Darryl and Joni, Trash the Dress, Lion’s Head. Well at some stage I suppose I have to break the news to you right? Now you see, the thing is this. In early Feb, about 3 weeks before I left for Bryn and Finn’s wedding in Australia, I started with what could only be described as a bit of a stiff neck. The plane trip to Aus was not overly comfortable as the pain grew worse. But it was bearable. When I arrived back in SA my schedule looked menacing – there were a LOT of shoots lined up – daily. I soon realized that this neck thing might be a small technical snag. But I soldiered on. I went to see a neurosurgeon. Painkillers and anti-inflammatories. Did they work? Nope. All a bit tricky really. But I HAD to get through March and April, I just had to. I’m not overly sure how I got through it all but I did. Standing was painful, sitting was extremely painful, lying down wasn’t too much better either. Weddings, family shoots, Trash the Dresses, weddings, family shoots, Darryl and Joni’s Trash the Dress. I wanted to do something different for this shoot so I turned to our friend Google and punched in: ‘Trash the Dress, Lion’s Head.’ No meaningful results. Perfect. And so that was that. I asked Joni how fit she and Darryl were and she said: ‘You want to take us up Lion’s Head don’t you.’ Perceptive Joni, very, very perceptive. So off we went. I must admit, I didn’t quite expect the attention some girl in her wedding dress up Lion’s Head would attract. She was a celeb up there. So was Darryl. The amount of ‘ooooh’s and ‘aaaah’s’ and ‘congratulations’ and ‘have you just got married up there’ comments were astounding. Darryl was seriously humorous in some of his replies. It was quite fantastic really premier-pharmacy.com/product-category/allergy/ albeit a touch challenging to actually get any photos what with the myriad of tourists appearing from behind rocks every few seconds. How Joni managed to actually climb around on that mountain in her dress beggar’s belief – it’s not for the faint hearted. Anyway, back to the neck. By the time we got down I’d decided to go back to the neuro. Which duh, resulted in x-rays, an MRI and an oblique x-ray, plus a very intensive inspection of my torso, the amazing thing that it is. So to cut a long, long story short, after pursuing all avenues open to me I said to the neuro: ‘bud, you need to fix me here – properly, I have things to do, people to see and at least another 200 000 kilometres in this tank – you need to help a friend here.’ So that’s just what he’s going to do. A bit of a snooze, a bit of surgery and a new disc at C4 (or is it C5 – I’ll leave it up to him). I trust him 100% and believe I’m in the best hands out there. Then it’ll be 3 weeks lying on my back watching the Tour de France, then another 3 weeks rehab and 2 weeks after that back we go into wedding season, fit as a fiddle. And yes, trust me, I’ve checked, I’ll have full mobility and be like a new 4 x 4. Which brings us all the way back to that piece of stone in the middle of Cape Town – anyone keen for a shoot up Table Mountain from the end of August, let me know. Onwards and upwards baby, onwards and upwards…
