Danskcolin: Friday December 17th 2021

The day I've been dreading dawns - the day of my annual check-up at Gloucestershire Royal Hospital: actually it's been 18 months since the last one, due to the NHS backlogs in routine appointments.

Gloucestershire Royal Hospital - main entrance

It's going to be a stressful morning for 3 reasons:

(1) We hardly ever drive to Gloucester, even though it's only about 10 miles away, and in fact, we haven't been there once since my last "annual" check-up 18 months ago.

(2) Will we catch COVID from somebody or something?

(3) [last but not least haha!] What things will they find out that are wrong with me?

Stress point no.2 is particular bothersome at the moment. I read on my smartphone this morning that as from tomorrow December 18th, new rules are coming into force at the hospital because of the omicron variant: (a) visits to sick in-patients are only by arrangement, (b) outpatients cannot be accompanied by anybody, (c) outpatients have to take a COVID lateral flow test, plus some other restrictions that I can't remember right now. My god !

Because of this, I consider trying to postpone the appointment till January, and even go so far as to pick up the phone to "dial" the number, but in the end I decide to go and get it over with.

10:30 We drive over there, but initially we have a parking problem: the ticket machines are being serviced or repaired, and eventually I find out that parking is free today as a result of this work - but why don't they put up a sign saying that? What madness !!!!

Because of the parking debacle, I only arrive at the check-up department 5 minutes before my appointment, which is for 11:20. I go into the check-up room reciting (not out loud) Brian Wilson's famous and incredibly powerful magic spell, "Don't worry, everything'll turn out all right".

And so it proves. Thanks (again), Brian! So everything turns out all right. But that's on condition of Lois and me not coming down with omicron variant, but I'm quietly optimistic about that. The hospital has got very good about ensuring people are masked and socially distanced etc - and in any case the only people I get really close to are all medical personnel, and I'm sure they'll all have been tested, so fair enough!

a typical check-up as depicted in this scene from "Curb Your Enthusiasm" -

Larry David gets a check-up from his cardiologist and from Nurse Renée

13:00 We arrive home and have lunch. After that we need to have a stress-free afternoon, so we have our usual Friday afternoon shower followed by a nap in bed, only coming downstairs at 5 pm, by which time we feel our normal selves again.

17:00 We have a cup of Earl Grey tea and a cheesy scone on the sofa. Lois looks through her correspondence, and finds yet another coincidence in her ZANE charity newsletter - she's an occasional contributor to ZANE, which does charity work in Zimbabwe.

We always read the ZANE newsletter because it always has an entertaining collection of poems in it, all with rather racy illustrations. And what should we see this afternoon but this poem by Emily Dickinson, with illustration by ZANE's Tony Husband:

This is weird because only a few nights ago we were watching a film called "Wild Nights", all about the poet Emily Dickinson and her passionate affair with her sister-in-law, Susan Dickinson.

All these coincidences are getting to be a bit too frequent now. I'm beginning to think that somebody up there is trying to send us a message after all! But I wonder what it is? More information please!

Well, we'll see !!!! This comes hot on the heels of another coincidence when we were reminded of 1960's political sex scandal survivor Mandy Rice-Davies on 2 consecutive days, including Mandy's appearance in 1980's sitcom "Chance in a Million" - and surely the very title of the sitcom is significant here. Am I right, or am I right?

flashback to last week: we see Mandy Rice-Davies in the 1980's

sitcom "Chance in a Million", and then next day we see her name in a crossword: the last

clue of all, but the one we do first: how weird is that?

And what a crazy world we live in !!!!!

So.... two coincidences in as many days, each involving a woman with an unusual sex life.

My late mother was a firm believer in "threeness", and that "everything comes in threes". I can still hear her say the words, "There's sure to be a third".

Mentally I pull out the scrabble letters for EMILY DICKINSON and MANDY RICE-DAVIES out of the scrabble box, but for the moment I can't rearrange them into a message that makes any kind of sense.

We obviously need a third woman now, preferably one with an unusual sex life.

The plot thickens!

We decide to watch "Chance in a Million" again tonight, hoping for some sort of sign - perhaps the "third woman" and the answer to the puzzle !!!!

20:00 We settle down on the couch to watch another episode of the 1980's sitcom "Chance in a Million".

Don't bother to try and understand the above synopsis of the plot - it isn't accurate anyway: and the plot is about 10 times as complex as that - my god!!!

The important thing to take away is that there are 3 brides involved in this week's episode, all getting married on the same day, a Saturday - that was the way you did it in the 1980's!

"Three" brides - we can't help feeling the number is significant, but apart from this obvious message to Lois and me to keep looking for the so-called "third woman", we must wait perhaps a few more days to be given our final answer. So we'll see! I'll keep you posted.

And it's an entertaining episode of the sitcom tonight even if we don't fully understand it.

Bride no. 3 is the easiest case, the heavily pregnant one: the wedding gets cancelled due to a misunderstanding, which I won't go into here. And the groom finds out that although she's pregnant, it's not his child, which turns out to be a bit of a disappointment to him. Oh dear!

bride no. 3 and the moment she tells the groom

the baby isn't his - oh dear!

Bride no. 2's wedding doesn't take place either - the vet who she calls to tend to the fainted horse that's pulling her carriage to the church turns out to be an old flame, and she decides to cancel the original wedding. Later she faints herself - it must be something contagious !

Bride no. 2 - she meets an old flame by chance after her horse faints -

she calls off the original wedding but later faints herself.

Bride no. 3 is Barbara, Alison's library colleague. She calls off her wedding when she sees her fiancé with Bride no.2, but there's a happy ending when she throws her wedding bouquet to bridesmaid Alison at the end, a clear signal that Alison and Tom will be the next couple at the altar. Let's hope so anyway!