nerve centre

My continued falling out of love with the WWW is recently exacerbated by a bout of sciatica. I find sitting upright the least comfortable activity at the moment. This appears to be a green ailment as cycling seems to offer relief whereas driving is agony, compounded by the sense of feeling hopelessly trapped and helplessly confined. And as far as walking goes, the poison is in the dose.

Looking it up on the WWW, as you do, I find I need the services of a physiotherapist/osteopath/chiropractor for a bit of leg pulling. What the difference is I don't know but I fear one of them might be a quack. However, my main concern is if they have somewhere safe to chain the bike.

The causes of sciatica are varied, the most likely being sitting awkwardly in the same position for too long - the old WWW again, probably. It's a relief that I'm not in regular employment right now or I'd have to take time off as most of modern office life in the knowledge sectors requires the worker to sit all but motionless in front of a keyboard and screen. I recall earlier times as a trainee/apprentice engineer working pretty much exclusively on a drawing board and being able to vary the height and inclination which enabled me to spend some time sitting and some time standing, at will. Not to mention the stretching and twisting which occurred unconsciously as I moved around the large board, and between board and desk to pick up and replace instruments. Okay, I was younger then but I never suffered a work-related illness in all those days.

What have we done to ourselves in the interest of progress and efficiency? The whole thing's a cock-up from beginning to end. Not to mention the fact that when the computer system fails, either by system crash or power failure, productive work stops immediately and we all look to each other like lost little children in a shopping mall.

Computer dependence will spell the death of civilization. Ouch! - now really I must go stretch my sciatica...