Hunchback

Something terrible is happening: I’m getting a back problem. It started months ago, with the sore neck here, the odd twinge there. Turns out that was transferred pain. The real source is where my kidneys are, but now I have replaced my pathological fear of kidney failure with the probability of a more muscular complaint, I fear that soon there will be a new entry in my imaginary telephone book, under ‘C’ - for chiropractor. 

Years and years of bad-postured writing at various different desks over the course of my education seem to have collided with the contained hysteria of having no purpose. This has only been exacerbated by several years of intensive typing activities and heaving literary theory textbooks around. My natural posture was never poker-straight, but recently seems to have deteriorated to that of a defiant hunchback; soon I will become shrunken and wizened, like my 90-year old grandmother. 

This evening, I look like a human question mark. I am bent, but not curious. Pain takes the curiosity away. Pain is introspective, it doesn’t give a damn about the rest of the world, it concentrates on itself. Not that I have anything of great note to be getting on with; the extent of my responsibilities are taking the dog to the vet and picking up dry-cleaning. Soon I’ll be retreating back to my tea-stained dressing gown and crappy novels, only bent over in some peculiar position in order to avoid looking like a down-trodden peasant. It brings tears to the eyes and moans to the lips, so god only knows what sciatica is like. 

Lying here, contemplating my gradual descent into muscular agony, a thought has occurred to me. In fact, two thoughts. One is, did my choice of shoes tip my back over the edge and down the slippery slope towards a painful middle-age? Is my rare indulgence in shoe vanity responsible for my worsening condition? I confess that there have been three occasions in which I have fallen off said shoes, whether inebriated or otherwise. Once was in the changing rooms of the shop. So could this be nature’s warning to start wearing MBT shoes in future? Boat-shoes they may be, but they’re kind to the spine... 

The other is, has my pathological hatred of massages aggravated a condition that could have been periodically relieved? I am fortunate enough to have had a number of spa experiences, and each time I have been desperate to avoid the complete torture that is any kind of massage. This is born out of my inability to relax (inherited from father) and irrational intolerance of people that I don’t know ‘touching’ me (also inherited from my father). But of course, each time I declined the opportunity to be pummeled and prodded by a woman in a lilac baby-suit, I was denying my muscles the opportunity to relax just a little. And as a result, they’re punishing me. 

My greatest fear is that I will eventually become a regular viewer of daytime television, although apparently my last three years as a student entitled me to this habit..yet I never felt the need to touch base with ‘Des and Mel’. Regardless, I still fear the possibility that I will grow fond of Jeremy Kyle and his visiting cretins, and may begin to regard them as proper human beings. However, too many other shows appear to rely on the ritual humiliation of members of the public, whether it be demonstrating your rendition of a whale being machine-gunned on X-Factor, or being shouted at by a professional chef because you don’t know what julienne vegetables are. 

In essence, I fear that if this back pain gets any worse, I will spent increasing amounts of my time horizontal on the sofa, with my head at a 45 degree angle at the TV, at a time in my life where spending more time than necessary in a horizontal position is really nothing less than soul-destroying. The purposeless existence of the unemployed English graduate is enough motivation to keep my back teetering on the brink for a while longer, I hope.

Lucy

My dog is old; 91 in human years. Her name is Lucy and I think she has begun to suffer from some form of doggy dementia, now that she is well into her twilight years. She spends her days, lying on her beanbag, looking as if she bears the world’s problems on her furry shoulders: as though she is in charge of Middle Eastern peace talks or responsible for the compilation of the British Rail timetable...but she can’t quite remember why. She wears a permanently miserable expression. I’ve become convinced that she has never ever really looked truly content at any point in her doggy existence, even as a puppy. My mother is quick to assure me that Lucy’s dour expression is a consequence of bone loss in her wobbly, worn old teeth. I personally believe she is in an enduring state of disgruntlement. 

Occasionally, she plods out into the garden, and will quite happily remain there for about ten minutes or so, staring into the middle distance, until she finally decides to leave what my father terms ‘a product’ in one specific corner of the garden. More often than not, she does not even manage this, but just stares, vacantly, with her cloudy, cataract-riddled eyes.

It had reached the point in the household where we would openly discuss what would happen to Lucy “once her time comes”. My father would suggest burying her in the garden, to which my mother would reply “Oh Martin, how could you! She’s only lying over there!”, perhaps forgetting that Lucy has been as deaf as a post since 2009.  

She has a serious eating disorder; this is because she is also a pathological liar. People come and go in our house all the time, and Lucy manages to convince each resident or visitor that she has been starved of nourishment for a week. Out of ‘desperation’, she would raid the bin each time the house was empty. 

She is also stupid. This is because her life-time habit of bin-raiding recently caught up with her. She has her own food, yet the fool decided that the bin would hold a more promising variety of delectable treats. Why on earth she thought a piece of corn on the cob would be palatable, I don’t know. Regardless, Lucy somehow manages to swallow it, unbeknown to my family and I. So follows three days of a literal playing-out of the term ‘sick as a dog’. By Wednesday, however, things had taken a significant turn for the worst. I thought her tiny little dog brain was finally succumbing to its slow but expected demise, little more than a useless sponge that told her to do two things: 1) stare into space some more 2) inexplicably dig holes in the flower border. A rushed visit to the vet revealed an ‘obstruction’ in the shape of a corn on the cob, and immediate surgery. Had we left it any longer, the vet said, then Lucy would have died. 

Naturally, Lucy is blissfully unaware of this. Dogs do things that humans are unable to do (except psychopaths or people reared by wolves). Dogs have no conscience; they do not suffer from feelings of guilt. Lucy remains unfazed by my father’s numerous barbed remarks over the ominous vet bill. She will not wake up in the night, drenched in sweat, thinking about the astronomical costs of anesthetic and gastrointestinal recovery food. Dogs don’t suffer from existential angst. 

One look at Lucy’s greying old face and shaved, bruised legs where her drip had been, and I started to question the point of animal and human existence. Why are we here? Lucy lived to eat, that much was true, and little else ever popped into her tiny little brain. But now that she’s home and recovering, her strange behavior has evaporated into little more than sleeping and eating mouthfuls of cat food, and eyeing each of us with equal amounts of disdain. Naturally her sleep is being constantly disturbed by stumbling, swearing people. Not to mention the furry intervention of the youthful equivalent of her great-great-great-great-great-great-great granddaughter, Ella, shoving her nose into Lucy’s stitches with great enthusiasm. 

Yet, she appears to take this all in a spirit of haughty, ancient doggy tolerance, proving that at the age of 91, there’s life in the old gal yet.