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Monday 9 April 2012

greasy vinyls

sciatica-aaaargh!

greasy vinyls

Sun May 29, 2005, 5:09 PM
...the summer's here, the sun is ris, let's go to where the birdies is!

- so, it's becoming pretty clear now that I must be getting on a bit in years, since I've started receiving a certain kind of catalogue through the post amongst the junk-mail: while I'm still getting the terribly useful gadgets kind of thing - you know, with handy stuff like the pocket torch that can shave a cat in ten seconds and keep narwhales out of your garden, that doubles as a salt-shaker and a puncture-repair kit and DIY exorcist's pocket-pal, waterproof to half a metre, and can even write upside down while singing "I'm in the mood for dancing" - that you suddenly wonder how you ever got on in life without it - I'm now also beginning to receive the fogey-folios, whose devices include things for getting your trousers on without trying - and for allowing you to wear 'em even though you're busting beyond the trim waistline you always thought you had, by application of an elasticated button-y-thing that affords a few extra inches of give; elasticated shoelaces too so's you don't have to bend down anymore, often coupled with high-shelf-reaching grabby-contraptions that don't actually have enough grip to pick anything up; things for kneeling on, and things to help you get up from things you've been kneeling on - and similar doohickeys for getting in and out of the bath, and to stop you slipping on the bath once you're in; things to ease your corns, whiten your teeth, or put your feet up on - along with instructional videos to make sure you don't confuse the various processes and end up with very white feet and teeth you can no longer reach.

- chiefly I'd like to know how it is that they know about my temporal advancement up to this particular point, whoever 'they' may be - presumably some sort of Big Brother thing is on the go - nothing to do with the crappy 'reality' show, nor indeed to do with my actual big brother - who, rather than spending his time spying on my aging process, ought to be bloody well getting on with insulating his loft like he's been promising his missus was gonna be the main goal of the bank-holiday-weekend. Anyway, I guess it's my luck out for filling in the census form instead of trying to pretend I don't actually exist (in which case, how are you lot reading all this? Am I a figment of your imagination? I'd get my head looked at, if that's what it is, fancy going 'round imagining stuff like this!)...

- I shouldn't joke about it really though, a bloke didn't ought to take such things for granted in matters of the body - and actually quite a few of them things would've been handy through last week as it happens, 'cause I went and had a visit from my old friend the slipped disc, come to remind me that a lot of folks don't have it anywhere near as good - usually if I'm getting a bit full of me own miseries I remind meself of the boy whose skin fell off or some other such tragic happenstance that's foremost in me frontal lobes to dose up on the what-could-be-worse of it all, but once in a while anyway I'll get a bit of this sort of self-inflicted shock therapy to remind me that actually I've got things pretty easy...

...anyhoo, this thing occurs from time to time apparently just for the heck of it (I first got acquainted with the phenomenon about half a lifetime ago when I got into an argument with some bloke's car that buggered off without giving me much chance of a retort, stocked me up for about eight month's worth of ouch, which wasn't a great deal of fun if I'm honest).

- for instance it came about in this instance from nothing more mundane than simply getting out of bed too quick in the morning, a quick whee-jump-wrench-AAAAAGGGHH! sort of a thing, and that was me set up for the week with a double helping of twinge-'n-winge - fortunately this was a Saturday so at least I didn't have to hobble the two miles up to work, which would've been pretty bad considering it took me nearly half an hour to get upstairs to the loo after that...and once I'd got there I couldn't even strain against the pain-y-ness enough to wince one out at the water, so bang went the usual routine of keepin' meself regular (thankfully, it didn't literally go bang, or I would've needed to get a new carpet).

I did at least - after some decidely painful contortions - manage to angle meself off the floor enough (also utilising the built-in flexibility of the male version of the tinkle-tap) to carry out at least one of the necessary functions of the morning's rituals: luckily the old 'morning glory' had worn off well enough by this point  to allow me to affect this tricky procedure without widdling up the wallpaper.

Meanwhile though I wasn't stretchy enough by any stretch of the imagination to get up to the sink and do stuff like toothbrushing, so I spent most of the rest of that day with  my laughing-gear feeling and tasting not unlike I might've eaten a tramp's pants for breakfast.

- anyway, those easy-on trousers and twangy shoelaces would've been just about right for then-abouts, 'cause it must've took me nearly ten minutes to get my first boot on...figured I'd force meself into getting dressed at least, rather than lie about in abject misery all morning - and in any case it's best to get mobile as soon as possible with this sort of thing so's yer bits don't start seizing up good and proper...and fortunately there's room enough in my place to do a fair bit of roaming about so's I could work a bit of walkabout into things and straighten meself up - so by the end of the day, so long as I didn't sit down or stand up for too long at a time (yeah, consider all the options on offer, hooray), it wasn't quite so numbingly painful as it might've been. By the end of day the 2th I could just about bend over again, much to the amusement of a mate of mine who dropped by for a visit and tried his best not to laugh as I took the best part of a quarter of an hour to put some food down for the cat. Through some poorly-muffled chuckles he managed to splutter that he felt really bad about my predicament - "yeah," I said, "really bad that you haven't got a video-camera."

- anyway, through the rest of this last week it's been doing a pretty good job of sorting itself out, though I'm not doing meself any favours by sitting here rattling off all this spludge. Meanwhile though this all led me to a bit of a wonder-y-woo about this thing we call the human body, and all of its frailties and failings - granted, by doing that thing of standing upright we loosed up our front limbs for picking things up and thinking about 'em, and finding new ways of using them to bash each other's brains in, in amongst more sideways pursuits like drawing things and writing things (usually to draw and write about other new ways of bashing each other's brains in, but what're you gonna do?), but we also set ourselves up for bad backs, grumbly guts, and knackered knees and necks - all of which rolls off the tongue in a rather rhythmic fashion, but isn't quite so much fun when you have to listen to folks like me moaning about 'em all the time. Theretohereforehence, no more shall I bemoan my backy beknackerment.

Next time, the Facts of Life! (such as they seem to be up to the age of thirty-five, anyway). Or maybe something about trees, and/or capybaras - which quite possibly shouldn't have an s on the end, so I might in fact write something about that sort of thing instead. Most likely though I'll just have one of them creosote things for breakfast and come up with something completely different...

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