“There is such a thing as tempting the gods. Talking too much, too soon and with too much self-satisfaction has always seemed to me a sure way to court disaster. The forces of retribution are always listening. They never sleep”.

Meg Greenfield

Just a few short posts back – in an offering entitled ‘Make it beautiful‘ – I ventured a short disquisition on the subject of permanence and impermanence. I wasn’t being particularly provocative – or so I thought. Apparently the fates saw things differently and no more than a couple of posts later I found myself having to relay the tale of our exploding (or more likely imploding) shower screen in a post titled ‘Synchronicity‘.

That particular mess is going to take a while to clear up (figuratively speaking!). The manufacturers of the screen rapidly ‘fessed up to what was most likely a manufacturing fault by the simple expedient of sending us, in short order, a replacement under warranty. I got in touch with our excellent contractor who had overseen our original renovation and came away with a list of contacts to get the bath re-surfaced (lots of pits and scratches from the falling glass) a man to install the new screen and another to put us in a new hot water tank (not directly related but I did mention it in the first post above).

The problem is that these things must be done in the correct sequence… nothing can happen until the bath is restored, and the bath restorers clearly have enough work on to take them through to next Christmas. I am still awaiting a call-back…

I had hoped that things would now settle down on the bad news front. Sadly, it seems that the gods are not finished with us quite yet.

A little over a decade ago – whilst The Girl and I were still resident in the UK – we purchased a device that the manufacturers describe as a ‘spinal mobiliser’. It is a sort of massage machine upon which one lays and which – by means of a system of rollers – stretches out the vertebrae whilst simultaneously massaging the surrounding muscle tissues. We came across this thing at (of all places!) the Windsor Horse Show. Horsemen and women are, it seems, much in need of such treatments after a heavy day’s competing in the saddle.

Now, as long as I have known her The Girl has suffered from Sciatica. There at the horse show she hopped (gently) up onto the demo device on the stand and immediately fell in love with the relief that it provided. The machine was an expensive beast – costing several thousand pounds even back then – so we hired one for a month to be sure that it was worth the outlay.

The answer being greatly in the affirmative we scraped together the monies and made the investment. When we later came to Canada the machine came with us (there being no equivalent over here, apparently) though we were obliged to purchase a big step-down transformer because the device only ran on 220V.

It would be an understatement to say that the Mobiliser has served us well and it has more than paid for itself. The Girl uses it most days and it is quite common for those visiting us to jump aboard as well. It was, thus, was a considerable shock when – just over a week ago – the machine emitted a plaintive rattling sound and gave up the ghost.

So – we now have something else that requires fixing. I shall have more to say on the subject in my next post.

Needless to say – The Girl is not happy.