okay we'll agree you're a nice person Martin, and successful and happy.............just try not to get too depressed about it.

having said that, it's a bit daft isn't it, giving advice to people who have problems that you have no experience of....you being happy, successful, and a nice guy.

Try to imagine someone putting their foot through the back of your Martin D35. and you have figure someway to make it play again - that's how some people feel about their lives, and they DO need sympathetic voices. There aren't support groups everywhere to help them, they feel isolated.

Doctors are okay, but they are medical people, and to them you are a medical problem. they stick the jump leads on and if they get it right - off you go for another few circuits.

However we are social animals, when we get a major medical problem we get all sorts of social problems concommittant with it. that's how the friendly voices help Martin.

the reason I know about this is because my wife runs a self help group for people with arthritis.   She got arthritis from out of the blue when she was 25 years old. the health and social work professionals were crap. they had no advice worth hearing about how to deal with long term pain, loss of bloody everything - status and wealth and career, even how to adapt your house, how to get round a town centre when you can't climb stairs, etc. you had to parley with people who had been there bought the t- shirt, ate the shit supper and thoroughly digested it. depression, has its own disabling agenda - that you have to have lived through - a medical degree just don't cover it

anyway that's what I think. I'm sure every contributor to this thread means well. I agree some of the attacks on Martin were unfair and expressed in language that I found distasteful.

all the best to evrybody - specially those in pain of whatever kind

big al whittle