Dora (her name) must have first been in her early 30s. She was a bright golden blonde with long hair, dark eyebrows, intense dark grey/blue eyes and a sunbaked golden skin which was in later years to develop the first faint signs of liver spots. She had pointy, well separated drooping breasts, a flat stomach and broad, slim hips. Below the right hip was a small stub which is all that had remained after she had been ran over by a tram. It seemed to poke forward, and from behind was obscured entirely by a shapely buttock. The lone leg was taut and toned, with a graceful and long ankle and long toes with painted nails. Athletic and rangy, she was any man's dream.

Dora was very poor. She didn't have a husband but she did have two children (a lad and a lass, both much older than me). She made a living from running a flower shop -- about as much private enterprise as the authorities in a communist country could swallow. In the daytimes she wore simple working garb -- a 'pair' of stirrup pants (the leggings of the 60s), and a tank-top, a gunky sandal or flip-flop. In the evenings the boyfriends came, and she was to be seen with a pretty dress, a gold-sprayed stiletto and a shiny hanbdbag. She mostly used a single wooden axilla crutch with rusty wingnuts and a very long stem, occasionally employed its twin and sometimes swung with amazing speed and purpose on a glinting pair of commplicated-looking, tiny forearm cruches.

I remember a hot sunny June evening about the time miniskirts came into fashion, before bouffant hairdos went out of fashion, and my pubescent hormones began playing havoc with homework. I was determined to 'sight' Dora, and sure enough, a few moments later I heard the click-clack of her crutches coming from the hairdressers I had loitered in front of. She swung past me aromatically (the workaday aroma was of raw fresh sweat) and stopped a pace or two in front of me. Her hair had been dyed black and shaped into a beehive, and she wore a tiny scarlet miniskirt. High SAKs can't really fill a skirt, and the hem of the mini hung like glued below her stump. Rifling her handbag for something, she suddenly took an elegant sideways hop, then raised and hooked the vestigial limb into her crutch handle.

At this instant I moved over to her right (legless) side and sweetly asked 'Can I help, madam?'. While she refocused on my eyes, I surveyed the stump whose bottom surface was uncovered by the mini, and at the athletic, stockinged inside thigh beyond. 'No, thanks, young man', said she in a husky voice. Then she swayed and pulled the crutch off and loped off into the distance.

On another occasion a couple of years later I remember walking into her shop, again in high summer. A group portrait of the national football team hung on the wall. She wore a short dress and sat listening to the radio with her bare foot drawn up on the bench. Her stump was visible!

By now she knew I was looking at it, but she did nothing. I mumbled my order (flowers for the headmistress on the end of the academic year, as I recall), and she didn't hear properly. 'Come closer, young man'. I moved forward. She didn't move an inch. My eyes stayed focused on the stump. She knew this. The stump twitched, like a fist inside a face mask. Its skin was much paler than that of her other leg. A glistening, complex concave scar ran its length. She moved her hand to it, lifted it and scratched it ('Bloody mosquitoes this time of year!'). As she lifted it, I noticed that only its outer side moved -- the part neighbouring a broad pudenda (hidden behind white panties) just twitched limply. This daring show over, she hopped onto her foot to get my flowers.

I mentioned boyfriends. Dora had no shortage of admirers (what they must have courted a florist with is a mystery!) but none of them 'did the honourable thing'. Several years ago I went back to my homeland, and looked for her. The shops had all changed owners, but one of them told me that she (now an old and worn out lady) had gone to the provinces after losing her son, a drug addict. Her daughter (a carbon copy of the mother but somehow missing the drama of the monopede) had married a 'Hollywood film producer' and emigrated many years earlier.