Month: June 2012

Over the Jubilee holiday I’ve been helping out in the CAMRA beer tent at the St Neots celebrations. As the weather was so bad on Sunday, we decided to pack up a day early, so we spent yesterday taking everything apart and loading it on to various lorries and trailers.

As the ground was so wet, we had to man-handle a lot of the heavy equipment, and 20-odd unopened firkins (9 gal) of beer. We had this many left due to the poor attendance on Sunday and closing a day early.

Rolling one of the firkins on the back of a lorry I felt an intense pain in my lower back and took a sharp intake of breath. It was a minute or so before I could move again and had to take it very carefully. No more barrel rolling for me: in fact there was little I could do at all, so I walked home.

I thought heat might help so I had a hot bath, but that didn’t ease the pain, so I took a Co-Dydramol (I have these prescribed for my migraine headaches).

I didn’t want to not do anything as we wanted to celebrate the arrival of Felix Ashley, my first grandson, who made a delayed appearance yesterday. Thus, I used Champagne as an anaesthetic.

We also wanted to go down and see the Jubilee Beacon lit.

After a reasonable nights’ sleep (OK, provided I didn’t move!), I was awake quite early to find no improvement. It took me 10 minutes to get out of bed!

It’s OK if I’m standing up or if I’m lying flat on my back but just about any change in shape causes pain. If I’m not careful it goes into spasm.

Time to do some research and decide if I need to seek medical advice.