24 Mo-Vember 2009 (Tuesday) - The Meaning of Life (Part Five)

I spent a little time last night updating my diary dates for the next year. I’ve managed to get confirmed dates for the beer festivals in Canterbury & Dover. And it would seem that I had the date of the Canterbury one wrong. It’s a week later than I originally thought. Which is good – coming so soon after the kite festival in Brighton does make for a very busy week.

And then a phone call from the dentist. My normal dentist is back, and wasn’t happy with his “stunt double” referring me to the hospital (see last Wednesday’s blog entry). They can do wisdom teeth in the surgery, and offer “sedation therapy”. Working on the principal that, if nothing else, it might make for an interesting blog entry, I’ve signed up to get sedated in a fortnight’s time. I wonder if I get to keep my tooth?

There was an interesting article on the radio this morning. Recipients of organ transplants are up in arms because of the sub-standard quality of the organs they are getting. Apparently a few years ago there was a decent amount of healthy people getting splattered in road traffic accidents to provide a constant supply of spare parts. But an unexpected side-effect of improved road safety, roll-bars and air bags is that people tend to survive serious road traffic accidents these days. Which is all very well for those having the accidents, but rather thoughtless for those hankering over their innards. (Or so the vulture on this morning’s Radio 4 would have me believe). Such people now have to rough it with sub-standard transplants from people who haven’t met their end quite so cleanly.

I dare say I might be a tad more sympathetic should I need a replacement kidney, but I can only see one solution to the problem. In the way that people donate blood, people might consider giving up some of their spare offal before they die. After all, we can manage on just one kidney, and if you lose a lump of liver, it grows back quickly. I will concede that it’s a tad tricky to muddle along without a heart or lungs. I can’t claim to be original on the concept of compulsory organ donation – I got the idea from the second film I took my darling wife to see. She was only fourteen at the time.

The post brought a letter from the chokey. Following “Norman Stanley’s” mishap with a plastic fork, he was unable to play basketball with the team. Is this why they have suffered their most humiliating defeat so far? – 112 – 2. And then he phoned - he seems pleased with my plans to “pimp his house”, and so it was off to B&Q to buy more D-I-Y things including ten litres of magnolia emulsion. You can’t go wrong with magnolia.

I like painting – both pictures and walls. I just hope he’ll be happy with the finished result. If he is, then all is fine. If he’s not, I’ll give him a bill for my time….