Uncles elephants and persistence.

Ah well, today is the International day of  Translators.  They seem to have international days for all sorts of things now. But this is a good one for me, because I had my book translated into Chinese and have just heard today, after months of translating and negotiating, that my book will finally be bi-lingually published in China.

  Its been a long road, and in my opinion the writing of the book is not the worst part, it is the constant hassle trying to get it out there. Persistence is the name of the game I reckon.

I was sent a fabulous link for  a set of pictures about Africa.  There are some terrific pictures there. You might enjoy them too.

One of the pictures is of an elephant family. This reminded me of a picture I have. You might not really call it a picture, it is made from wood using a technique called intarsia.  If you have never seen this kind of work, check out the link here.

I have an uncle. Well most of us have uncles, but my one is a really clever guy. He was a builder in his working days, now at 80 years of age he spends his spare time in his workshop making everything imaginable from wood. He has all the machinery to make the most intricate stuff from wood. He has made all sort of machines, boats, trains etc, from tiny bits of wood all put together like a jigsaw. He has even made a tractor with these kinds of tracks that tanks run on. I can’t remember how many pieces are in the tracks, I think maybe he said about 600 pieces.

I tried to upload a picture of the tracks but it didn’t want to cooperate, but you know the kinds of caterpillar tracks that tanks and big machinery moves on.

Wikipedia says......Caterpillar tracks work on the same principle as a conveyer belt. The tank engine rotates one or more steel sprockets, which move a track made up of hundreds of metal links. The tank's wheels ride along the moving track, just like the wheels in a car run along the road. Earlier tracked vehicles weren't practical in battle because their steam engines were too cumbersome and unreliable. The internal combustion engine made tracked military vehicles feasible.

Tracked vehicles can move easily over rough terrain because the track makes contact with a wide area of the ground. A car grips the ground with only the bottom portion of four tires, but a tank grips it with dozens of feet of track. Additionally, the track has heavy tread that digs into muddy surfaces, and it never goes flat like a tire.

 

Anyway back to my elephant.  My uncle belongs to a woodworking club in his city, and has won practically every championship at the local woodworking shows for years. He has also done lots of animals using this intarsia work and when we visited him a couple of months ago, he gave me this elephant. Pretty good eh?

I’m back. Bobbly, knobbly and not at all wobbly.

I don't know who this guy is, but he's got strong fingers! I reckon my physiotherapist could do this with her eyes closed!!

I haven’t been here for a while, for various reasons.  We have settled into a rather normal routine here, being at this house sit for quite a long time now. But change is on the way, the home owners return at the end of next month and we are off to new pastures for a few months until the owners return to Europe.

The main reason I have been away from here, well there are several, but the main one is my back. I have been having trouble with my sciatic nerve, and it’s been bad enough to make life somewhat miserable without being completely debilitating. Aches and pains in my hip and right down my left leg and into my knee comes and goes. The chiropractor helped, but it didn’t last. Eventually I went to my GP who referred me to a physiotherapist.

I have had past experiences with physiotherapists and they weren’t positive. They seem to warm up the muscles with an infra-red lamp, do a spot of massage, poke your bones and charge like a wounded bull.

Not this one. I have been going to a place called ‘Adjust’, on Fortune Street, not far from here. They seem to be busy, people coming and going. I can’t remember the name of the lady who treats me, but I have a nick name for her, ’body-builders fingers’. You know what a body builder looks like when they flex their muscles, all bobbly, knobbly and not at all wobbly? Well her hands are like this. The first time I noticed them I was really impressed. And I can tell you why. She ain’t no wimp.

I lie on the table, face down and she starts off by giving my affected muscles a gentle massage. But the gentle doesn’t last long. It soon gets serious and the fingers start to poke and prod into the most painful areas. Then she gets her second wind and really goes for it, with long deep massage strokes, finding all the pressure points, and sort of holding me down as my normal reflexes have me almost hitting the ceiling. Fair go! The pain!

Once she has got me to the end of my pain threshold she decides I need more help so I get some acupuncture needles. I’ve never had acupuncture before, but once the needle is in you don’t really feel much. Five minutes later the needles come out and she starts off with the hands again. By the time she has finished with me, the eyes are watering a great deal.

This ‘helpful, restorative’ treatment has me in a gentle form of agony for the next few days as the muscles get over the assault, popping anti-inflammatory pills and panadol for a few days.  But I do think it is helping. Well I think so. I am spacing the treatments out to weekly so I have a few pain free-ish days in between. But today I woke up feeling like doing stuff. I actually felt well enough to do some writing, so here I am.

Spring has sprung, snakes and huntsmen are on the move, the days are longer and getting hotter and I’ll be back here again soon.