Getting the hump with a camel

We do some things well. It doesn't take a London think-tank to tell us we have social capital in spades – horrible Stalinesque phrase, but we get the drift.

Trusting and willing to help strangers, close-knit New Zealanders ranked first in social capital, according to a global analysis by the Legatum Institute.

The evidence is all around us in the Samoan relief appeal. Dances, benefit concerts, donation boxes in shops and businesses ... it's a humbling effort.

The cause has seeped right through to the heartland. In Levin, the local builders rounded up some free timber from their suppliers and are giving up a Saturday to make framing for new fales.

The trusses will be loaded into containers for the trip north. Levin, would you credit, has a seasonal population of Samoans who work for a local asparagus-growing business.

I've never even been tempted to stop there for a cuppa. My mistake. Next time, through, we'll make it an Earl Grey and hang the expense.

Watching all this unfold has been a ray of sunshine in a week where the real thing didn't show up much, and even when it did, the gloss was knocked off by a southerly.

I was feeling grumpy anyway. My back was out. I looked like one of those freighters whose cargo has shifted and they slope into the nearest port on a 30-degree list. That port, in my case, was an osteopath. First time I've tried one. As a general rule, I avoid people who can see through me. Pain has a way of overriding principles.

She is strong, this osteopath. Towards the end of the session, she placed one hand on my shoulder, the other on my back and warned that a decent shove was on its way. The crack must have registered on the earthquake monitors in Wellington. I could feel my vertebrae bobbling like the keys on a player piano.

A friend told me a true story recently about a child at a memorial service.

"That's Auntie in the box," an adult had said, pointing to the cremated remains. The child furrowed her brow. "Did they fold her up?" she asked.

That's how this felt. The osteopath was using my body for origami practice. At the end of the session, I would fit into a small wooden box. We couldn't isolate a reason for my seized spine. Bad backs are the baby boomers' disease. Blame our neglectful youth, our sedentary lifestyles, our high-stress culture.

Maybe it was from picking up babies and tossing them in the air.

I like that explanation. I'll add it to the bill of guilt to be presented to my daughters when I throw myself on their mercy in retirement. (They already give me a post-office-box number as their address, so this is shaping up to be a long battle of wiles.)

Or it might have been the time I lifted a fallen camel off a youngster after a freak accident at Auckland Zoo. I'm sure the camel was the last straw that broke my back.

However, that incident was a long time ago. My spine should have sorted itself out, regenerated or something, bogged itself up with the biological equivalent of Araldite.

The osteopath shook her head. It doesn't happen, she said. How disappointing. The human body wins hands down as the most astonishing machine. It copes with unspeakable abuse – drink, drugs, morris dancing – and keeps on pumping. Yet here it was falling down, literally, on the job. Straighten up and fly right, dammit.

I told you I was grumpy.

"Is there a history of morris dancing in the family?" the osteopath had asked before she set about disproving the theory that you can't fold a body in half seven times. On reflection, she might have said "heart problems". Either way, my answer is protected by medical confidentiality.

After the interrogation, she ordered me face down on the table, worked her thumbs up my spine, quickly located the seat of pain and burrowed in. Hell, I thought, I once had a girlfriend who was a whizz at that – as I said, grumpy.

The mid-spine muscles were locking up the damaged lower vertebrae, so they wouldn't move, the osteopath explained, but the muscles were going into spasm. She worked the tender spots expertly so the pain stayed within the macho threshold without tipping me into crybaby.

Ten more minutes of such magic and I was plumb for the first time in yonks. She's a wonder. Even better, her ministrations were being subsidised by the state. Camel misadventure comes under ACC – even if I wouldn't swear to the veracity of that tale (it might have been a dromedary).

ACC should foot the bill for on-going care. (If it is still upright – the Government is invading under the pretext that the corporation harbours weapons of mass destruction.) I may go out dancing this weekend. No, a long lie-down sounds infinitely more appealing.

- © Fairfax NZ News