Fight Quest IV...

I am currently sporting an ice pack on my shoulder. I have been sporting this for a few days in a bid to stem pain and speed healing. And I think it's working so I'll be back in full training mode sooner than expected. Hurray!

Bizarrely sporting this ice pack has given me a new appreciation of what it's like to be a hunchback, walking around with an odd lump sticking out of my shoulder.

I am also informed that Gillian McKeith suffers with a hunchback affliction so for once I am in sympathy with the whippet-thin, whining, shrew-faced, modern snakeoil saleswoman and fraudulent doctor.

Sadly, apart from McKeith, hunchbacks are not something you see any more and advances in medical science and paedeatric surgery are perhaps reasons for this. Like village idiots they seem to be a dying breed but I reckon the good old-fashioned village idiot is still alive and well somewhere in the UK.

Goole had its own village idiot, of course. He was nicknamed 'Nutty' Graham because his name was Graham and he behaved like a nutter.

These days he'd probably be categorised under the catch-all term 'learning difficulties' but any man who stood at the level crossing on Boothferry Road day-in day-out just in time to see any passing train then proceed to shout abuse at those trains for years on end must have had some method to his madness.

And watching him go to work on unsuspecting train passengers is what used to pass for entertainment in Goole. It was certainly better than watching the football team. Or going to Hull for a shopping trip.

Happy days...