Shock Treatment

Hands throbbing, excrutiatingly so. I can see the veins and everything. Osteo something. Doctor gives me exercises - they hurt, the silly mare! Has she ever had any medical training?

Heat, the old cow says. Does she mean the magazine? Or one of those things with electric bars? No, apparently. Like Deep Heat, out of a tube, and those thermal glove things. I now look like some goulish surgeon, with the fingers of the gloves cut off. Feel like doing a burglary or something, tho' it would be bit redundant I suppose.

Go down the local high street. I have been living in this sh...house for one year now, and I have never set foot down there. Neither have I gone down the pretty walkway by the river, that leads me straight there. It was like an urban yellow brick road - without that annoying girl and yappy dog, and lion and that, obviously.

Well, what a marvie time I had! Loads of charity shops, butchers, bakers and greasy cafes! Proper ones, run by families and that, not those Starbuck things. Well, I get a take away coffee from one of these, and the young girl hands me a hot stylofoam cup. So accustomed to those poofy protective things round the cup the BIG chains hand out, I burn my bloody hand off! She apologetically hands me a serviette.

Funnily enough, down the road, my right hand feels so much better. The sudden and brutal lunge of heat seemed to penetrate my poor veins. Now there's an article for The Lancet: Don't bother with all that exercise shit for osteo-arthritis, simply go into a small cafe that stinks of grease, get a foam cup of cappuchino, and stick your mitt straight round the thing. There you go - Deep Heat my arse!

Going there next week. What great therapy!