My right knee hurts in the middle of the joint. When I stand on it, it sometimes wobbles side-ways, and other times it tries to bend backwards instead of forewards.It is also swollen. Any physios in the house? Do I rest it or exercise it and how can I get it better for to-night when I'm orf to Newcastle

Wear a tubi grip bandage

Get a new knee.

Try here;

www.newkneesfortheelderlyatshortnotices ... adance.com

it is called age and is a creeping disease

Does the sufferer turn into Iain Wright?

I certainly hope not
However you are all useless and mean except for Groovy. I've tried the tubigrip, tho, and it just locks the knee into the wrong position

Tubigrip! Now you're talkin'

You have knees that normally bend forwards??

as i said it is an age thing support stockings are the answer

More seriously, is it swollen hard or swollen puffy? If it's puffy then the swelling is due to sinovial fluid and you've probably buggered a cartilege, especially if your joint feels like it's trying to bend the wrong way.

Well, it depends which way I'm facing. And on other things like whether I'm coming or going

Oh God, that sounds like it. So what happens next? bearing in mind that I never go to GPs

well this is a puzzle because mines fine

I get that sometimes Grabey baby, and Monty's right, its knacked cartilidge/ligaments.

I did physio for a bit but it cost too much, suffer in silence is what I say you should do....

I've had a buggered cartiledge for 35 years. They kept talking me out of doing anything about it with a kind of circular reasoning that went "the only way we can be sure it's buggered is by operating".
Just avoid skiing and tennis and other twisty-turny activities and you'll be OK. Keeping the upper leg muscles in trim also helps. The "wanting to bend the wrong way" sensation goes away after a few days, maybe a week.

Alternatively go see a specialist. Things might have changed in 35 years.

Thank you for all the kind help and suggestions. Am relieved it's turned out not to be an age thing, anyway

That was, of course, not one of the suggestions I was grateful for

Might be nasty tendonitis - I've got it at the moment and every day it seems to affect my knee differently. I have piriformis syndrome though (apparently) and it's because I put weight on the joint wrongly (and it's a lot of weight). Worth seeing a physio, honestly - maybe A&E if you're bricking it. I've had a bad back for 2 years and it took 8 weeks from GP to hospital physio department

Colour is usually a good indicator in those situations......particularly if the way you're facing prevents instant visuals........

we have a candidate for the dibble fat kid in goal award then:laugh:

There's your problem there. Don't stand on your knee. Not only is it difficult it can be bloody painful.

To strengthen the knee work on the thigh muscles, take glucosamine and apply a cold compress should you get jip.

Thank you, one and all. Ees much better to-day. Especially as I have just had a session of reflexologywhich I recommend it to all other Bunkerites with knee problems

Pitiformis syndrome, Mr GP?? I've not heard of that, but it sounds nasty.



(I hope it doesn't run in the family )

Piriformis syndrome is pretty much mild to extreme sciatica. The 'syndrome' part of it makes it sound a lot worse than it is, although I've struggled with it for two years. Not recommended for sure

When I saw this thread I thought it was going to be about Dee Brown's book Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. I've hated all Americans, apart from the Natives,since I read that.

I tore cartiledge in my knee and it was operated on 4 days later, on the NHS.

Yes, the way American Indians were got rid of, and then replaced by what's there now, doesn't really bear thinking about.

Have you come across this, by Carol Ann Duffy....

Selling Manhattan

All yours, Injun, twenty-four bucks worth of glass beads,
gaudy cloth. I got myself a bargain. I brandish
fire-arms and fire-water. Praise the Lord.
Now get your red ass out of here

I wonder if the ground has anything to say.
You have made me drunk, drowned out
the world's slow truth with rapid lies.
But to-day I hear again and plainly see. Wherever
you have touched the earth, the earth is sore.

I wonder if the spirit of the water has anything
to say. That you will poison it. That you
can no more own the rivers and the grass than own
the air. I sing with true love for the land;
dawn chant, the song of sunset, starlight psalm.

Trust your dreams. No good will come of this.
My heart is on the ground, as when my loved one
fell back in my arms and died. I have learned
the solemn laws of joy and sorrow, in the distance
between morning's frost and firefly's flash at night,

Man who fears death, how many acres do you need
to lengthen your shadow under the endless sky?
Last time, this moment, now, a boy feels freedom
vanish, like the salmon going mysteriously
out to sea. Loss holds the silence of great stones.

I will live in the ghost of grasshopper and buffalo.

The evening trembles and is sad.
A little shadow runs across the grass
and disappears into the darkening pines.

