I think I’ve found a miracle cure for a bad back

I’ve had various ailments during my first 74 years — the worst being those induced by smoking, such as emphysema and chronic bronchitis — but never before have I suffered from back pain. I know many people who have, and I have witnessed the miseries they have suffered — their months spent lying on the floor, their desperate search for suitable treatments, their failed operations. I had begun to think that I might be immune to this particular affliction, attributing this to the fact that I have rather a short back. But suddenly, before Christmas, my back started to ache when I got up from a chair, and soon afterwards there was a shift of the pain from the middle of the back to the left-hand side, and from there down the whole length of my left leg, the calf being the achiest part of all.

It occurred to me in a bleak moment that I could be a victim of the Curse of Gnome, as Private Eye used to call it; for Richard Ingrams, when I succeeded him as editor of The Oldie after he resigned last summer, bequeathed me a wobbly chair with only one arm that would probably do in anyone’s back.