Substack diary no.152: Wednesday, 13th. May 2026

It is blustery outside and cold inside; two t-shirts and a jumper cold. My back-ache is quite bad this morning, to the point where I am avoiding picking anything off the floor, so if I drop a tea towel it might just have to stay there for a while.

Oddly, I felt the urge to take a colchicine tablet this morning rather than the more usual paracetamol or ibuprofen. The need to take colchicine is a marker in the second half of life that lets everyone know you have reached maturity. Throbbing big-toe syndrome strikes, you writhe in agony and your friends laugh like drains. Yes: you have gout, a crude four-letter word that suggests an unimportant and insignificant medical condition, unlike the very long and often unpronounceable names of ‘real’ medical conditions.

But, let me tell you, if you have never had gout it is incredibly painful and disabling. My first attack was the worst. An attempt to get out of bed failed miserably, until I learned to just fall out of bed. I very quickly learned an unusual, and for an observer, amusing means of locomotion – the bum walk! Get dressed? Forget it! My foot was the size of a small planet and I had no socks in my possession that would stretch around it without causing knockout pain. My eyes deceived me: my foot appeared to be its normal size but my brain was depicting my real (mental?) foot: not only large but throbbing like in a whacky cartoon having been hit by a mouse wielding an oversized cartoon mallet. Funny but not funny if you get my drift.

Thankfully, my occasional gout attacks since that first one have generally been so mild that I am able to walk, albeit with great pain. Colchicine is a natural ‘medicine’ and works brilliantly. Most people get gout in the foot most of the time, but it can affect other places, like elbows. So, by way of experimentation and a prod from whichever guardian angel might be cohabiting my mind from another dimension, I took a colchicine tablet for my lower back. I am hopeful that the pain will be banished by a mixture of zen, brute ignorance and a rather nice crocus. We shall see…