Yesterday was the anniversary of the day I suffered a stroke. It was exactly ten years ago, late on a Saturday morning, that my left leg first began to drag. Although not actually lame, it became less and less responsive throughout the afternoon and by evening I began to limp. I put the problem down to a pulled muscle, which I thought I must have aggravated. Initially I was not too concerned but became alarmed when on the Sunday; I fell over as I got out of bed. I have on occasion fallen over going to bed, but never getting out! When I then found I couldn't stand, or kneel or even crawl, I did the only thing left and yelled for help - merely to discover I couldn't speak. By now my wife, mystified at the sudden, silent disappearance of her man, leaned over my side of the bed. Taking one look at the mute form struggling on the floor, she immediately rushed it to the nearest hospital.

Numerous investigations, cat scans and other medical procedures later, the duty doctor concluded I had suffered a stroke. It all came as a terrible shock to me. One moment, I was a capable, competent, athletic human being, the next a virtual vegetable. My left side was completely paralysed and when I smiled, something I wasn't doing a lot of, the side of my face never so much as twitched, which left me looking slightly imbecilic, (more imbecilic, my less sympathetic friends would say ...). I also couldn't speak.

Because my stroke was mild, I was repeatedly told how lucky I was ... I suppose that's luck as in, lucky not to be murdered? Anyway, despite not feeling particularly fortunate, it was less than a month and I was back on my feet. My speech returned soon after. Over time I fully regained all my faculties and have fortunately, never looked back. A delightful side-effect was, because of all the effort I put in at gym, all done in a fanatical frenzy to escape my invalid status; I paradoxically got into arguably, the best shape of my life.

Anyway the stroke a now distant memory, last week I found myself in Cape St Francis, attending a fiftieth birthday party. We had a raucous barbecue the first night. Then on the Saturday morning the boys were booked to play golf and the girls to go sightseeing. I enjoy golf, but elected to be an honorary girl and spend my morning driving around St Francis, rather than drag my hang-over around the wind ravaged course.

One of the girls I was to sightsee with was my friend's wife, Theresa. She was recovering from a massive stroke and two years on, still limped badly, (can you limp well?). She needed a lot of help as she moved around and apart from being able to say "yah", she couldn't talk. She would communicate by saying this "yah" to everything, while simultaneously making an up or down motion with her thumb to show if the "yah" meant "yes", or "no".

Initially this never bothered me, but as the morning wore on with Theresa relentlessly going, "yah" and "yah" and then "yah", I felt for sanity's sake I had to intervene and as a fellow strokee assumed I was permitted to offer advice.

"Tri, if you can say one word, surely this means if you try, you can say other words? Your means of speech are obviously working..." I began.

"Yah", she replied hesitantly and motioned upwards with her thumb.

"Well why don't we see if we can learn a new word this morning before we go meet the boys from their golf game?"

"Yah - yah" she said, not entirely convinced. She looked a bit apprehensive.

"I tell you what; let's see if we can get you to say a word that you can use with passion in any situation; something that will excite you and thereby hopefully enable you to learn it? A word everyone knows and I'm sure is not too difficult for you..."

"Yah...slowly she put her thumb in the air.

I looked her in the eye and said, "Let's see if we can get you to say Fuck?" She never missed a beat and with a huge smile, almost stuck her thumb up my nose as she gleefully yelled, "YAH!!!"

I spent the rest of the morning doing my best to get Theresa to say the F word. At first all she could manage was a lot of Fs and S's. Then we got a "fudd." After that more Fs until she actually, clearly said "fudge".

"A new word!" I said excitedly. But Theresa, scowled, shook her head and said "yah", with her thumb facing down - wrong word. She was hell bent on learning to say Fuck, and she wasn't about to be derailed by stupid words like fudge.

While we were doing our speech therapy in the back of the car, our driver decided it was tea time and pulled into the local shopping centre. With Theresa leaning on my arm we slowly made our way to the restaurant, a bit behind the others. As we walked, we carried on our lesson; even though I was starting to despair if we would ever achieve anything. Theresa was still coming out with lots of Fs and uhs, but not much else. There hadn't been any improvement since she said 'fudge', almost two hours earlier. In the meantime the other girls had popped into a lovely little antique store, which lay on the way. They were still there when we reached it, so we decided to step in and look around. There were a number of white haired old ladies in the shop.

Then it happened. As we got inside the doorway, Theresa looked at me and in a rasping screech, shouted, "FUCK!" I couldn't believe it!

"Well done!!" I cried as I shook her able hand, "Well done!"

"Fuck" she said. "Fuck, FuCK, FUCK!" she yelled. Never have you seen such joy! Ecstatic, but seemingly demented, she repeated the word; as if petrified it was going to leave her the moment she stopped saying it. Immediately 'our' girls cut us dead and became strangely engrossed in a painting on the far side of the store.

"FUCK!!" Theresa shrieked.

The little old ladies split up. Three of them sprinted from the shop as if it was on fire, while the rest did their utmost to squeeze themselves behind some partitioning.

"FUCK! FUCK! FUCK!" went Theresa.

Gradually I got her to calm down and for a moment to stop shouting Fuck. But she wasn't done yet and caused a huge commotion in the restaurant when, asked by the waiter what she would like to order, she bellowed, "FUCK!"

Feeling somewhat shell-shocked, after tea we adjourned to the golf club to meet the boys. Once there we stood at the bar and watched the players come off the course. Theresa sat at the end of the counter, quietly nursing a drink as she waited for her husband Vincent to arrive. About ten minutes later he walked in, greeted everyone, strolled over to Theresa and gently kissed her.

"Hello darling, how was your morning?" he asked, as if talking to a child.

Theresa gave him a broad smile, and then yelled "FUCK!"

Vince couldn't have been more surprised if she had pulled out a wet fish and slapped him in the face with it. But boy was he delighted...!!!

"Fantastic!!" he cried. "At last... you can talk!"