The best advice

I'm going slightly stir crazy at the moment. My back is still not all it should be, so I'm hemmed into my flat quite efficiently. And everybody wishing me well and offering help is actually driving me to distraction.

One of the things I've been learning while I've been if not laid up then at least slowed down, is that back pain is one of those things that everybody either has a cure for, or can recommend someone who does. So much of it is contradictory that it's of next to now use, but people feel obliged to offer up their kernels of knowledge, and I have to accept all of them like a grateful beggar on the street. I might be drawing things in a fairly harsh light here, but I've had so many recommendations of good chiropractors, osteopaths, physiotherapists, doctors, acupuncturists and masseurs that if I took them all up not only would I not be able to move even as much as I can now, I'd be getting shuttled around like a tennis ball, shunted from end to end, as I ran to all the appointments.

It's not that I'm not ungrateful. I do understand that it was concern that drove my grandmother to offer to call my aunt if there was anything wrong with me (although why I wouldn't just solve all the problems by calling my mother, who is not only a damn site closer, but able to drive, I have yet to figure. At the very least, surely I'd just call the aunt directly, if needed?). But folks, really, there's a limit to how much of this I can take, and I've about reached it. Thank god I've been a little more mobile today, even if it was just a grandmotherly shuffle. There's a light shining at the end of the tunnel. And best of all, it's not offering me any bloody advice.