Spine

John Patrick Higgins has been told he's spineless for as long as he can remember. But if that's true, why is he obliged to leave an armchair with the nervous trepidation of someone dipping a toe into a piranha tank?

John has a bad back. His skeleton's turned on him like an angry dog denied, ironically, a bone.

As he embarks on a six-week course of Pilates to iron out his kinks—years of Freudian analysis having not even touched the sides—he finds himself in a world of Lycra-clad pensioners far...