Grey morning (probably, I didn\u2019t see it), becoming hot and sunny in the afternoon.<\/p>\n
Are you sitting comfortably?\u00a0 Right, then I\u2019ll begin.<\/p>\n
So here is a little puzzler to start the day.\u00a0 What condition is it that I\u2019ve got that completely incapacitates me, keeping me from working & playing, and makes me thoroughly miserable?\u00a0\u00a0 It\u2019s not my bad back – although that tries every so often;\u00a0 it\u2019s not my tennis elbow, nor my RSI.\u00a0\u00a0 It\u2019s not my sciatica which I get from time to time.\u00a0 It\u2019s not a cold (or even man flu), or any other sort of fever or headache or\u00a0 migraine or whatever.<\/p>\n
Give up?\u00a0 Well it\u2019s a problem of a delicate nature, so don\u2019t read on if you\u2019re squeamish or sensitive to graphic descriptions of pain.
\nIt\u2019s hemorrhoids!<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t know where they came from (ha ha) but yesterday, between making a cherry crumble and going to bed I started to get an almighty pain \u2026 \u201cdown there\u201d \u2026. and as a result I didn\u2019t really get any sleep last night.\u00a0 I knew what it was of course because I have had them in the past, but nothing as big or as painful as this.\u00a0\u00a0 It was excruciating.<\/p>\n
I tried to get out of bed this morning but it was clear I wasn\u2019t going to be able to have a normal day because it hurt standing, walking, bending and sitting.\u00a0 Lying down was just about okay, so I just had to lay in bed into the afternoon.\u00a0\u00a0 I found some ointment in my comprehensive first-aid box (with a \u2018use-by 2004\u2019 label \u2013 yeah as if that was going to put me off!) and I took some anti-inflammatory pills in the hope something might anti-inflame, but otherwise I was completely incapacitated for most of the day.<\/p>\n
It was a sunny afternoon, so I thought I MUST drag myself out of bed for some of the day.\u00a0 I put out the deckchair, sat in that and started reading a book and playing guitar to take my mind off things a bit.\u00a0 During a particularly bad rendition of\u00a0 \u201cSo Lonely\u201d, by The Police I heard someone call from around the corner.\u00a0 At first I thought it might be someone from the French musicians union to complain (or complement!), but it was an English voice calling hello.\u00a0 It was my English neighbour \u2018Ken\u2019, bringing some post for me that had been delivered to his house by mistake.\u00a0 Ken\u2019s not his real name (I don\u2019t think), but I can\u2019t remember his real name and he looks like a Ken to me.\u00a0 He speaks (a lot) in a slightly Yorkshire accent, although I don\u2019t think he\u2019s from Yorkshire, but one or two counties down from that – you know, he\u2019s a northerner (I think Nottinghamshire or Lincolnshire or wherever).<\/p>\n
He didn\u2019t want to stop for a drink because he said he had a barbeque to attend to, but it didn\u2019t stop him chatting for about a half hour in which he covered every topic under the sun and told me everything about his life, but didn\u2019t draw breath or find out anything about me.\u00a0\u00a0 Just the way I like it actually.<\/p>\n
Went to bed early, and started watching Angela\u2019s Ashes, which Ilka\u2019s parents had sent me because I asked for some German-speaking\/subtitled DVD\u2019s that could assist my German learning.\u00a0\u00a0 I haven\u2019t seen the film before, and I watched it in German with German subtitles just to see if anything made sense at all.\u00a0 It seems quite easy to follow although not very uplifting with death, depression, gloom, rain, poverty and misery throughout the most part.\u00a0 It almost made me feel comforted that my only pain was piles.\u00a0 Almost, but not quite.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Grey morning (probably, I didn\u2019t see it), becoming hot and sunny in the afternoon. Are you sitting comfortably?\u00a0 Right, then I\u2019ll begin. So here is a little puzzler to start the day.\u00a0 What condition is it that I\u2019ve got that completely incapacitates me, keeping me from working & playing, and makes me thoroughly miserable?\u00a0\u00a0 It\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1310","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-living-in-france-2007"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.splunge.co.uk\/richnilk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1310","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.splunge.co.uk\/richnilk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.splunge.co.uk\/richnilk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.splunge.co.uk\/richnilk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.splunge.co.uk\/richnilk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1310"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.splunge.co.uk\/richnilk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1310\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1312,"href":"https:\/\/www.splunge.co.uk\/richnilk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1310\/revisions\/1312"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.splunge.co.uk\/richnilk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1310"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.splunge.co.uk\/richnilk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1310"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.splunge.co.uk\/richnilk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1310"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}