I am going on. I know.
I left the office in my dark blue Crombie-style overcoat carrying my big lawyer's briefcase. I was doubled over so that I was walking looking almost straight down. I walked to the Railway Station and caught the first train to Victoria. I can't remember if I got a seat. I struggled through the milling crowds down to the Underground and got on a packed tube Northbound. I was obviously in pain. I imagine the distress I was in was evident to anyone. A little old lady got up and offered me her seat, God bless her! I got off at Highbury & Islington and went to wait for a bus up the Holloway Road. Despite my obvious disability I was barged out of the way when the Number 43 arrived. I did get on a bus but I had to fight my way on. I can't remember if it was the first Number 43 that came along. I got off at the stop nearest to Marborough Road and walked the last couple of hundred yards.
Getting to the house was one thing. Once through the front door I had to climb the stairs to the third floor. The one bedroom flat was carved out of the roof. So I went up the two flights to the flat door which itself was at the foot of a flight of stairs to a small landing outside the bathroom and then there was another flight up to the main part of the flat. I got up there, went into the living room and just had to collapse. This was not a very bright idea. I couldn't get up. In fact my back went into spasm even trying to get into a sitting position. Emma was quite distressed at the state I was in and helped me drag myself into the bedroom where she helped me undress and I got into bed.
We called the local surgery which even then was contracting out its out of hours work. A doctor did come. She stood in the corner of the room and started to write a prescription for something called Feldene (or something like that). I insisted that she at least take a look at me. After all, I thought and said, the pain was at the base of my spine and this was quite an important part of the body. Reluctantly she asked me to pull the quilt off (when I realised I was naked) and lift one of my legs as high as I could. I managed to get my right foot about 2 inches into the air before going into spasm. She finished writing her prescription declaring that the painkillers were excellent. She had twisted her ankle a few weeks previously and had taken the same tablets and had been walking about in no time. The doctor was thanked and she left.
So I spent the next eight days off sick. I wasn't malingering. I really had to spend the whole of the next day in bed. Emma got the prescription. The next day I hobbled to the surgery to sort of complain that the decision to prescribe painkillers without an examination didn't seem quite right. The doctor was quite rude, I thought. He told me it was a sports injury and he'd seen plenty of them. I decided that I wasn't getting much care from the NHS.
My mate Brian recommended that I see the osteopath he'd seen after injuring his shoulder on a dry ski slope (causing him to cancel a skiing trip). By day three I could just about make it and took the bus up to Muswell Hill. The lady Osteopath was called Elaine Evison. Her "surgery" was in a street off the Fortis Green Road.. I went to see her over the next few days and gradually the injury was healed. Elaine said I had pulled a muscle at the lumbo sacial joint. This was hands-on care with a proper diagnosis and treatment.
After a week I was walking almost normally and before I returned to work I went to see the doctor again. He dismissed the treatment I'd had from Elaine by saying that "Time is the Osteopath's best friend". I don't care what he said. What Elaine did made me feel better and I didn't take any more of the Feldene tablets after seeing her. I had spent a year or so sharing a house near Maidstone with James Somerfield who was studying at the European School of Osteopathy. I know that these people are not quacks. He's on Harley Street now. I wonder where the doctor who was practising on the Holloway Road ended up. Perhaps his rather abrupt manner and dismissive attitude was because he had ended up on the Holloway Road.
