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Moon rises again after almost total eclipse

Moon

    rises again

        after almost

            total eclipse

1    Two snapshots. The first is from a day three    the body produces endorphins so you don’t feel
 years ago in Africa, the moment on a sunlit any pain. Then I realised I must have been blown
 morning in Mozambique when a young up by a mine that was below metal-detector
 Englishman, the leader of a group detecting land range.’ Before the pain kicked in, Moon had to
5 mines, is blown up as he walks down a lane that40 cope with the greatest of the factors that might
 has been ‘cleared’. have killed him: his loss of the will to live. ‘Quite
2    The second is set in the near future, a week simply, giving up was the easy option. I’m sure if
 from today in a park in south London. This time I’d given up and gone to sleep I would have died.
 the noise that shatters the stillness is the gun But I couldn’t. I just think the only failure in life
10 sending 30,000 runners on their way in the Flora45 is giving up and I just had to fight it.’
 London Marathon.6    Having established his will to live, Moon had
3    Chris Moon narrowly survived the first and will to overcome more life-threatening problems
 take part in the second. He is a remarkable man before he confronted the more ordinary task of
 who, in a literal sense, comes as close as possible to walking again. It was while he was still in hospital
15 being a sporting hero, fulfilling the classical50 in England waiting for his artificial leg that, after
 requirement: achievement based on superhuman watching the 1995 London Marathon, he
 effort. The mine blew off his lower right leg and resolved to run the following year. His first
 damaged his hand so badly that he lost that too. attempt at walking - ‘I got really excited, went
 But less than a year after leaving hospital in the out and fell over for half an hour’ - supported the
20 summer of 1995 he had run his first marathon.55 medical view that he was being overambitious.
 Last year he became the first leg amputee to But he was on the starting line in 1996, finished
 complete the 140-mile Great Sahara Run, which is in five hours 40 minutes and raised £20,000 for a
 regarded as the toughest foot-race on earth. rehabilitation centre in Cambodia.
4    The explosion in March 1995 nearly killed7    This year, Moon will take part as the captain of
25 him and redirected his life. He says he accepts60 Team Flora who aim to raise £1.25 million for the
 total responsibility for the accident: ‘I chose to be Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fund.
 there, but the people who live in mined areas have Having met the princess and worked with her on
 no choice. Also, it doesn’t matter whether there the mines issue,’ he says, ‘I wanted to do
 was a de-miner who made an error - and something that was quite simply about turning
30 genuinely don’t think there was - because if that65 tragedy into something positive. It’s all very well
 was the case, it was back down to me because for people to be sad and sentimental, but
 was the boss. unfortunately life is not always fair. As Forrest
5    ‘When it happened I heard this really loud Gump says, “Shit happens”.’
 bang and the next thing I knew I was lying on the8    You can take Chris Moon’s word for it, too.
35 ground. At first I felt completely normal because 
 70 ‘The Observer’