Gorblimey hello Mrs. Jones, how's your Bert's lumbago?

After days of nagging warnings, it finally gave out on Thursday.  I am not sure what started it all off or even the exact nature of that which played the part of the last straw, but something  has obviously gone awry in my poor old back.  So, I am now hobbling around like some ancient and wizened old crone from a well-told fairy story.  Apart, that is, from the fact that I do not have a long crooked nose, a wart, or dishevelled, dry, wispy grey hair and do not possess a gnarled and bent walking stick, and I still have most of my teeth.  In fact, upon reflection, not really much like a crone from a well-told fairy story after all, so that little cameo is ruined. 

But hobbling I am, and bent over I am.  It took me around ten minutes this morning to go from lying in bed to sitting up,  and then  to get my legs to take me in some weird half-standing/half-crouching crab-like walk into the bathroom to attend to those oh- so-necessary morning ablutions.  I rue the day all those years ago when, being younger and without such cares in the world,  I washed my hair over the bath, much as I had done since I was but a slip of a thing but clearly, on that occasion, with misplaced enthusiasm.   To find that I couldn’t stand up straight again for hours afterwards came as a surprise, albeit - I suppose - merely one of those early warnings that youth was being left behind as I climbed towards the summit of that hill that would all too quickly reveal its somewhat slippery descent on t’other side.   Suddenly, something I had done for years was not possible any more without discomfort, and has now most definitely progressed to an absolute no-no. 

Whatever I did to cause this episode has well and truly scuppered my plans to film 'Watcher of the Skies' for the next edition of On the Track whilst tap dancing and juggling three coconuts at the same time.  Hmmm, I think we are back to long noses and well-told fairy tales again.

However, I am chuffed to note that I am providing Jon with some small entertainment as I shuffle around, followed by Pru the hop-a-long dog.  We must look a right pair.