Essence and Extension

I had to get the tube to work today, which for a jobbing cyclist like me is a nightmare.  Also, it's July; the sun is shining and the cotton is high, instead of being out there enjoying it, I was stuck in a giant tumble dryer with the vulgar mob.  And they are vulgar, believe me.  The reason for the unwelcome return to London's expensive and shambolic transport system is that one of my hamstrings is playing-up.  It's not sore exactly, just not right, and I don't want to do any damage, so I'm waiting to see my physio.

I have a difficult relationship with health care professionals.  I love them but at the same time hate myself for being so needy.  It's all take-take from me.  I don't know what my physio gets out of it, frankly, apart from £90 an hour (I suppose one could rent a very attractive Russian prostitute for that kind of money, but BUPA would probably baulk at that).  My physio is big on taking responsibility for one's pain management.  I had a problem with my neck some years ago; it was absolutely excruciating.  I mean this was real "can I go on?" agony.  It was debilitating too.  Anyway, he treated me and the symptoms died down, but afterwards he gave me some exercises that were designed expressly to anger the errant neck vertebra.  The rationale for this is that pain has two elements: the electrical signal, about which you can do nothing, and the brain's reaction to that signal, about which you have absolute control.  So basically I was prodding the sore nerve ending with a physio stick until it realised that Mr Brain was going to ignore it.

It was incredibly liberating, this process.  I felt a degree of control I'd never previously thought possible.  For a few months I was master of my limbs and trunk.  Unfortunately, real life creeps back up and gives one a drubbing, just to restore balance.  Just as well I suppose, otherwise I might have ended-up like one of the halfwits who thinks himself utterly invulnerable and spends his weekends base-jumping when he could be drinking freezing cold sherry with his darling wife.

No pain - yes please.

Arse rubbing

I had another session with the physiotherapist today.  Unfortunately, there's a tube strike in London, so I had to cycle the seven miles from my office to get there.  Given that I'm being treated for a shit knee, this is probably not what the doctor ordered.  Are you listening, the ghost of Bob Crow?

Luckily, it's an absolutely tremendous day in the capital, sunny and warm, so it was almost a pleasure to bob and weave in and out of traffic in the Blackfriars underpass.  The only problem with being on two wheels today in fact was the lack of parking spaces.  Everyone who's ever owned a bicycle clambered aboard it.  

There is some shocking cycling to behold on London's roads at the moment.  The combination of moderate heat, men in shorts and crowded streets is an accident waiting to happen.  Sometimes I look on, slack-jawed, at some of the antics middle-aged men get up to on bikes.  To look at most offenders, you'd have to assume that they are otherwise extremely conservative by instinct - the kind who wouldn't buy a lawnmower without having read Which Magazine cover-to-cover first.  But as soon as they hurl their thin white legs over a bike, they become freed from fear or self-doubt.  

They really take chances.  I sometimes want to applaud when one of them narrowly escapes coma-free from another altercation, and shout over "Well done.  The best that could have come out of that particular piece of high slapstick was your not ending-up in a wheelchair and having to be fed with a funnel for the rest of your days.  So, hats off."

And when you consider that most of them are en route to jobs they loathe when dicing with death like this, it really beggars belief.  I don't know how, or indeed why women put up with most men.  Bunch of facking idiots, if you ask me.