No soy codo, pero...

I've been suffering somewhat from tennis elbow for the past couple of months. All the more disappointing given the fact that I haven't played tennis, proper, for years. 

V and I often turned out on our local hard courts three or four times a week during the shortish British summers. 

But then just over a decade ago she suffered a fall from a reasonable altitude, landing very hard on her shoulder, and although we did try to go back out with our racquets, it was soon clear that her service was but a shadow of its former self and the competitive element of our matches was gone for good. 

This was especially traumatic for her as she had always been extremely sporty — Guatemalan national fencing champion and so on — and had worked her way back from an ugly knee injury which occurred just before we met, but as we all now know, unresolve-able chronic conditions begin at 40. 

And La Antigua has some lovely clay courts comparable with those we enjoyed playing on over on the mucky red continent in the late 90s. 

In my youth I never seemed to get how easily athletes come a-cropper. Years and years of football, rugby, cricket, tennis, badminton, soft ball, squash, real-tennis, swimming, diving and not a niggle. (Though V and I are on the same page on the unnecessary wrist pain of volleyball.)

But then in my thirties I made a lunge on the tennis court at Cascades against an awkward Aussie opponent and landed clumsily on an outstretched leg, which left me with a form of sciatica for weeks. 

I recall that my father suffered quite alarmingly from tennis elbow for an extended period of my childhood — in his case more properly golf elbow — and had it treated with hydrocortisone injections, but that is not my way.

Luckily I have discovered a handy Argie-manufuactured med called Reversal Flex here in Guatemala, which is extremely effective at targeting this sort of discomfort. Over the counter, but ought not to be, of course. 

Albañiles in LAG tend to rave about Vitaflenaco for back pain and other forms of inflammation, and I have experimented, but this is a painkiller one should avoid if at all possible. 

In my case the garden shears can take the lion's share of the blame for my codo condition — there are times of year when I insist on manually mowing the lawn, and last June was one of those. 

About eight years ago I had some fairly serious knee ligament trouble myself, which was settled almost overnight by a dose of electronic acupuncture in Pangbourne, but I doubt similar miracles can easily be accessed here in LAG. 

In the last couple of years in London we used to play badminton regularly at the weekends with some friends near Stamford Bridge (Chelsea FC i.e. deepest Fulham) and we still occasionally indulge in the same in our garden, as it seems feasible, even for the decrepit, and always generates some amusing canine mayhem. 

Perhaps the best part of our tennis championships in Wapping were the pints at the Prospect of Whitby afterwards. The lesson here is that one's compound experiences may start to fall apart as the years go by, but one is not necessarily left with the spotty bananas at the bottom of the bowl.