I can't even hail a taxi...

Overheard fleetingly on the way to the station last Monday, the middle of a conversation:

"And then she said 'why, I can't even hail a taxi!'". The speaker, on uttering this, was raising her hand above the shoulder, as in hailing taxis.

Now I don't know for sure what this conversation, of which I caught such a fleeting moment as I cycled past, was about. But it rang a sort of bell.

Why have so many people got rheumatic aches and pains in their arms this Autumn? And pains in their backs? I know of at least four with a similar rheumatic inflammation in the shoulder and arm that makes it hard to move the arm or lift anything. I feel sure that the person telling her interlocutor this story from her front door was reporting another case of the same illness. I've had it since the end of September.

Is it a virus going round Cambridge at the moment? Or is it a reaction to some kind of pollution? Or is it the effect of the vitamin deficiency we're all suffering following a summer with no sunshine? Or what is it? Does anyone else know of any cases? Are there any cases that are not women?