The World I Fell Out Of: The Inspiring Sunday Times Bestseller

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Now she has written a book detailing life from that fateful moment through her long months in the spinal unit of a Glasgow Hospital to the initial fears and challenges of returning home and the impact on relationships. From the 1960s on, residents were complaining to authorities about the smell of fumes from the plant; more recent media reports contain residents' recollections of curtains that melted, of factory workers' footprints leaving dead patches on lawns; of children playing with the orange foam from the effluent stream between the factory to the sea. In two incidents an explosion in 1972 and an equipment failure in 1986 the factory released chemicals across the town.

Because you aren’t fanciable and you won’t be, can’t be and never will be. Because the great game of sex, in all its hurts and joys and sleaziness and beauty, is no longer one you can play." This lovely place” is, indeed, gorgeous: a 300-year-old smallholding that’s as impractical as they come. “We came here 22 years ago and it’s just impossible to leave. We should have moved to a little bungalow in suburbia with a tarmac drive that I could have rolled down to go to the local shop and get my own papers, instead of being up in the hills in my eyrie, looking at the view.”Growing up outside Glasgow, Gregor was 14 he asked where he was christened and was told that he was adopted. But it wasn’t quite that simple. And so began an unfolding of truths, half-truths and polite cover-ups from his various families. Unflinchingly honest and beautifully observed, this is a memoir about the joy – and the risks – of riding horses, the complicated nature of heroism, the bonds of family and the comfort of strangers. Above all, The World I Fell Out Of is a reminder that at any moment the life we know can be turned upside down – and a plea to start appreciating what we have while we have it. You’ll be able to push me to the pub in a wheelchair,’ Dave said. ‘And empty colostomy bags, that sort of stuff.’

She doesn't shy away from the toll it took. "There you have it – the core of loss. The stone heart of longing, envy and emotional shut-down which is a woman’s self-defence against disability," she writes. But a documentary that scrupulously balanced every claim with a matching counterclaim would soon disappear into a morass of contradictory detail. And though the ESR is incensed it was not given a chance to defend its research, TV3 argues, with some merit, that the ministry commissioned that research and has long been fronting the dioxin issue. So I abandon my car and walk the rest of the way up the rough path, suffused with an earthy smell of the outdoors, trying not to think the obvious: if you wanted to design a place perfectly unsuitable for tetraplegia, then don’t bother – nature got there long before you.Penning the memoir meant constantly rubbing at her own wounds. "In that sense writing is both my salvation and my yoke because I cannot escape from it." Reid has won Journalist of the Year and Investigation of the Year several times over at the New Zealand TV awards. To properly understand the impact Reid's paralysis had on her sense of self you have to know that, before her accident, she was 6ft tall and very active. Working in a male-dominated environment, her height gave her authority and a presence she might not otherwise have had.

Fascinating place, abrupt old age. There were new tribal routines. Topics of conversation, for a start. The inescapable one: ‘Did you sleep well?’ Couples don’t ask each other this! They already know! But when you’re no longer young hotties entwined all night, you don’t. Now it’s only polite to ask, to celebrate making it alive to morning. It’s an opportunity to discuss cold feet and sore hips. Karen's story is more similar to Melanie's, but her outlook is very different. Her passivity has always fascinated Melanie - can she learn anything from it?

Books by Melanie

On the contrary. The Times has been amazing. It actually did a leader calling for improved catheter care, as a result of what I’ve written.”