How did that happen? One day I’m walking like a grown-up, hitching my weak right leg over my stronger left one as merrily I go along, sweating bullets. The next day I’m using the chair more as, frankly, it’s getting to be hard work and I’m not sure that, if pole-axed, I could get up again. Then the one after that, literally, Johnny is slumped like an old timer with a backbone like a lariat lying on the desert floor. Johnny the gimp.

I thought I was caring for my posture, both in the wheelchair and on my super-dooper office chair. I celebrated the latter for its miraculous effect on the nerve pain that, in probably related news, has now resumed its position as the bane of my life. Well so much for that, and it’s hardly likely to get better now, is it?

Back in the olden days, in Stoke Mandeville, I was lectured on the danger of ignoring posture and becoming ‘wheelchair shaped’. I paid attention to that but took it the physio was referring to my body’s side-on aspect and I could avoid that by, whenever the opportunity arose, standing up straight against a wall and lying on my back in bed. I must have done that at least once every day, ignoring the possibility that my plan view might be at risk as well. Now all I can do is try to sit up straight, but every adjustment has to be thought about and, a second later, it has to be thought about again.

Is it too late? Are the vertebrae now fused? Can I stop it where it is? Can I even alleviate it by suspending myself by the ankles in a frame (the physio says noo-oo)? I have appointments with the experts in February, by which time I may be even shorter. And it’s not as if I have much height to play with.

Slightly left-wing low in the Philippines

• If there is such a place, I want my picture taken by the welcome sign

(Actually, I think I may have dreamt all that. While my spine is indeed curvaceous in some unexpected directions, my pelvis is the main culprit.)