Some things are also just best forgotten...and that outfit really was ill advised. To be fair though anyone who has Dr Brian Cox playing keyboards for you can't be all bad.
When you're first coming to terms with a back problem you tell yourself all the time that things can only get better. In fact if I had a pound for every time in the last 6 years I told myself that things can only get better, I could now get a full basket of very reasonably priced items at Poundland. Luckily I work in Hemel Hempstead, so I also have an excellent selection of said outlets to choose from.
After each episode as you slowly recover you begin to convince yourself that perhaps this time will be different and your back problem will not come back and that life really will get better again.
But then it happens again. And it always seems to be when you're doing things which involve virtually no strenuous activity at all. I remember one of the occasions my back went was whilst cleaning my daughter's gerbil cage. If only they'd died sooner everything could have been different.
It's a cliche but it's true. If you've never had a back problem you really can never understand how fundamentally it impacts everything you do. It's on your mind, or at least in the back of your mind literally all of the time. It effects your work life, home life, sex life...and it effects the lives of those around you too.
Then after a while you find yourself doing these ridiculous things because you live in fear of your demon, your back.
For example, I've got used to carrying round a cushion to sit on when I drive my car, and then when I leave the car I put it in a special bag and take it with me so that I can sit on it at the cinema or a restaurant, or even a gig. The last concert I saw just before my operation was The Cure at the Albert Hall...I took my cushion. Very bloody rock and roll. And it wasn't even a black cushion (just a little joke for any goths reading this).
At one stage it got so bad that I had even tied a piece of string to the cushion and then when I sat down I would tie the other end to my belt buckle, just to make sure that I didn't forget it and leave it behind. Even writing this I'm wondering why my family didn't consider sectioning me. Then one day at a restaurant I got up angrily to complain about the length of time we'd been waiting for our meal and completely forgot about the cushion. I stormed across the restaurant my cushion bouncing along behind me, leaving my family in acute embarrassment. God how they suffered.
I got quite attached to that cushion, literally as you can see. But these things act almost like a comforter, your security blanket, the thing that will keep you safe and stop your demon returning to make your life a misery.
It's served me well but I'm still looking forward to burning that damn cushion when I get home.
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