It’s been a bit of a hectic time of late so I have another backlog of posts to write. Watch this space for some back-dated things that I didn’t have time to write about properly when they popped into my head.
Rats
So, our house now smells, quite pungently, of dead rat. At least we think it’s dead rat. It stinks a bit, but we’re kinda used to it now. They ate all the pest-controller’s poison and he came back and re-baited the place, and they haven’t eaten any more since that second visit. Which suggests that they haven’t eaten anything. Which suggests that they’re dead! We’ve not heard them for a while either so it’s all looking good rat-wise.
We’ve also been outside and plugged up the holes where we think they were getting in. So hopefully that’ll be the last vermin we have to deal with for a while.
Backs
I mentioned in passing the other week that I had a bad back again. This all started a couple of days after my post-Christmas “good ride“. It started in my middle back, faded after a couple of days, and then came back with a vengeance in my lower back. Crazy country dancing at the wedding the other week didn’t help of course.
I’ve seen the physio twice and all he seems to be able to do is move the pain around, rather than fix it. Looks like everything from my hamstrings to my hip flexors is screwed up and tight.
I’ve tried doing a bit of cycling with it (as you will read about elsewhere) and that, oddly, seems to help. But it’s not going away and it’s causing me more pain and frustration. I had a really low evening mid-week where it all got to me, but I’ve picked myself up again and have been feeling a bit more myself in the last couple of days.
The real improvement seems to have come by doing nothing – no stretching, no cycling, just sitting or lying still for as long as possible each day. I think all the muscles need to just relax themselves. I’m learning AGAIN not to throw myself into things too much and that sometimes I just need to stop.
Not Cycling
NOT cycling is an odd thing for me to be writing about. But I am not-cycling at the moment because of my back. Which means I’m driving to work. Which is, itself, depressing and frustrating.
Most people in Swindon can’t live more than a few miles from where they work, yet they insist on sitting in queues of traffic for hours on end looking miserable and angry. It really bothers me. Perhaps they’ve never considered that cycling or walking is an option? I’d much rather be moving on two wheels than sat doing nothing in a big box on 4. Plus, the globe is warming and petrol prices are going sky-high (104.9 at Sainsbury’s!). Why drive? Once I’m 100% well again I’m definitely doing as much not-driving as possible!
I wonder what we can do to get people out of there cars more. It strikes me that if we can’t do it in a small town with excellent cycle routes like Swindon then where CAN we do it?