Bloody hell, I thought of that book too.
I wanted the Indians to win so much; it was tragic.All the losses they incurred, one after the other, massacred. But of course it was history, not a novel, and they got almost wiped out. Makes you wonder what would have happened had they not.
As for Carol Ann Duffy, well I'm a fan.
I went to a gig last night - Ruth Padel - a poet doing lectures and then a reading for Bloodaxe. Her poem and book Soho Leopard I would recommend. Also for anyone intersted in writing or understanding modern poetry (probably not a high percentage I would imagine) her books 52 Ways to Understand a Poem and 60 Poems - The Journey of a Poem are fantastic.
err...glad your knee feels better chuck

Thank you, sir.
I nearly went to the Ruth Padel, too, for the lecture, but had too much on last week. I've already heard her read the poems about her trek to Nepal or wherever. I agree she's a brilliant mind and she's good at pointing up things about poems that I would, in some cases, not pick up in a month of Sundays. But I think she's often over-analytical and there's sometimes not much left of poems when she's finished dissecting them! Somebody told me she's the great granddaughter of Charles Darwin, which seems very possible
Anyway, this is my favourite Carol Ann Duffy.

Prayer

Some days, although we cannot pray, a prayer
utters itself. So, a woman will lift
her head from the sieve of her hands and stare
at the minims sung by a tree, a sudden gift.

Some nights, although we are faithless, the truth
enters our hearts, that small familiar pain;
then a man will stand stock-still, hearing his youth
in the distant Latin chanting of a train.

Pray for us now. Grade 1 piano scales
console the lodger looking out across
a Midlands town. Then dusk, and someone calls
a child's name as though they named their loss.

Darkness outside. Inside, the radio's prayer-
Rockall. Malin. Dogger. Finisterre.

Sorry. That's enough poems for now

Uh oh - its a poetry love in on the terraces.
We may get stoned, or battered with rolled up programmes.
Thats what makes this board more interesting than any others - the variety, debates on music, politics etc.
Ruth Padel's lectures will be transcripted and online within the week I'm told. Not sure if that means her own website or New Writing North.
After last weeks successful reading of a chapter of my novel on stage, I'm now looking for different venues around the north east. Are you aware of any in Durham (or indeed elsewhere) that would allow me to read to an audience?
(My fave poem at the mo - long lost lover by Simon Armitage and Soho Leapord by Ruth. Also Ripe for Conversion by Brian Patten)

this is what always happens when someone asks a question on here. 20 different answers!! I end up more confused than at the start.
Good innit?

And which is this one the answer to?

Yup, I know one or three. There's the Blue Room at the Bridge in Newcastle, where writers, singers or musicians can perform to an audience. If you get on to their web-site (www.blueroom.org.uk) you can click on 'submissions' at the top of the page, and get instructions on how to go about it.
Then there's the Lamplight Arts Centre in Stanley, which might be a bit far away for you, but it's a similar thing (tho no-where near as atmospheric as the Bridge). They do an open mic monthly on Mondays, and the number is 01207 218899.

The other is something I've just heard about so can't say what it's like, but someone is starting up a monthly event, possibly in Stockton but it's not sure yet.....and she's looking for storytellers, singers etc etc. The contact is Diane Taylor and she's on 01642 851139.
Good luck!

Bless you Grabec. I will try those three in the next week or two. Stanley's not too far away. I dont mind a bit of travel if it gets me heard and connected.
Anyone hear of anymore, please let me know. There must be some in Durham.

Ripe for Conversion
The God-freaks, their bibles
Burning with improbable flames,
Have singled me out again.
Perhaps they see in me a pit
Only God can fill. Their thrill
Is to catch me on street corners
Or coming out of bars where their quarry,
The proletariat, gather.
Like salesmen, whose patter devalues
The goods they are selling, they
Reduce Heaven and its prophets
To a crutch and a cliché.
They’re like morose cenobites
Whose isolation is secular and spreads
From room to room, and is malignant.
Watching them forage so earnestly
Among the crowd they cannot encompass,
Sometimes out of charity I let
Their soul-squad catch me,
Listen to them talk until
They spill out their own history.
Yes it makes me uneasy the way
They see in me someone
Not so different from themselves;
A man exiled from himself,
In a state of mild decay, like a house
No one lives in any more,
Ripe for conversion
- Brian Patten

ps - yes, Ruth Padel is indeed the great granddaughter of Darwin, its true

There are none in Durham that I know of, except that the Durham WEA workshop sometimes do their own reading at the end of term, but that's for members only. Durham's not really very cosmopolitan. It's a city only in the sense that it has a cathedral, none of the usual city subterraneanisms

Well, yes, I guess it must have become more subterranean now that you're here, not to say furtive

Whereabouts do you work if it's not an intrusive question. I expect it'll be another Belmontesque suburb

But that's BELMONT

You're just trying to confuse me aren't you? To be properly Durham you have to be within hearing distance of the cathedral bells and within sight of the viaduct