Saturday morning. Got to get walking.  Sciatica needs exercising, (or is it exorcising)-both!

Nearly three weeks ago, sciatica bad, cash fund near zero my natural instinct was to get back to work, make more furniture whack it on e bay and hopefully earn more money.  How the leg was going to get better I didn’t know.

Do you have those times in life when something inside says, ‘NO, don’t do that, do this’?  I’ve had loads.  Six or seven years ago I hit a particularly bad stretch of ice on a small road near Dunstable.  The car span in tight circles as I grappled with the steering wheel-to no effect.  I had lost all control of the vehicle.  “Let go of the steering wheel” a voice said from within.  I had never heard such calm, close and immediate instructions.

So I let go of the wheel.  During the next few moments the car span some more, belted the kerb, turned upside down and we both landed in a ditch, the contour of the ditch matching the contour of the car roof.  I climbed out of the shattered side window, not a scratch in sight.

I was hitch hiking through Hungary in 2001.  I was not a happy man!  Penniless, pissed off and being passed by lorry after lorry.  Diesel fumes, noise and frustration were taking their toll and I was fuming at my lack of progress.

“Turn around and head the other way Simon”, the voice said.  This made me even more angry.  How ridiculous was that?  I was aiming for Turkey.  The signs said that way.  The voice said this way.

So I turned around!  I crossed the road, turned off it down a country lane, walked into a small village, walked through the small village.  It was silent.  There were no lorries, no fumes, no noise.  And I was no longer angry.  I walked up an incline and saw field after field in front of me.  The sun was setting.  I wrapped my jacket around me, curled up in a furrow in the nearest field and fell asleep.

When I woke up cold in the morning I walked back onto the country lane.  A horse and cart stopped and gave me a lift to the top of the hill.  The driver and I waved good bye.  I continued my journey on back lanes!

I walked to Blandford again the other day.  With my clicker gizmo on the Stickland Blandford back road, (4 miles), I counted 664 plastic bottles and tin cans.  But roadside garbage is coming into its summer hibernation period, all covered in grass.

I walked part of Portland’s South West path yesterday.  Very very dramatic.

Back to that little voice inside.  Three weeks ago that little voice said stop the woodwork, contact your creditors and start writing.

I’ve done ten five hundred words(ish) blog posts and I didn’t win that Telegraph “Just Back” competition either.  Where from here?  God knows!

I’d better carry on listening.

(499 words).