Helen Mead

It's bad news for many of us - gardens can ruin our health. The thousands of people who enjoy the country's most popular leisure pastime have been advised to take a leaf out of Linford Christie's book and perform warm-up exercises before tackling their flower beds.

A growing list of green-fingered casualties has led doctors to issue a health warning about the risks of weeding, pruning, digging and hoeing. They are being advised to ease into a job rather than throw themselves at it with vigour, and go slowly when wielding sharp implements such as garden shears.

Giggly gardening girlie Charlie Dimmock advises people to limber up - presumably by bending over and swinging your bra-less breasts like a pendulum, yet gardening tsar Alan Titchmarsh has never done warm up exercises, but agrees they are sensible.

I reckon that - like cigarette packets - anything to do with gardening: garden centres, tools, books and TV programmes, should come with a Government health warning. And it's not the only thing that be flagged up as a hazard to well-being, alerting people to the perils in store if they indulge.

I suggest the following are subject to such warnings:

Sex: a dangerous liaison if ever their was one. It's not unheard of for people to put their backs out and have to summon help. Better stay safe than suffer embarrassment on a huge scale. This is particularly the case if your romp involves your best mate's hubby and takes place in the back seat of a Ford Fiesta in the middle of a forest.

Shopping: Supermarket trolleys can cause back strain. Those small wheels that jam with fluff and dirt, or suddenly decide to stop, or only go left, can wreak havoc with your spine. Carrier bags are just as bad. They cut into your wrists, split when you've got more than a couple of items - usually while you're hurrying across a busy six-lane road - and put even more strain on your back.

Driving: Sitting in your car for what can be hours on end, puts untold pressure upon your nerve centre. And, don't fool yourself into thinking those wooden ball seat covers will help - although, according to a mate, they're great for cellulite.

Exercise: All right for the super fit, but for those who, after decades lying on the sofa watching videos, suddenly join a gym and launch themselves furiously upon the rowing machine, the writing is on the wall.

Sitting: Office chairs, armchairs, sofas - your back is in peril from all of them. Whoever invented the chair had no idea what an instrument of torture it would become as we manoeuvre ourselves into a semi-comfortable position.

Kids: My back is on the brink of total collapse. Well, it feels like that. And it's all down to children. Picking them up, picking up their toys, their clothes, their food up...I could go on. And don't tell me you can avoid all the pain by bending your knees as you lower your body. As any mother will vouch, you ain't got time even for that. Kids mean bad backs, and if anything needs a Government health warning more than gardening, it's children.

Basically, just about everything in life can ruin your health. If we all lived in padded cells, chances are the padding would be made from some sort of highly-toxic material.

We only live once, and if we spent half our lives gearing up for potential health risks we wouldn't have a life at all. Even by typing this I'm probably vulnerable to repetitive strain injury.

Best to throw caution to the wind.

Do what I did at the weekend - tackle our unkempt borders, play with the kids, drive to the supermarket, run round the block, slop down on the sofa.

But avoid sex, of course.

Any excuse I can add to the list (headaches, exhaustion, waking the kids, washing my hair...) is worth hanging on to.

24/04/00

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Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.