Tuesday 11th December 2018

I wake up at five after a good nights sleep. I mean I did get jarred awake when I moved, but seemed to be so tired I just mostly slept.

First take of the day was to get up, which did not bring the expected pain, so I could go and get a coffee downstairs.

The plan for the morning was that I had an appointment with a chiropractor at half eight, Jools would take me down Station Road, wait, then bring me home afterwards before she went to work.

My main concern of going to the surgery was that Sunday and Monday I would not have been able to get in or out of the car. I felt a little better on Tuesday, so thought it OK to go.

I lower myself into the passenger seat, sitting at an angle I am while not comfortable, I'm not in pain.

We zip down the road and nip over Deal road down to the surgery, where I can just about lift myself out of the passenger seat and shuffle into the building.

I explain what happened, he looks at me standing and see my back is all bent, so begins the process of straightening it out.

It was going to hurt.

A lot.

And it did.

But at the end I felt in a little less pain, and was told I was standing straight. What he said was that my lower lumber joint had not moved when I bent down to do my shoelace, instead it remeained joined to my pelvis, and the muscle tried to accommodate the unusual movement, but couldn't. Hence the ripping, tearing and pain.

He bends me into all sorts of shapes, charged me fifty quid for it, and Jools drops me back home while she goes to work.

And for a while all is good, but the treatment has created some new swelling, and I am in pain. So, I have a series of exercises to do, and need some rest too, so I call in to say I won't be working, and the expected news that I won't be travelling to DK on Wednesday.

So, I walk round the house, and once the sun breaks through and warms the day up, I go for a walk.

Wasn't sure how far I was going, but I guessed it wouldn't be far. Turns out it was just to the start of the field, a couple of hundred yards, and then I had to get back. And as I walked back along the street, pain spread to my thigh, and I was in pretty uncomfortable pain by the time I got home.

That deserved a brew.

I am whacked for the rest of the afternoon, retiring to the sofa to watch a documentary about gravity. Yes, gravity, not gravy. It does send me to sleep a few times.

Dinner is chorizo hash, which we wash down with a bottle of rose wine which Jools got as a Christmas present from her boss an hour earlier. We made that vanish.

Evening is football, European football, which I sleep through some of, but am awake to listen as both Liverpool and Spurs quality.