Oscar Wilde said it best, said the silver-haired man - and he was paraphrasing - a journalist without balance is like Usain Bolt without a pointing finger.
But I have never learned balance, I prefer to work out on the edge where the wild things are. You can say what you want out there because nobody understands a thing you are on about.
Balance?
Pfft! Happily my complete lack of balance has recently been confirmed by an extremely expensive hospital machine.
I believe in hospitalspeak it is called an MRI Scanner. Which was an experience in itself. Scans are not new to me and I looked forward to the MRI with a tangible degree of excitement as I enjoyed early 1970s krautrock immensely - the sound of the scanner's high-volume electronic workings equated to some of the best music I had heard in this genre.
However the noise level can accede to something I could only call frightening, so when the technician asked if I would like him to mix in his iPod with the high-decibel gongs, I naturally said yes.
He had long hair and only Pink Floyd could possibly have resulted. And that was what I got. For an hour. Tangerine Dream meets Pink Floyd meets sheets of metal dropped into a dangerously live malfunctioning power plant.
A consultant neurologist with a colossal brain sent me his report last month: "The MRI scan has shown me a lesion in the inferior fourth ventricle, possibly a subependymoma. A lesion in this location is very likely to be responsible for the positional down beat nystagmus and longstanding imbalance."
You know this man had a colossal brain because he used words like subependymoma and nystagmus where you and I would use cat or dog. Indeed until I received this letter I had always believed a subependymoma was a pole-dancer who worked exclusively in submarines and a nystagmus was a positional down beat nasal complaint suffered by jazz drummers.
So, a lack of balance confirmed, condition longstanding and prognosis benign. I wish I had had this letter to show the silver-haired man in 1966.
The incidents that led me to the neurologist's rooms were certainly the equal of anything suffered by Scott and Shackleton in the Antarctic. Both came outside exciting prestigious lunch eateries after being greeted from behind. I swung around far too hastily and experienced that remarkable feeling of not falling quickly to the ground but of the ground racing quickly up to meet my face, the arms powerless to intervene.
The manager of Strictly Coffee in Bath Street was particularly kind. As I stood there protesting sound health, mind and body, she pointed out my face was covered in blood and an ambulance was best. I told her I was heading for another urgent lunch but she was hearing none of it. My lunchtime was with two very nice men in an ambulance.
I have had accidents like this all my life. I have never ridden a bike, not being able to even get on one for fear I would fall off. My wife-to-be claimed to be the only female student at Canterbury University with a motorbike, so I went for a pillion ride in Dunedin as practice for what I assumed would be a terrifying life aback her monstrous BSA. Craig was the driver, the winding roads of the Town Belt the venue and I lost it on the first corner, leaning the way I thought would prevent death. He said if I leaned that way the bike would fall over.
Balance. Pfft! I don't need to see both sides of the coin. If I am going to twist and turn and contort to try to see the other side, I am just going to finish up in hospital.
• Roy Colbert is a Dunedin writer.
