Show Some Backbone - Monday

‘Oooh, dear. What happened to you?’ Asks my chiropractor, with an unwelcome chuckle. A tsunami of sarcasm isn’t best directed at someone who will have you bent double in your underpants shortly, so I just grimace and remind him I wouldn’t have booked an emergency appointment at £45 a pop, without a whole lot of agony.

I hobble awkwardly in to the waiting area, where two other people are slumped in the leather armchairs. Clearly hypochondriacs. I shuffle straight to the upright chair and lower myself gingerly to the squab. I look like one of those losers who ship up at A and E of a weekend, with a foreign objet wedged up their nether regions. Only I didn’t fall on to the vacuum cleaner nozzle while doing the housework naked - at least not this time…

‘What happened?’ Asks the chiropractor wearily, once I’m in the treatment room and down to my underwear. Socks still on. There’s no way they are coming off until he straightens my spine. It took my wife several goes to put them on me and she’s usually telling me to take them off when I’m on the bed.

‘I just woke up like this.’ I tell him pathetically. If he asks if I jumped amorously off the wardrobe the previous evening, I’ll take my business elsewhere - at least when I’m able to walk without resembling Notre Dame’s most famous bellringer.

‘Try and bend forward to touch your toes.’ Suggests the man softly.

He might as well ask me to levitate and do a trick with stale loaves and fish leftovers.

‘My, that is tight.’ Says the bone-bender. No shit Sherlock. ‘You’ve got yourself in a bit of a pickle haven’t you?’ He continues, as I resist the urge to verbally flay him with derision.

‘Now just try and relax.’ Says the man as I lie face down and he tugs at the waistband of my underpants. If anything I tense even more, and that’s before he really shafts me with  a bill most high-class hookers would baulk at on a cost per minute, while bent over making animalistic sounds.

‘This is going to take several sessions.’ Suggests the chiro, as the treatment table rises with a soft swishing. Now why am I not surprised? I’ve known for years that alternative treatment practitioners in the private sector have a vested interest in stringing out your treatment for several return visits. They need repeat business. The polar opposite of my experience with NHS staff.

I still recall, with bitterness, the clueless NHS physiotherapists my GP sent me to see after several bouts of back trouble. Bored-looking middle aged women, with cheaply photocopied handouts I could have obtained on the internet, spent most of the sessions filling out my medical history on their laptops. They never once touched my lap, or asked me to take my top off.

After several pointless sessions they were just eager to sign me off their caseload, with less hands on than a children's rugby game. One did refer me to a pensioners’ pilates class. It’s a sign of how desperate I was to break the pain/spasm/pain cycle that I attended. Some memories you wish you could erase forever. My mother disorientated in the old people’s home, father in a hospital bed, mute and terrified post-stroke - and a cobwebby crotch in a gaudy-coloured leisure suit, three foot from my face. ‘You might want to move up the mat a little Mabel, you’re a bit near that gentleman’s head.’

‘How’s the housing market?’ Asks the chiropractor, as he instructs me to roll on to my side and to clutch my opposite shoulder. Does he really want to know? Or is it just distracting small talk to fool me into relaxing, before he tries to get several vertebrae to audibly explode, like popcorn in a microwave.

I sometimes wish I could keep my identity secret from the pain-givers, but this guy, my dentist and my bank manger all know what I do. I give him a property platitude.

‘Deep breath in.’ He instructs, as my buttocks clench. ‘ A little discomfort coming.’

As I’ve been predicting.

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So What Do You Do - Wednesday

To the new chiropractor-come-sports injury masseur-come-witch doctor. Like a punter at the roulette table, I know the odds are stacked against me and this time I’m not expecting free food and provocative staff in low-cut tops. It’s me who is making a tit of myself.

But that’s the thing with long term pain conditions. You’ll try anything, no matter how seemingly obscure, for the faint hope of some relief from the constant, wearing, nagging discomfort that follows you like a sadistic spectre, from morning ‘till night.

I approach the door with trepidation and a dull throbbing in my coccyx. As I walk in I’m greeted with the cool waft of air conditioning that actually works, unlike our ageing office unit that still pisses on your head, like some angry dominatrix, as soon as you heat up.

‘Hello.’ Chimes a soothing female voice and I spot a pretty twenty-something woman behind the fake timber-veneer counter. She’s slim and attractive so I know I’m not back with the NHS physiotherapist. She seemed to spend more time consuming pies than massaging thighs, when I was referred. I know the ailing health service is under pressure but a handout I could have printed from the internet and the offer of a daytime pilates class with a bunch of pongy pensioners, was never going to hit the spot.

‘How may I help you today?’ Continues the woman, standing to reveal a perfectly starched white top, of a semi official nature. The NHS biffer wore a creased nylon billowy blouse that might easily have doubled as a cheap parasol on a sunny day. I’m obviously paying through the nose for all this pleasantness, but at least she’s started well, with a open question. I give her my name - something I don’t do lightly - and appointment time.

‘So, if you could just fill out our questionnaire on your health background and doctor’s details while you wait, it would help enormously.’ Soothes the woman. Not bad, apart from the annoying habit of people under the age of thirty beginning every sentence with the word so, it’s a good start.

