Carry on treatment

Been to the hospital up the road from me today, to see about having some of my toes re-set, which are not correctly aligned as a result of being two weeks late being born, twenty-four years ago. The operation will be some time in the future but already I have been afflicted for life. The podiatrist said my big toes did not bend properly and were locked without pressure when they should be flexible so he said I had to wear special insoles in my shoes for as long as I should live. Luckily, the NHS pays for them and they only have to replaced once a year or so, so just like buying new shoes (except without the buying part). The podiatrist had an interesting take on NHS turf disputes calling them "'Chinese wars' between the departments," which is an intriguing counter-posing of the simmering conflict between the People's Republic of China and Taiwan (the Republic of China) as applied to his work. I had never heard that phrase before. He also related a case study from the USA, where a man was cured of toothache by action on his feet; this worked out along the lines of "Dem Bones" where the 'foot' bone's connected to the ankle bone, the ankle bone's connected to the shin bone, the.... Footache compounded backache compounding the tooth problem. Sorting out the foot sorted out the rest. But as my podiatrist said, the man could have had his head down because he was deep in thought and subsequently had his head upright because the foot brace was so painful, his nerves were on full alert.
The Levantine troubles continue, but I was taken aback by last night's BBC coverage, which I thought was unusually biased i.e. telling it like it is.
Reading in the news that Wayne Rooney loves a bit of golf simulation, perhaps retired footballers like their golf so much as it is the only sport where they don't have to do any running on their knackered knees.