Donkey Derby

I feel like a donkey.

Not hung like one perhaps, and not always as obstinate as one.

But I feel like a donkey in a derby.

 

My rider is dangling the Carrot of Recovery tantalisingly in front of my nose, always there but always just out of reach, and as I strive for it more desperately with each stride, he belabours me the while from behind with an armoury of sticks, using a fresh one every time he breaks one over my backside.

This week's fresh stick is a severely stiff back which makes any movement a trial and also makes me grunt and puff at any activity, however minor, like sitting down or standing up or turning over in bed. My back has been complaining for a while, but this week it has been doing so much more loudly than before. Every time I move, it grabs me round the middle and squeezes the breath out of me. So what to do?

We went to the GP, who at least confirmed that he thought it was muscular-skeletal and not a symptom of some deeper or more sinister malaise, and he will arrange for me to be seen by a physiotherapist. We suspect it is a product of my extremely sedentary lifestyle which consists mainly of struggling from the bed to the armchair and back again, and Julia has been encouraging me to take more exercise, even if it's just walking round the block once or twice a day. She is right of course, loath though I often am to admit it because I like my bed and my armchair. And I'm lazy. Though in my defence I would say that I'm not exactly brimming with energy at the moment.

So, more exercise it is, which, coupled with my continuing weekly massages, does seem to have made a difference in the last few days. Perhaps the carrot is just a little bit closer....

I have to administer drugs to myself three times a day with a syringe via the naso-gastric tube and often listen to music as I do so to relieve the tedium somewhat, pumping the syringe in time to Roy Orbison's 'Only the Lonely', to pick an appropriate example. By such means do I wring a few drops of enjoyment from the husk of my desiccated life. And it reminds me of my dear cousins Linda and Eli, with whom I shared a house in my early twenties. They invented a Dishcloth Dance to alleviate the boredom of drying up after dinner, sashaying and pirouetting round the kitchen brandishing dishcloths and various items of tableware. Happy memories! And it has just occurred to me now what an appropriate use of CHOREography that was. Geddit??!

Finally to the new Archbishop of Canterbury, why not?

He is 3 months older than me and educated at the same institutions of Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge, so I would assume we were in the same year, unless he was very bright and a year ahead or, whisper it soft, a bit thick and a year behind. Whatever the case, I have zero recollection of either his face or his name. And this time it's not just my Forgettery, because I checked with some old schoolmates who couldn't remember him either, except for one who had a vague memory of someone 'quite small?'. So sadly I cannot ring him up and ask him to put in a few words on my behalf with the Big G. Shame. I could do with a little assistance from that quarter.