Monday March 25th 2024

Have you noticed how, whenever you have a stay-in-hospital scheduled for the near future, maybe for the very next week, as in my case, the subject of hospitals starts to slowly make all other topics of interest fade into obscurity?

Lois and I are finding that right now - even the jokes which, by our house rules, we're each obliged to make before leaving the dinner-table,  on the "leave 'em laughing" principle, are becoming dominated more and more by so-called "hospital humour".

Have you heard this "doozy", which I used last night to leave the table after our lamb-tagine-with-couscous "do" ?

British tourist in Australian hospital: "Doctor, have I come here to die?"

Doctor: "No mate, you came here yesterday."

And although the papers are full of stories about world crises, the economy etc, it seems that you soon begin to concentrate only on the medical news, like this one, a few years back, from the local Onion News Worcestershire Desk:

Well, it's definitely been that sort of a day for Lois and me today - dominated by "hospital talk" and hospital related activities and all that malarkey, to put it mildly.

Going about my normal business in the house this morning, I get a sudden call from Nurse Sutha in "pre-op" at Worcestershire Royal, to say she'd like me to drop by this morning to collect some cleansing fluid as preparation for my next week's operation, then this afternoon I do a one-hour telephone appointment with Jenny, a friendly orthopaedic therapist at Queen Alexandra, Redditch. And finally I talk to a nice woman in admin at Gloucestershire Royal who confirms that my check-up appointment tomorrow at Gloucester is to go ahead as planned.

What madness !!!!!!

So I've become a "three hospitals" kind of a guy it seems, suddenly, expected to pass information on from hospital to hospital as appropriate. Am I the only person holding our so-called National Health Service together?

I wonder......!

flashback to this morning; I park the car in the hospital's

massive carpark in Worcester, and then Lois and I sit waiting

in the pre-op "waiting area" for me to get my

pre-op cleansing fluids from Nurse Sutha

Out of all this medical malarkey today, I am happiest of all to get confirmation this afternoon from Gloucestershire Royal, however, that my appointment there tomorrow is to go ahead. The reason is just because a nurse left a confusing message on my answerphone on Friday saying that "I'm sorry, but Gloucestershire Royal can't treat you any more now that I see you've recently moved to Worcestershire". When I called back I had to leave a message, asking them to get back to me, but they never did!

What madness (again) !!!! Call this a National Health Service, do you !!!!

Have you noticed how everything is done by counties in this country? I blame the Anglo-Saxons, who started this whole malarkey a thousand years ago, dividing the country into "shires" as counties were called in those crazy far-off days, each with its own "sheriff" (the shire-reeve or shire-officer) and each sending two MPs to Parliament.

our Anglo-Saxon counties

The result, politically, was, from the start, a whole lot of instability. Each county had to send 2 MPs to Parliament, even if some counties were teeming with peasants, while others just had a few pigs and sheep, maybe, and a bunch of medieval viruses, "plagues" and such like, as their "electorate".

Sometimes it was the sheep that held the balance of power in some areas, or "special interest groups" such as viruses - something that can happen even today, as I was able to exclusively reveal in my blog of March 17th.

And this happens occasionally even in America. Witness the influence of particular "hobbyists" in the 2018 midterms, a  new political phenomenon which was threatening to throw the whole country "out of whack", as evidenced by this Onion News story from November of that year. 

[That's enough whimsy! - Ed]

12:00 It's nice this morning when we come home from Worcester, to find in my emails another amusing set of Venn diagram from Steve, our American brother-in-law, who monitors these diagrams for us on the web, on pretty much a weekly basis, or as and when they're being finished being worked on [Tidy that sentence up a bit, will you? - Ed]

Yes, popcorn on the floor, when the lights come on in the cinema - it's always annoying, isn't it.

But the truth is, that having spent maybe 3 to 4 hours in your seat there, fully immersed in some wonderful fantasy world featuring beautiful people in nice weather in gorgeous surroundings, the very experience of seeing the popcorn on the floor when the lights go up, is an unpleasant but actually quite salutary "wake up call", telling you that you've got to get back to reality.

And it sort of half-prepares for exiting the cinema into maybe a rain-drenched day in Bell End or North Piddle, or wherever your "humble abode" happens to be in this area. It's pretty brutal, but we all have to go through it at the end of a session "at the pictures", don't we.

crowds seen exiting a cinema recently in the 

lovely Worcestershire village of Bell End

The Venn diagram gives me this brilliant idea - would popcorn-strewn cinema floors be the perfect place to stage events in the new sport currently sweeping the Western World - "competitive hoovering" ???

I wonder......!!!!

This up-and-coming sport was thrust into the limelight last week by New Yorker John Wilson in one of his "how to do it" guides to modern living, this one being about how to get to enjoy watching sports events without having to fake it.

That last picture is a bit of a warning, however, that these events can take a terrible physical toll on the hoovers themselves, and require a "pit stop" with mechanics etc standing by, and a workshop every bit as complex as a Formula One set-up, just to keep those hoovers "on the road".

What a crazy world we live in !!!!!

21:00 It's been a busy and rather stressful day. So Lois and I decide to get some light relief and go to bed on ex-cabinet minister Michael Portillo's latest programme in his new series of "Great British Railway Journeys".

Tonight Michael is in the Scottish lochs,  hearing the heart-warming story of work to restore the beautiful old 1950's paddle steamer Maid of the Loch.

The engineering side of the work is taking place under the watchful eye of retiree George Gerc (crazy name, crazy guy!). First Gerc shows us the Maid of the Loch's steam-powered winch, housed on the slipway.

The Maid of the Loch itself evidently isn't as old as Lois and I are - it was launched in 1953, when we were both 7 years old, but it's comforting to know that the winch's engine at least is much much older than we are. There's always something older than you are in this world, we find, which is always something of a comfort - call us 'a bit desperate' if you like.

Michael asks Scotsman Gerc how much of his life he's devoted to this engine, and it turns out that it's a couple of years now, but, previous to his work on the steamer, he himself had a much longer maritime background.

Oh dear!

Poor Gerc !!!!!!

And taking a quick glance at Lois's face as we watch this conversation, I can see that Lois is feeling some sympathy here with Mrs Gerc.

However, I tend to think that it's more or less the duty of retiree men to give a few challenges to their wives, which helps keep them fit and young, both interested and at the same time also interesting, I believe. 

"These things are sent to try us", was one of my dear late mother's favourite phrases, and I think there's a lot of truth in that.

I wonder....!!!

[Oh just stop wondering and go to bed! - Ed]

22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzzz!!!!!