I have been having an outing.
Obviously I had my usual morning outing, over the fells with the dogs, which, incidentally, is a great pleasure in these days of balmy climate-changed sunshine. I really don’t care what Just Stop Oil think, if this is climate change, I am enjoying it very much indeed and certainly hope it lasts. I am not in the least a supporter of these hare-brained projects to fly upwards with a cargo of salt and squirt it all over the clouds, we have more than enough rain here already, thank you very much, and salty rain would do the garden no good at all, although it might be useful in deterring slugs.
Anyway, I ambled very contentedly over the fells this morning, occasionally indulging in a sort of pre-breakfast appetiser of fat, sun-warmed blackberries, whilst the dogs puffed along in my wake.
They collapsed on the conservatory sofa when we got back, in their usual way of finding the hottest place in the house in which to bask, and I rushed around getting myself organised for my outing.
I was having a trip to the metropolis, Kendal, actually, but it was all being very exciting.
I was going to get my hair cut, but there was also a second purpose to the visit.
In a spirit of noble fortitude I have not grumbled about it on these pages, also because I do not wish to turn into the sort of boring old person who talks about nothing but their very tedious ailments, but I have got a sore shoulder.
I have had it for ages, and it wakes me up in the night sometimes.
I have tried drugs and alcohol, tiger balm and the massage machine we purchased in Harrods on our honeymoon, many, many years ago, but nothing has worked.
It is making it difficult to fasten my underwear.
A few weeks ago, one of the other taxi drivers recommended a lady in Kendal who had made his back pain vanish like the morning mists on the lake. She is something called a chiropractor, which in my lexicon has always translated as definitely hippie and probably well-meaning fraud.
However, it is a mark of how desperate I have become that I decided to make an appointment, and today was the day.
She was a nice sort of young lady. It is utterly beyond me why anybody might voluntarily condemn themselves to a career which must largely involve shoving other people’s horrible fleshy fat bits around, but some people do, and they also seem to be the sort of people who smile a great deal and make reassuring noises, and she was like that.
I explained as well as I could. It turned out that the phrase I Have A Sore Shoulder It Is The Left One, was not an adequate description, and I was obliged to spend some time fluffing my way through completely unanswerable questions about the nature of the pain, the exact location, the type of numbness, and all sorts of other completely inexplicable queries. In the end I began to wonder if perhaps I was just making it up after all, because she made me do things like holding my arms out and stretching my neck around and putting my hands behind my back, all of which I performed with no pain whatsoever.
She poked my neck and back and waggled my head about. Then she told me that I had a trapped nerve and that she would be able to fix it but it might take a bit of time.
Then she made me lie down and poked it all about again.
She said she was going to try acupuncture.
If I thought chiropracticalness was a fraud, that is nothing to what I had thought about acupuncture. Acupuncture, to my thinking, is more or less in the same league as the Tooth Fairy, although with rather less evidence.
In any case, I am not in the least keen on needles, although fortunately these were behind my back and I can’t turn my head because of the sore shoulder, so I couldn’t see them, which helped.
She stuck some needles in, then poked my shoulders again and there was a loud crack. This was something in my shoulder changing place, not a needle snapping off or anything terrible.
In the end she had finished. She said that it might take a few weeks of treatment before the pain vanished, and that I should come back next Friday.
I am sick of having a sore shoulder, and so I agreed that I would.
I am not sure if it has made any difference. My shoulder is not exactly sore at the moment. It feels weary and limp, as if a hot bandage might be just the thing, although of course I am in the taxi and so I can’t. Maybe when I get home.
I will let you know how it progresses. I think we can be reassured that there will be no placebo effect in this case, because even after my visit I am still entirely sceptical about the whole thing, although I would add that I would very much like to be proved wrong.
The haircut afterwards was jolly good, though.
