Backache and Boredom

Okay, whose bloody idea was backache? One minute you're pootling around quite happily (or as happily as is possible at 6:30 am on a Monday morning) the next... something inside your lower back pings and suddenly you're paralysed with pain halfway down the stairs in total darkness. Moving a single muscle causes the kind of ridiculous pain that makes you whine at such a high pitch that it causes dogs in the next street to sit bolt upright in surprise, and awakens your neighbours.

Today is Wednesday, and it's still no better... what really annoys me is that the medical advice when you have cricked your back is to keep moving around! Seriously, that has to be a wind up! At the moment I am only comfortable in three positions... lying flat on my back, sitting up straight, or standing with my back against a wall. And these positions are only comfortable as long as I remain still, movement of any kind is painful and unpleasant, and makes me whimper and be bad tempered.

So I've not been to work, which is bad for several reasons... I won't get paid, I will be in trouble when I get back for having 3 absences in a year, and I'm bored witless. Unlike being off sick with a proper illness, say flu, I'm not actually feeling ill - but I can't get anywhere or do anything, so I'm stuck inside with daytime TV for company. There is only so much Jeremy Kyle a sane person can take, thank the Gods for 'Due South' which is one of the best things on telly at the moment, and has been thoughtfully placed in the lunchtime viewing schedule most weekdays - I'm sure for my benefit lol!

I've been reading a lot, I finished 'The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo' which was a slow starter but turned out to be actually quite good, and I look forward to reading the other two books soon. I re-read 'Nineteen EightyFour' for about the 20th time, never get tired of that, and am now working my way through the Philip K Dick short stories again. But I felt like it was time I bought some new books, I have loads and loads and loads of books, but I have read them all - often over and over again, so some new stuff would be welcome at this point. So I went on Amazon and treated myself, I bought some HG Wells (The Time Machine, The Invisible Man and War of The Worlds), 'Brave New World' by Aldous Huxley, 'Under The Dome' by Stephen King, and a box set of Sookie Stackhouse novels.

I was a bit wary of buying those, but at £24 for 10 books, I thought they were worth a punt. The whole vampire thing I find either very very good, or very very bad, and the trend towards the Twilight bollocks around at the moment is enough to make me boak... I can't stand that whole tweeny, emo, wannabe goth, trying to hard to be sexy, bullshit that you find in things like Vampire Diaries or Twilight. But on the other hand, True Blood is fantastic so the books I've ordered should be okay too. The best vampire around at the moment is still Mitchell from 'Being Human' though :-)

They should arrive tomorrow, so I will make sure I'm downstairs at a reasonable time, and hope the postman is patient enough to wait while I shuffle painfully to the door, lol... he'd better! With any luck I may even make it as far as the corner shop, I am down to my last 3 cigarettes and have run out of cat food and milk. Fortunately, I'm trying to cut down on the fags otherwise I would have run out days ago... I'm using one of those electronic cigarettes which I am quite taken with, and although I haven't stopped smoking all together, I am only smoking about a third of what I was before. I'm hoping to have stopped completely before too long, and then I can put the money towards something else.

Like a scooter! I have a notion for a Vespa, so am weighing up my options... the CBT will be around £80 and should only take a day (assuming I pass of course, lol) then I can get a small bike and ride around on L plates for up to 2 years before having to pass the bike test. The two choices I'm kicking around are: getting a little 50cc moped, which will be cheap and can get me to work and back, and around and about the town... most often to and from my friends and my parents place. But the other option of getting a 125cc scooter would allow me to get further afield, I could go out into the countryside on nice summer days, go get ice cream at Wallings Farm, go on little day trips and suchlike... but that might be out of my price range, a 125cc seems to be around the £1K mark for a reasonable second hander, whereas I can pick up a moped for a couple of hundred quid (which means I can buy one NOW). I do think though, that as the restrictions for riding either bike are the same for someone in my position (no full driving licence and over the age of 21) it would be silly to buy a moped when I could have a 125. And am I really gonna be completely satisfied with something that can only do 30mph? But do I want to spend the extra money getting a 125cc (along with higher insurance, petrol costs, tax, protective gear) if I'm not really gonna need the extra power very often? Hmmm, I need to give this more thought...