to the left, to the left...

I've developed a twitch.

It's not quite as dramatic as Robert Lindsay's character Michael Murray in GBH, but it's getting there.

It's my left thigh, and it seems to happen mostly in the evening.  I'll be minding my own business, sitting on the sofa or lying in bed or something, and my left thigh will suddenly jolt as the muscle contracts. If I'm sitting with my feet up on the coffee table, this will quite often send my leg flying up into the air and off the table.  As you can imagine, it's quite irritating.... not least for the cat when she's sitting on my lap.

I've had problems with my calves cramping for a little while now.  That seems to happen mostly at night, usually when I'm asleep in bed.  I'll wake up, wonder why I've woken up and then suddenly realise that my calf muscles are cramping and I'll hobble out of bed to desperately try and stretch the muscles out.  It's not much fun and I'm not sure what to do about it.  I've been taking magnesium supplements before I go to bed, and I usually have a pint of orange and tonic water with my tea because the quinine is supposed to help.  Maybe it does help, but I'm still cramping.

The muscle twitching is new and troublesome development.  My left leg is my weaker leg, of course. During the summer months, I usually spend my Wednesday evenings doing some interval training on the Embankment organised by my friends at Colwick parkrun.  It's the kind of training that you would never really do on your own. It's horrible, but fun all at the same time.  We often have lots of different exercises each week to try and keep things fresh.  This week, we some of those little hurdles that you use for quick feet exercises.  They're only three or four inches off the ground, but they're designed to work on your speed and agility.  We ran over them as part of our warm up, leading with the right leg first, then the left leg and then both feet. I couldn't help but notice that I found it significantly harder to pick up my left leg over the hurdle than I did my right.  It's only a small loss of mobility, but it's a noticeable one and I'm afraid that it might be getting a little worse over time.  I seem to be having an accumulation of little issues in my left leg.

Still.  At the moment, most of this is annoying but not much more.  I can't be spending my life worrying about what might happen and if this might all get worse, because equally it might not.  It's a total waste of time.  That's not to say that I haven't noted that it's happening though, or that I don't find it irritating, because I do.

Probably not as irritating as the cat does though...she cocks her ear at me in a most dissatisfied manner with every twitch.

I suppose there's always this....