I Take it all, back.

This week Fryday is suffering from a bad back. I am told that there are many things that can damage a back: age, weight, posture, standing too long, sitting too long, sharing your bed with a dog (the canine variety), and I am guilty of just about every one of them. No wonder my back is objecting. My main issue, however, is my occupation. It is a sedentary occupation and does require long hours at a desk typing. To be fair, that is by choice; there are writers who chose to write standing up—Dickens, Hemingway (at times), Churchill and Nabokov among them. Shakespeare is thought to have stood at his writing desk. But it is not my choice; I like to sit and write. So, my problem comes down to choice of chair and its ergonomic design. And I don’t want to go anywhere near those new fangled options such as Swiss Balls and knee chairs—I am a traditionalist. So, it was on to Google for a bit of research (which ultimately became more confusing than anything) and to Warehouse Stationery, which at least has the convenience of being local. My chiropractor, who has wrestled gamely, assiduously and patiently with my back issue also gave me advice. In the end, I settled on convenience, so it was down to Warehouse Stationery I went. They didn’t have a big range of office chairs, just a big price range. The cheapest was about $130, the dearest in excess of $1000. I sat in them all. Surprisingly, the most comfortable was among the cheapest: $160, down from $240.00. It also looks smart, like one of those sports seats in a modern rally car. So I bought it. And I haven’t been disappointed in it. I have spent several writing days in it without incurring any of the pain that beset me from previous chairs. I even persuaded the chiropractor’s receptionist, his wife, to invest in the same model of chair, and she seems equally satisfied. And mention of the chiropractor brings me back to my central premise: the day before I bought the chair I went to him in agony. He did what he could and it was enough to provide relief and restore equilibrium. Then I went and bought the chair, hoping to maintain that newly-restored state of relative harmony. The next day my back was back at the chiropractor—in agony. You guessed it, as much as the new seat is now supplying me with the part panacea for my ills, it required assembly. And, that my friends, is what you call irony.