Symbolic Forest

Yesterday, I was idly wondering: does anybody suffer from “curvature of the spine” any more? Or was it just one of those Victorian diseases which you just don’t see nowadays?

You see, I remember reading, years and years ago, that Catherine Mumford, wife of anti-poverty campaigner and Salvation Army founder William Booth, suffered from it badly when she was a teenager. So much so, she was forced to spend a few years lying face-down in bed reading the Bible and writing letters about the evils of booze.^* Today, though, you don’t hear about it very often. Does it still exist?

I spent a while thinking about it yesterday, googling up things like kyphosis and scoliosis. It’s still around, then – but is it common? Do people still get problems like that, or was it just a result of bad nutrition and poor mattresses?

And then, this morning, I woke up in rather severe pain. I couldn’t move, because my back was in agony. It’s stayed rather painful all day, albeit not as bad as it was when I awoke. Clearly, my spine has a twisted sense of humour.

* Thinking about it, though, her life probably wouldn’t have been much different if she had been allowed to leave her bed. The entertainment options for teenage girls in 1840s Lincolnshire were rather limited, and she was rabidly religious from an early age.

Keyword noise: Catherine Booth, Catherine Mumford, curvature of the spine, irony, kyphosis, Salvation Army, scoliosis, William Booth.

As it’s April 1st, here is a post containing outright lies. Roughly half of the following statements^* are currently true. Others are completely made up. Guess which are which.

I know it’s already the afternoon, and by tradition April Fools should only be done in the morning. Nevertheless, I don’t care.

1. I have never driven a train.

2. I have had sex with everyone I’ve ever kissed, apart from relatives.

3. Recurring blog character Big Dave doesn’t actually exist – if I’ve done something I want to blog about, but don’t want to admit to it myself, I write a disguised version, gender-swap it as required, and attribute it to “him”.

4. This website is named after a real piece of woodland called “Symbolic Plantation”, a few miles from my house.

5. I have never worked in any field that I actually have qualifications in.

6. I was born in the Far East.

Go on, tell me which ones you think are lies.

* And all of the footnotes.

Keyword noise: April Fools Day, falsehoods, lies, misleading, truth.