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Hello and welcome to the writer Hanif Qureshi's guest edit of the Today program,

much of which reflects on a traumatic year in his life since Boxing Day 22,

when he experienced sudden and life-changing disability after a fall and injury.

Hanif no longer has the use of his legs,

arms or hands, which has affected every aspect of his life and made him see the world and his

relationships in a new way. He wanted his program to talk about the impact of moments like those

and an adjustment to disability. I'm the same person, but I really feel that I lost my sense of humour.

One of the nurses said to me the other day,

she said to me, you're the man that never smiles, aren't you?

I said that's because you never say anything funny.

But it's kind of true as well that you really lose your sense of humour.

The world seems much darker than it was before.

You've gone through a door when you have an accident in the way that I had an accident.

You've gone through a door into a much darker world and everything seems much worse.

But in a sense, I feel that I'm much closer to reality,

that in a way we're living in some kind of nirvanic miasma until something like this

happens and then you suddenly see reality as it is. And much closer to other people, I get the

impression. As a writer, you must have spent many, many hours on your own. Now that is exactly

what frightens you. I spent most of my life sitting in a room on my own with

a door closed, scribbling away, which was my job. And now I'm, I spend all my time with other people

and with much greater intimacy that I ever had with them before. And I can share my pain and

...