a message to my readers

If you are a regular reader of this blog, you will probably have noticed that I haven’t posted any new material since the beginning of last month. The problem started in the middle of last month. I’d just been for a short bike ride (35km), and when I got home, I found a note in my letterbox to inform me that someone had tried to deliver a parcel, realized that I wasn’t in and left it with a neighbour across the street.

When I went across the street to retrieve this parcel, I found that it was too heavy for me to lift. I could raise it just clear of the ground, but there was no way that I could have carried it across the street. However, the neighbour had a child’s push-chair, but when I tried to lift it onto this conveyance, I felt a slight pull in my lower back.

You probably think that I should have sought the assistance of a younger—and stronger—neighbour, because I have a long history of lower back problems, which started in 1968. I was working in Libya, on oil rigs in the desert, and I was driving a Land Rover across what appeared to be a gently undulating plain of firm sand at about 50mph when suddenly I was airborne. As I touched down, I felt a sharp stab of pain in my back. I did need some treatment by the rig’s medic, but I recovered quite quickly, and because my lifestyle has always involved a lot of physical exercise, adverse back episodes have been quite rare and easily dealt with, apart from one in 1983 when I was hospitalized on traction for two weeks after an incident when I was working at the Outward Bound School in Hong Kong. The school had just been hit by a severe squall that had caused the school’s pontoon jetty to break free from its moorings, and effecting a suitable temporary repair involved doing things that my back didn’t like. The problem was that I couldn’t just stop, which probably explains the eventual severe outcome. Incidentally, although I quickly returned to full fitness after the hospital stay, I was refused a new contract and kicked out when my existing contract expired on the grounds of ‘doubts’ about my fitness.

The parcel incident that I described above also seemed quite trivial. I expected my back to be okay within a few days, but a few days later, I woke up to a slight feeling of numbness in my right leg. This also didn’t seem significant, and I continued with my routine of long walks in the morning and evening as usual. I seemed to be able to ‘walk off’ the numbness in my leg.

Unfortunately, this numbness has slowly changed to pain, which means that I haven’t been able to do any cycling since the ride I referred to earlier. I haven’t even been out of the house for more than three weeks, apart from a visit to the local health centre for a detailed assessment of my condition, because I can’t place any weight on the affected leg without triggering excruciating pain. And I can’t sit in front of a computer for any length of time either (it has taken me almost two weeks to finish writing this short note). I don’t expect to produce any more posts for quite a while, although I do have a few posts in the pipeline, including a hold-over from last year that will answer the question of where you would take someone who had one day to ‘see’ the Lake District; a detailed description of a bike ride that Paula and I did south of Penrith at the beginning of July (with videos); and the usual selection of photos that I post every year after my stay in my home town.

We’ll be heading back to Hong Kong at the beginning of October, and I’m optimistic that I will have fully recovered by then (I am making progress).