Six degrees of osteopathy

A follow-up to my last posting. Well, the first of two follow-ups actually. The next I’ll post tomorrow.

I don’t — as regular readers will surely agree — generally do personal health stuff etc here. I did, though, mention that I had a bad knee last week. Not that you probably care — I certainly wouldn’t if it was you — but I no longer have a bad knee.

For which transformation, I have one person to thank. Which is, frankly, only of interest to me and them. But I thought I’d share with you the (brief) story of how I came to find this person . . .

Garry Trainer, that is. He’s an osteopath, based around the corner from me, in Primrose Hill. A burly, middle-aged, twice-married Kiwi who likes a drink and has just taken up surfing again, he has my deep thanks for fixing my knee.

An hour or so on Monday lunchtime. A few needles — he does acupuncture, too. (I’m inherently sceptical but also acceptingly pragmatical.) A little back bending — no crackings, though. A hefty massage of the back and knee tendons.

Right away, I felt better — improved, that is. By the next day, I was limpless. So, for what it’s worth, this free add.

But I also thought I’d share with you how I came to put my body in Garry’s un-tender care in the first place. And how it connects to my (relative) closeness to Adolf Hitler's hand and Oscar Wilde’s penis.

Garry first, though. About two years ago, in the wake of the exams I sat for the first year of my course, my back got really bad. The worst I ever had. I couldn’t walk. I ended up not seeing the local shops — not much more than a hundred metres away — for nearly a month. I couldn’t get from one floor to the next in under five minutes.

I knew I had to get something done. I’d been to an osteopath years before and she’d done the trick. But she’d moved away.

Two new ones came recommended, both by people I respected. Jonathan Le Bon and Garry Trainer. I checked both their websites. I discovered that Le Bon was brother to Simon Le Bon, the popster, while Garry had had his hands on Gwyneth Paltrow. Well, which one would you have chosen to get closer to?

Me and Adolf Hitler? Well, I’ve shaken hands with not just one but two people who, as children, had their hair ruffled by him.

Oscar Wilde’s penis? I’ve shaken the hand of a man who, in pre-war Brighton, had his hair ruffled* by Bosie, Oscar Wilde’s boyfriend, nemesis and, I should guess, penis-handler.

I can also get to the Pope in one. Freud? Loads via London analysts, of course — particularly via Anna Freud. But also via an American cousin who is related to Joseph Paneth — a close friend of Freud’s who lent him the money for his wedding and who died of TB, at 32. Paneth was also a pal of Nietzche’s.

Hence, my personal variant on the classic parlour game. I call it Six Degrees of Separation Anxiety. It's just the same as Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon — only the link (or end-person) should, in some way, be odd or unsettling. I welcome all contributions to my game. Put your own links to the famous on the comments page.

* Hair-ruffling children was once a big thing in Britain — Germany, too, it seems. I was certainly a victim in my own childhood. Fears of hordes of marauding child-abusers seem to have put paid to hair-ruffling — which seems to have gone the way of spats and . . . Gordon Brown. (I can do him in one, too.)

Today, I am mostly listening to . . . Jackie DeShannon (and Jack Nitzche — no relation.)

Pins and begins

Nonchalant and want

An original demo

You’ve got to live for yourself — and nobody else

Next up The other follow-up — something Maggie Alderson didn’t mention in Cambridge.