Heron Island, Great Barrier Reef, Australia

Sunday 14 February 2016

Hip Hip

..but not yet quite hooray.

For some time I've been annoyed by sciatica, and for longer than if I'd been a bit more systematic about professional advice. Now that I have, the NHS has ruled out all the potential slippery slopes into really nasty infirmities (in less than a month, three GP consultations, blood tests, X-rays and a check with a vascular specialist - perhaps London may be a little better provided for than elsewhere in the country), and the various exercises and so forth are starting to loosen things up a little. At last the slightly more comic (though perhaps no less annoying) side of it comes to the fore. It's long been a commonplace that once you reach about 50, it is the law that you can't bend down and pick something up without a satisfying "oof!". But that's nothing compared with the variety of flinching, wincing, huffing, puffing, moaning, groaning, gurning and even occasional yelping that comes with a sore hip and an inflamed sciatic nerve: and what's even odder, is that all this is wasted on the desert air, since it's hardly the done thing in company. A pained smile, in moderation, is about as far as one can reasonably go. Even when the man in the paper shop asks if it's the shrapnel that's giving me trouble.

But at least I'm no longer walking as though I'm about to serve two soups (though it may be a while before I'm ready to gallop).

3 comments:

  1. There you are!
    I stop by regularly, hoping you will post. I went away for a week and lo! you are putting out, as it were. Glad to see you.

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  2. I thought that was going to be a link to the galloping gourmet.... probably before your time.
    Sx

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  3. Oh nothing stops me putting out from time to time, Ur-spo. I just take my time, as Miss Kitt said Englishmen do.

    You can come again, Ms Scarlet. I am more than blessed enough in years to remember the Galloping Gourmet very well, though the last time I heard anything about him, he'd become some sort of holy roller evangelist.

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