I’m not wishing to be melodramatic and believe me there is no actual blood and thunder but Christ on a Bike, i’ve injured myself, in a not at all elegant fashion and this blog post, if I can finish it before i totally seize up, will explain how a faulty tumble drier led to my prolapsed or herniated or whatever Disc in my back.

A while before the heating tariffs rose from unreasonable to “bang out of order” and will rise further to “You are taking the piss” in October this year, just intome to hit the most vulnerable of us just in time for winter: “Happy Christmas Poor People” from Johnson and his contemptible cabinet. Anyway, before this all happened I spoke to my neighbour, who is wise in the ways of boiler science, about the rising costs of our electricity since installing a smart meter, now you can actually see how little you are allowed to spend on electric before the Icelandic jumpers need to come out. Anyway we managed to change the settings of our heat pump controlled boiler so it only comes on when its cheap night time rate and then a minimal amount other times, this simple act has cut our bills by at least half. And then the tariffs went up.

Anyway this particular afternoon Mrs T was using the spin/tumble drier (could be either or could be the same, not my department to know the names of such machines, they dry clothes, thats it) Anyway for some reason, maybe wet inside, maybe wet outside, it tripped the circuits, the internet went off, and Mrs T’s afternoon meeting came to an abrupt halt, she breathed deeply and hears the birds twittering outside the window, despite the squally rain. She went to check the fuse board, and flicked up and down a few switches, and sadly got the clothes airer out, for a bit of inside drying action. Later that day friends of ours swapped their very elderly labra-dog for our son as they were taking him to Centre Parks. We would be letting P shuffle around the garden in her perpetual state of blindness, deafness and confusion; she seems happy to shuffle. The following morning the house was baking hot and as we had gone to bed earlier than usual, the dogs had had a long stint from bedtime to waking up time and were panting like dogs who have been left in a hot car or dogs who sleep on a thin mattress ontop of a furnace of underfloor heating. P takes a good 5 minutes to realise what’s going on after waking up and once I had shoved her out of the door I realised she had made a visit in her bed, several dark shapeless poos were nestling under where P slept, nice and dry because the underfloor heating had come on due to the boiler being shut down and presumably resetting itself. Cleaning up poo is a thankless task, even your own dogs so to pick up someone else’s is like changing my best mates daughter’s nappy, like I said a thankless task. Dry Poo is different and certainly easier, more palettable and so with several disposable kitchen towels I scooped it all up, walked calmly over to the bin, pressing the peddle down to open the lid, then leaning over to jettison the unspoken about deposits, I suddenly felt a “pop” in my lower back and a searing pain for many miles around the epicentre.

I put this down to a twinge, like when you put your back out sneezing, and so would probably wear off so I drove to South West of Hereford where I had some work, (none of your business, don’t ask, top secret) Spent 3 hours timidly walking round a building site with a pained look on my face, before lowering myself back into the motor and heading home, usually I’m a bit of a roister doyster on site, but yesterday was in no mood for “Site Banter” and inappropriate conversation, and driving home was a torture, no word of a lie.

And this is now where you find me, in the comfy chair, looking out of the bedroom window, sitting on pillows, drugged up on Co-codamol and waiting for a few days to pass, and hopefully my back to improve. I’m sure i’m not alone in finding pain abhorrent. I didn’t have a cold shower today either, i’ll risk dementia manifesting itself early today.