I’ve now spent most of the last two weeks flat on my back, wincing. Occasionally, I try to do a bit of pilates, or go for a five minute hobble.
Once again, apologies if emails are going unanswered but I’ve only been in to the office once in that time. I had to come back home after half an hour. Apart from one lunch meeting and one unavoidable trip yesterday, I’m mostly doing ceilings and books.
Backs are funny things. Mine dates – at least the injury does – to the flight home from Australia after the 2003 Rugby World Cup final. Being a less than enthusiastic flyer, I dosed myself up with sleeping pills and whiskey and slept, jammed into a seat next to my rather large brother in law, for most of the way. I’m still paying the price.
During this interregnum, Inspector Gadget has passed 10 million hits. Approximately two million of them are people saying ‘First!’ and conversations-within-conversations involving regulars exhibiting varying degrees of sanity, but there is an awful lot of solid info about modern British policing, by people who appear to be serving officers. Their view seems to be, it’s terrible and is going to get worse. Quelle surprise. Despite this, and despite his actual experience in catching real criminals, David Cameron and Theresa May prefer on policing to listen to Blair Gibbs, a man who has no experience of the job, or – as far as I can see, I’m happy to stand corrected – any real job (ie making something people want to buy or providing a necessary service that people are willing to pay for).
Cricket fans – and, in fact, anyone interested in sport, the pressure on international sportsmen and the murky world of high stakes gambling – should really, really listen again to this week’s truly fascinating 5 Live documentary about Hansie Cronje.
And, as Charles Taylor goes down for a nifty fifty, Theodore Dalrymple’s Monrovia Mon Amour is now available to read as a Kindle eBook.
Right, time to lie back down. Old time bluesman Lowell Fulson (here recording as Lowell Fulsom) puts it nicely for me:
Sympathies on the back. Pilates worked wonders for me. Great song at the end too!
Calum
Sympathies on the problems with your back. I’m just coming off the end of several months enforced recuperation after smashing my wrist. I don’t know about you, but I always find it difficult getting a balance between doing nothing (as the doctor and physio recommend but leaves me bored and irritable) and cracking on regardless (which usually makes things worse and makes me even more irritable).
Yes, that is a tough one. At least with wrists, I suppose depending on the scale of the damage, they can repair it; with backs, they a) often can’t identify the source of the pain and b) are chary of doing anything as they’re worried about the spinal column.
On the mend now, thanks to the wonders of Tramacet and Doom Bar…