The Watcher.

I had a meeting early in the evening which meant that I would have had to curtail my Wednesday cycle ride had I gone. As it was, my back was suddenly rather sore and the weather pretty miserable, so I stayed at home. It's not that I'm a fair weather cyclist but the pains felt rather ominous. However, I did get out for a stroll to relieve my sanity but couldn't really concentrate on  photography. I did see  an interesting angle on a reflection in a puddle which didn't turn out very well but, having taken it, I raised the camera to shoot the view directly and, having done that, noticed this gentleman gesticulating wildly at me. As far as I could make out, he had walked in front of the camera and then appeared to complain that I was taking his photograph.

Now, three days later, the back pain has worsened and, since yesterday morning, I have been confined to my reclining chair, a cripple being waited on hand and foot by Mrs TD. I am, of course, extremely grateful to my ministering angel and realise that, in the grand scheme of things, my problems are both trivial and transient, but that doesn’t prevent me from feeling rather sorry for myself and the effort required to travel a few yards to the toilet and back is enough to reduce me to a gibbering wreck.

It is, of course, all my own fault; I recently wrote a piece about the last time this happened about years ago when I ended up in hospital and had four months off work - so I was tempting providence. As recommended, yesterday I looked up "managing back pain" on the National Health Service web site but, since I have over fifty years of personal practice in that field, I didn't find much that was useful. The exception was the advice that, if I experience difficulty having sex I should phone the doctor. That seems to be an excellent idea, particularly if they send out the schoolgirl I saw today who purported to be a doctor.

In view of the above, my blips will be few and irregular for the foreseeable future though I may be able to catch up on some back-blips.