Stress in the leg

I have in the past got quite painful cramp-like aches in my (left) calf. It is not cramp, because so far as I can tell there are no muscles in spasm. Years ago, when I went to the GP about it, he listened to my symptoms at great length, asked a lot of relevant questions and finally said, "What you have got is pain in the leg." Such is the diagnostic skill that straight A's at A-Level and 7 years at university give you! He said the pain was probably (note, probably) caused by 'stress in the leg', and he gave me some homeopathic tablets. They worked for a time, but I know a better cure – tights. The worse the pain, the more support I look for in the tights I wear.

Well, after a day of running around administering the netball league, my leg was hurting rather badly, so I put on some M&S medium support tights. Straightaway both of my legs began to feel a lot better. And incidentally to look a lot better too.

Sunday I continued to wear the M&S until the afternoon when my wife noticed in and said 'aren't you hot in nylons?' Well, yes I was quite warm at the time. But why does she have to call them 'nylons'? – that is always to my mind a pejorative term. The long and short of it was that we were going to have a barbeque and I took the tights off. Summer temps, plus cooking a BBQ plus wearing tights would have been too much even for me! Of course by the time I went to bed my leg was hurting again. So I put my medium support tights back on, and slept on top of the bedclothes to compensate.

Monday I wore tights under long trousers at work despite the heat, changing into shorts for the journey home. As on previous occasions, I wore my tights with shorts (mid thigh length) in the city centre and on buses, and no one seemed to take any notice. I did not take them off when I got home, either. I preferred the minor discomfort of being a bit too warm to the pain of 'stress in the leg'.

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