SCIATICA IN PARADISE
Hello!
I’ve been feeling rather flat. Actually, I’ve been feeling totally pancaked. Splat is the word. My intestines have been real little shits and I’m exhausted and fed up with them. I’ve also had horrible sciatica, so I took myself to my favourite acupuncture clinic yesterday and since Dr Dong wasn’t there, I had a session with Dr. Fan who is adorable. I won’t lie and say it was wonderful because it was flipping hard. I had to lie on my side, which is never comfortable for me as my hips and knees hurt in that position, and Dr Fan stuck needles with electric currents that flicked muscles in my bum, and a gazillion other regular needles in a gazillion other places and had to stay in that position for about 35 minutes…I wiggled a teeny bit but it was hopeless, so I just tried to breathe into it.
Finally it was over, and I had could stretch my back and hug my knees. Then Dr Fan did some cupping, which I always enjoy. I went home knackered, and did crocket with a fire going, while listening to an old Marian Keyes book (Rachel’s Holiday) that made me giggle. Then I started fiddling with a text on my phone, and it started to run away with me, and turned into this. Which could be the start of something…I don’t know yet. But it lifted my spirits, and made me giggle. Then I stuck a Voltaren patch on my bum and slept like a log!
Have a great weekend,
Cesca
SCITATICA IN PARADISE
Emilio was grumpy again. His sciatica clearly wasn’t any better, despite him having spent a fortune on a bespoke hands-free massage and chakra-recalibration with Tinkle Twilight, Ibiza’s internationally renowned healer to the superstars.
“But Twinkle must have been thrilled to have you as a client!” I beamed, once again muscling into the spirits-lifting act with such vigour that I might need a session with Twinkle myself before tea-time.
Emilio performed his best eyeroll.
And in that moment, I realized with horror that Twinkle hadn’t had the foggiest idea who he was.
I hesitated before gently asking, “But did you not at least hum, I don’t know, Fuego de Amor, amor?” Fuego de Amor won Emilio four Grammies. Even if the song was decades old, it was still practically the Spanish national anthem, for crying out loud!
“I might have mentioned Fuego and the Grammies,” he muttered, shrugging.
I gazed at him, bright eyed, eyelashly-expectant.
He scoffed. “She said the Grammies are commercial basura, commercial garbage.”
The bitch! I’ll recalibrate her root chakra so precisely she’ll be coughing up her frickin’ mulabanda, I fumed. But I kept my livid thoughts to myself.
“Oh, cariño, she was definitely having you on!” I said congenially. “Besides, she’s clearly a Gen Z born-again music snoot who claims she only listens to chimes, tambourines and beach bongos. I bet she’s a closet Swiftie.” I giggled. “Also, she’s Turkish. Their national anthem is different.”
“What’s a beach bongo?” he wanted to know, except he didn’t, really, he was just being a snarky little shit. He knew damn well what a beach bongo was because he loved playing his own flipping bongo at the Sunday sunset sessions on the beach at Benirràs. Anything for an audience.
Well, if that’s the way he was going to be, he could take his leather trousers to the dry cleaners himself the next time they got gross and sweaty. And I wouldn’t be reminding him to buy talcum powder so that he could squeeze into them, either. He could bloody well lay off the Toblerone.
Emilio turned and shuffle-limped dejectedly over to the end of the terrace. He rolled up his faded jeans and sat by the edge of the pool, dangling his gleaming caramel legs in the water.
“Let’s face it, amor,” he said, running his long, tanned fingers through his thick, sunkissed, espresso-coloured hair. “I’m a has-been. I’m ancient history. I’m old.” He kicked a smooth jet of water towards the fat pigeon taking his daily bath on the opposite side of the pool. The pigeon just turned his back on Emilio, flapped once and relieved himself.
It’s all going to shit, I thought, as an icy bubble of anxiety slalomed down my back.
The question was, what could I do to turn things around?