Half way through the form, with the scent of something resembling those joss sticks people burnt in the sixties, in my nostrils, I get to the occupation question.

‘How is my occupation relevant?’ I ask. I instantly regret it. The woman seems to quite like me. I know it’s sales too, just with more soothing music and less body odour - but as soon as she hears I’m an estate agent I’m expecting the atmosphere to become frostier than a butcher’s meat locker.

‘It helps us to understand any stress you might be under, whether you job is sedentary, and physical strains or posture issues.’ Reels of the receptionist smoothly. I’m pretty confident I tick all those boxes. So I do. Then pass her back the form, looking at my shoe laces. She scans it and I’m fairly sure I hear a sharp intake of breath, either that of their air conditioning is about to dump on me too.

‘So you’re an estate agent.’ She finally says, after an interminable silence, punctured only by the quasi red indian chanting, piping from some hidden speaker. No sign of the sperm whale, so far.

I fess up and get ready for the inevitable opprobrium, and a secret do not resuscitate style addendum being added to my notes, to forewarn the back doctor. I’m surprised.

‘I adore property.’ Gushes the woman, face coming alive. ‘I would really love to do your job.’ She continues animatedly. You wouldn’t.

‘I can’t think of anything more exciting than looking at people’s property all day long.’

‘It can be rewarding.’ I tell her neutrally. Best not to dash her hopes too much, not before her colleague gets their hands on me when I’m semi-naked and vulnerable.

Just then her phone chimes and a disembodied male voice asks her to send me in. Saved by the bell.

‘Do you need many qualifications?’ Asks the receptionist earnestly, as I hobble towards the appointed door..

No. Just open an office and get hands on.

Then the pain starts.

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Back On The Road Again - Monday

‘You off to the back quack?’ Asks assistant manager T, as I walk towards the office door without a briefcase, or clipboard. I made the mistake of telling him I was trying, one more time, to see if another in a procession of charlatans offering a “free” first consultation, could ease the pain.

I’ve had more pins stuck in me than a self-harming Goth. Seen chiropractors, osteopaths, sports injury therapists and a host of other alternative healers in between. If I have to listen to any more whale music while a vegan with scented lube violates me, I might just completely flip - and I don’t mean roll over while someone approaches me with a hose and stirrup pump. I drew the line at colonic irrigation. I get enough shit in this job as it is.

‘This the jokers offering a visit at no cost?’ Queries fat mortgage man M. See, it’s round the office faster than flu.

‘It is.’ I tell him curtly.

‘You know nothing is free don’t you.’ State M rhetorically.

‘Apart from our no obligation valuations.’ Chips in negotiator S, with a winning smile. I wonder, fleetingly, what she could do with some jasmine-smelling petroleum jelly.

I do know nothing is for free. Everything has a price - even if it’s those bastards in London Road who went with the opposition agent at £50,000 more than I recommended. They shouldn’t start packing any time soon.

‘I know.’ I tell M, looking at the office clock and calculating how long I’ll need to hobble to the Body Treatment shop. I don’t want to sit there too long before my appointment. Once you’ve heard one Minky singing an aquatic lullaby you’ve pretty much heard them all, and the sad selection of tree-hugging magazines in the waiting room are greener than a curly kale smoothie and just as sick-making.

The format doesn’t change, but still they hook in the gullible and desperate - I like to think I’m firmly in the latter category, but who really knows? An initial consultation, that wastes two-thirds of your freebie, listing ailments, aches, pains, medical history, then the inevitable disclaimer that obviates all responsibility should the wheat-free practitioner insert something into a cavity, that won’t come out again.

Then like a high-class prostitute heavy on the tease and light with the hands on, they just get you half-naked and settled, full of expectation against past experience, and it’s time to stop. Needless to say they’ll need you to come again. Next time at full price. And of course it will take several sessions before they can fully ease your pain. Sucker.

‘How long did you last with the last lot?’ Asks M, with a wobbly-chinned chuckle.

‘About three hundred pounds worth.’ I tell him ruefully.

‘Why did you stop?’ Asks S gently.

‘Because he was getting shafted with none of the best bits.’ Speculates T, with a laugh.

T has a point. You seemingly get a vertebrae-clicking law of diminishing returns with alternative back cures. After a while it’s the same plodding procedure with the hands-on healer urging you to relax when your body, forewarned after the first sudden downward pressure, tenses like a virgin on their wedding night. Then it’s all soreness and regrets.

‘It wasn’t only that.’ I tell my audience. ‘They just seem to run out of ideas. A lot of them seem like one trick ponies.’

‘They do animals there too?’ Asks trainee F, wide-eyed and idiotic.

Someone is being taken for a ride.

‘Was that the bloke that kept asking you about the property market?’ Asks T, grinning.

I nod. The last thing you need when down to your boxer shorts and vulnerable, is having to tell some angsty failed veterinary candidate he’ll never be able to afford to buy his own home, as a self-employed muscle manipulator with a massive student loan. Painful.

‘Perhaps it will help this time.’ Suggests S as I check the clock and start to leave.

Almost certainly not. But in life, as in sales, you have to persevere.

I’ll be back for more.

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