If I've been a little quiet these last few days, its for a variety of reasons.
The biggie is that today was "Meet The Surgeon" (soon to be a hilarious screwball comedy featuring Robert De Niro squandering what little credibility he has left) and I was nervous.
Hell, I pretended it was the curry last night, but the nervousness was clearly making itself felt all day.
After a ride in The Most Expensive Taxi In The World, and listening to the driver complaining that his wife didn't understand him (in actual fact, it sounded like she understood him completely. Most women do) I found myself in the unprepossessing town of North Cheam. South, East and West Cheam were not present. Possibly victims of some Bin Ladenesque conspiracy involving water melons and aardvarks. WMD are so last year, dahling.
As a private hospital, it was depressingly bright and clean. Nurses smiled and the magazines were only marginally out of date, being concerned about Princess Diana's new boyfriend, rather than the outrage at Grace Kelly marrying some obscure royal you get in the elderly publications at my local doctors surgery.
I was called in. The surgeon peered at me through thick, thick glasses. I was sure he wasn't wearing them the last I saw him. "Mr Single?" he said in thickly accented English, "We have found your problem" and there, on the lighted panel behind him was my spine in all its glory. Slipped disk, kinked nerve (well, I *am* pretty kinky, if truth be told), and worn vertibrae.
All good news apparently. The damage is healing. The last 6 weeks of caution have paid off. Another 6 weeks and this boy is going skiing. The benefit of fixing it 'properly' with surgery are outweighed by the risks. So the man is going to leave me alone for now, on one condition. I have to build 'trunk' strength.
This, darlings, means a six pack stomach rather than the six pint stomach I currently possess. The thought of a man in Mr Magoo glasses poking about in my back with a scalpel is all the inspiration I need.
After this last beer.
