27th August 2008

Interim report from the torture chamber.
I am now half-way through the standard 15 sessions with my physio and I am still alive to tell the tale. Yesterday my appointment was at his other consulting room in a pretty village called Arnac. Apparently he holds his morning sessions there and the afternoon sessions in the nearby town of St. Antonin. Anyway, with my usual trepidation I drove up to Arnac and saw that his rooms were actually based in a large, beautiful old stone house, overlooking the Midi-Pyrenees hills. When I arrived, the mist was just starting to lift over the distant peaks, giving the whole view a surreal feel. I shivered involuntarily. But there he was with his usual jovial bonhomie and firm handshake, waiting for me in the drive. Is this your house? I asked him, to take my mind off things. No, it's my mother's, he replied. Another shiver, as I imagined some ancient crone living in the upper dark turrets of the house. Maybe, like Toulouse-Lautrec, he keeps her hidden because of the hump on her back. Before going in to start the session, where no doubt he would attempt to continue pulling my arm through its usual tortuous angles, we looked way down the valley, an almost vertical drop. What's that? I pointed down below. 'Oh, that's the cemetery,' he said blithely. 'You can just make out the tops of the white tombstones.' Uhh Ohh. If the treatment hasn't worked, or worse, if his previous clients haven't (like me) paid the bill, is that where they end up............