Real life | 4 July 2019

Either the osteopath is a psychopath or he is the second coming. I see no other possibility.

I turned up on the doorstep of his surgery feeling demented from the pain that has been gnawing at the base of my skull relentlessly for two weeks.

All I had done was to duck under the tape of my horses’ field, a movement I have performed a thousand times.

But this time, as I turned my head momentarily upside down, something pinged and my skull exploded into the worst headache ever.

It was so bad I wrapped my head in a coat and became, like Tchaikovsky, possessed by the theory that it was going to fall off. Holding on tight with both hands, I made the builder boyfriend drive me to the GP surgery.

The doctor was supremely unimpressed. She stuck a thermometer in my ear, then told me to go home and take paracetamol. This produced the most marvellous sense of relief.