I have had a slow Saturday where, despite having the time to do all the things on my To Do list, I have managed, largely, to do a whole load of things I hadn’t intended to do. I haven’t been wasting time, by any measure. However, in the greater schemes of things I have erred on the side of doing low priority side-projects rather than the stuff with red flags on top.

I need to clean out one or more hamster cages, complete editing on two h2g2 articles I have had for too long, fathom some jQuery validation I need for a piece of work from my almost day job, write some simplistic documentation for someone I’ve created a blog for, and watch the Grand Prix.

Instead, I have created a new background image for my Twitter profile, created a matching background for this blog, had a walk, revived a flagging blog about my back garden, done some washing up, and watched the Grand Prix.

So, I’m not completely off target – and I’m quite proud of the image I’ve created for the backgrounds on here and Twitter… but those articles have been begging to get finished for months, as has that documentation for the blog. I think I may have to set my alarm for extra early tomorrow and get down to business before the house rises and the telly becomes a distraction. Yes, our nation may be facing economic struggle and political upheaval, but if I can’t get some basic writing tasks completed then I’m in serious trouble. That To Do list won’t sort itself out if I can’t put pen to paper and bang-out a basic set of bulleted guidelines and correct a few errant typos in an article or two.

Last week I had a conversation with someone at work and said that I could manage my time just fine. I think that’s true at the moment where I’m handling work, but home tasks… there I fall short of the ideal. I can little afford to find stress at home when I get more than my fair share from work. I need to keep my home life in order to provide some sort of foundation for greater calm.

Ohm! Ohm!

Right… a little calm sorted – now, back to that list.

Shit!

Now I’ve written a blog entry instead of what I’m supposed to be doing…

I’m getting old, apparently. Actually, according to my physiotherapist, I have bits that have got old before their time. The wear and tear on parts of my spinal column appear to be progressing ahead of schedule for the average adult. I had to spend 15 minutes in a grinding, clunking, banging MRI machine to discover that I’m prematurely worn out.

Currently, as I type this, I feel disturbingly like 2000AD’s Stickleback. I don’t really strive for either the look or the sensations that might be involved in having a spine like this for real (although, it isn’t real… old Stickleback just wears that thing to put people off their guard thinking he’s some semi-harmless old cripple). My back and neck have struggled since the middle of last year, when a creeping tension from my shoulders advanced up my neck and tugged on my scalp until I had a near permanent headache. Luckily, I don’t feel quite so bad now. Now I feel like I’m wearing a nigh on permanent yoke of discomfort that weighs down on my shoulders.

By the way, I’m not looking for pity here… I’ll be the first to admit that I have never exercised enough. Fifteen years ago, maybe I got close, playing badminton one or two times a week and walking to work every day. Then again, I was fifteen years younger at the time (oddly enough). Now, in my late thirties, I make room for a 30 – 45 minute walk (almost) every day at a brisk pace – which represents quite a progression from doing nothing at all. However, hunching in front of a PC pretty much is 50+ % of my day job, which does nothing for the neck, back or pretty much anything involving the spine. I need to take a proactive approach to improving my health, wellbeing and posture – something that requires commitment, time and a little concentration.

Anyway, I saw the physio yesterday and he poked, prodded and pulled at me for 20 minutes. Wherever he located pain, he pushed his digit hard into the spot and rubbed the discomfort away… or, at least I think that was the idea. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t. I sort of thought a physio session might be more physical, with exercises and tugging on a macro level. I found that the actual process resembled a less ‘gentle’ form of manipulation than I would expect from my osteopath (he spends more time with prodding followed by swift acts of bone cracking). By the end of the session, I felt a patchy improvement, though the pain lingered in the right side of my neck.

In the same way as a lot of this medicine approaches each part as an element of the whole, I need to get my exercise, diet, posture and environment sorted to stop this currently situation becoming a regular part of my life. I don’t want pain as a permanent hanger-on.

Seriously, I cannot believe the bad luck we’ve suffered in the last week. I should have been celebrating my 10th anniversary, but that’s been somewhat soured by an odd turn of events.

On Tuesday, at work, I fell over. Now, under other circumstances that might have meant a bruise or a scrape, but I had to go the whole hog. Having spent Monday with no companions to buy beverages – as one was ill and the other on holiday – I’d avoided buying hot drinks at work. However, having been for a lunchtime walk in the chill of this late March and then picked up a parcel from the post room, I decided to treat myself to a latte. I purchased the drink and wandered into the lobby. Under normal circumstances I would have called the lift and gone up a single floor with the hot drink – but with no one else around and the lift having just left for the 2nd floor, I decided I’d head up the stairs. I went through two doors and then ascended the first flight towards the halfway landing.

