Pain

I got up at 6:20 this morning and went for my Sunday constitutional, a 90-minute run that took me 6 kilometres down the river and back, round the Marina bay, culminating in me getting lost and running around Clarke Quay like a deranged fool.

This afternoon, we walked over to Fort Canning, photographed a lizard clinging to a tree, visited a mall to inspect the 100% tax Singaporean shopkeepers seem to be trying to levy on camera gear, and then walked home again. I didn't feel too bad, except for my calves, which felt like somebody had attacked them with a knife. So we decided it would be wise to go for a foot massage.

The preceding paragraphs may give some sense of the masochism I've succumbed to: early morning starts, long runs, walks in the baking heat, dealing with shop assistants, and choosing of our own voilition to have a foot massage.

There seems to be a bit more choice in our area for massages. When we lived in Hong Kong there were three or four massage places that were pretty much identical - none of them rub-a-tug joints. Whereas within ten minutes of our flat in Singapore we have the full gamut, from a 'sensual massage' that looks like it specialises in happy endings, to a high-end spa, via several traditional Chinese places that have terrifying pictures outside of women being bent backwards. Oh, and two men-only massage parlours, advertising their male therapists. I'm not going to investigate whether that caters for the rub-a-tug market that doesn't want female "practitioners".

We went to a place near the MRT and had an hour of the most painful massage I can remember - it's possibly the first I've had this year, and the combination of sore legs and feet from running, and my feet growing stiff (or my nerves regenerating) from not being massaged regularly, meant that I was in agony for 60 minutes. I think it's done something good for me, but it's probably just the wave of adrenalin my body has produced to help me cope with the pain.

Still, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. Apart from liquorice allsorts. And scurvy. And most non-fatal, debilitating diseases.