terrible child I have created down there, and what it will bring to the world.

Of course running has its own physical risks: blisters, ire, silly walks. But it's nothing compared to badminton. Not once in my running miles have I ever sustained an injury so severe that I haven't been able to use my foot for six weeks, such as when I twisted my ankle during a rash singles game. Nor, interestingly, have my faithful running partners ever hit me in the face with racquet, arm or cock.

I think I shall store my nail carefully in a box with a glass lid once it has left me, so that I can gaze down at it fondly and remember the good times. (Like the necrophilic Prince did with Snow White's cold and lifeless body.) My faithful friend led me to a PB in March. I can still see a dark patch where it was bruised by the Barcelona blister. It was there for me at the end of my last emotional 5 miles with my running buddy, before I left for London. It accompanied us throughout our dreadful 17 miles, when we thought we would perish from cardiac arrest and hypothermia. It's borne the brunt of table leg attacks and crowded pub stompings. It's been at the head of my best foot forward, facing the world ahead of me. It's always sustained me in my longest and darkest miles. Without it I shall feel as discombobulated as Gollum without his ring, as Saleem Sinai without his All India Radio, as Eeyore without his tail.

I will remember you.