>My mate, the legendary Frank the Potter is at this moment in hospital, waiting for them to wheel him into the operating theatre in a couple of hours to fix a herniated disc.

You don’t want to know about the Keystone Cops episode that lead up to it.

You do?

OK.

Being a potter, he’s lifting heavy stuff all day – clay to the wheel, pots onto racks to dry, racks of pots over to the kiln, packing the kiln, unpacking the kiln…

On Saturday – they were just about to set off on vacation – he keeled over in excruciating pain, called the paramedics on Sunday, the doctor took one look at him and said “Hospital and MRI scan.

Get to A&E and the flossy in charge said “Don’t need an MRI, it’s sciatica, here’s an aspirin, go home and rest, you’ll be OK to go on vacation tomorrow”

They eventually get a clinic to accept him, find out what’s wrong and treat it like the emergency it is.

Thank Christ for that.

So he asked me to fix him up with some music to counter the boredom.

At the moment, he’s got my 30 year old short wave radio, Bose® cans and aniPod® with enough music for a week.

A bit weighty for someone with a crook back, so I zipped out and bought him a nifty little Sony® Walkman®.

Only weighs 64 grams including earbuds.

The bloody packaging weighs 200g……..

He’s better not try lifting that until he’s better