Here things went awry…

I made it to the penultimate step, when I guess I must have failed to raise my foot high enough stepping forward. My toes hooked under the lip of the landing step and I pitched forward. With a package in my left hand and coffee in my right, my instinct was to save myself from falling flat on my face, while retaining the coffee and clinging on the to bag… a gathering of activities that I couldn’t honestly juggle all at the same time.

So, I recall trying to regain my footing, with a slight forward stagger, and the coffee cup crushed in my hand. Scalding hot coffee erupted from the crushed cup, washing out across the back of my hand and dribbling between my fingers. Now half falling, half kneeling, my head made contact with the thin metal crossbars of the stairway bannisters. Indeed, my head arrived at such an ideal angle that my forehead struck one crossbar and the top of my head struck the one 6 inches above it. At this point, my hand released the coffee cup and the remaining liquid sprayed across my legs, the landing, the wall ahead and the glass of a nearby window. The cup then rolled off the edge of the landing and dropped back down to ground level. Package still gripped in my left hand, I stumbled upright and touched my forehead with my free fingertips – to find a trickle of blood and an already expanding lump beneath the flesh. Confused by the sudden accident, I stumbled back downstairs, went to check out where the cup had fallen and a pool of coffee had formed on the floor, dripping from the landing edge above, before heading back out to the lobby and into the coffee shop for assistance.

The upshot? I burnt the back of my right hand and between the fingers, bruised the right palm and both needs, got a massive plum-sized lump on my forehead, and sprained my left thumb. I would later also discover the lump on the crown of my head where I’d hit the other crossbar and enjoy the whiplash-like muscular pain in the right of my neck, presumably a result of the sudden fall and striking an unyielding metal bar at the end of it.

Suffice to say, while I managed to drive home – the follow day the bruises, sprains and screaming muscles all decided to kick in at the same time. I have slept little over the last few days, probably because I keep accidentally rolling on to a bruised bit in my sleep – but, it might also be because of the food poisoning.

Yeah, food poisoning…

As it happens, I haven’t been the one suffering, but my wife certainly has. On Good Friday we decided to have fish for supper – a little dover sole and a few fresh sardines as a sort of odd side dish. I have no clue what happened – because four people tucked into that fish meal and only one person came out of the other end swearing they’d never eat another fish ever again. My wife got seriously sick, seriously quickly. Now, two days later, she has stomached food for the first time and has been in considerable discomfort throughout. The nausea and vomiting only lasted the first twenty-four hours, so I’m hoping she’s on the mend. Plenty of water and peppermint tea seem to be helping.

I have suffered pain, but I’d prefer that over food poisoning (I’ve had it before, I don’t want it again!).

Today I managed to cook a fine piece of roast crackling pork, with roast potatoes, petit pois and cider sauce – which certainly made for a very different Easter Sunday experience. I’m happy to report that while my head still throbs and my left thumb hasn’t stopped bothering me, the meal proved delicious and no one has complained of food poisoning (as of yet).

I hope that the remaining time I have before returning to work with be hassle and pain-free, and that my wife will recover very soon. I shall always take the lift in future when I’m carrying a hot drink and never eat fish unless it’s either processed to oblivion or has been gutted and filleted by a professional (who I can ideally sue if something later goes wrong).

UPDATE: After due consideration of the evidence and suggestions from others, my wife has decided norovirus -the Winter Vomiting Bug – seems more likely than food poisoning. I’d prefer it stay as the less contagious food poisoning option, but there you go…

Using QTC (quantum tunnelling composite) in the buttons for lifts and pedestrian crossings could finally lead to rewards for those insistent individuals who push again and again in the hope that the lights might change faster or the lift might arrive quicker.

The weather seems set to make January 2010 memorable indeed. I can’t recall the last time the snow fell so deeply – though I daresay it has in the past. I have a vague recollection of deep snow in the 70s or early 80s – and trudging through it on the way to school. I know, back then, people just got on with it. You went to school waist deep in snowdrifts and gave thanks for the opportunity to test out your survival skills. These days, people stand outside the doorstep, fall over and lay siege to the Council because they didn’t grit all the pavements.

I had extended my holiday until tomorrow to give me the chance to spend a couple of days with my wife, children safely back at school. Now, I can see that isn’t going to happen. We even have a friend of the boys staying overnight rather than risk driving him home – largely because his school has already posted that it won’t be open. They started building a snow fort in the back garden, so now they’ll be able to add turrets and crenelations come the morning and set about declaring war on the neighbours.

Ah well… I shall hunker down and ward off the cold with blankets and copious hot drinks. I wonder, with a 70+ mile round trip, continued snow fall and crazy drivers on the roads whether I’ll be returning to work this week or the next?!