19 November 2013 (Tuesday) - Doctors, Cars...



I had a worse night than usual; and that is saying something. I am fed up with my insomnia; I now dread going to bed as I know I will sleep for a couple of hours at best, and then lay awake for the rest of the night and spend much of the following day feeling knackered. I have tried all the old traditional remedies to no avail. I think I’m now at the point where I need to go to a sleep clinic. So I phoned the doctor’s surgery. My doctors are are… I won’t be negative. I’ll just say that if you want to be very unlikely to ever obtain an appointment with a doctor, and when you do get one you’d like to be faced with a doctor who is more interested in fiddling on his mobile phone than in talking to you, then South Ashford Medics is the place to be. I phoned them and told the receptionist that I didn’t want an appointment. I wanted a referral to a sleep clinic. She couldn’t give me a referral without seeing a G.P. first. I asked for an appointment to see a G.P.; she said I couldn’t have one.

It’s easier to get a check-up for my car than it is for me. Unfortunately my car needed a check-up. A month or so ago I had loads of work done to my S.L.O.W. (super-luxurious omnidirectional wassermerjigger as Lacey calls it), and since then the steering has developed something of an intermittent knocking. I took the car back to the garage today and left it with them, and then went on for a bit of a walk with “Furry Face TM “.  We went up through Repton Manor into the Warren where a very aptly named geocache had been hidden. We found the cache, and then carried on walking through the woods. I would have liked to have let Fudge off of the lead, but they’ve recently released highland cattle into the woods, so I didn’t want him coming off the worst in a fight with a cow. We came home a rather circuitous way via the Sainsbury’s car park and the town centre.

Just as we got home the garage phoned. They had taken my S.L.O.W. (it’s a Cat in the Hat thing) for a test drive and had experienced the knocking in the steering. They had been all over the steering circuit, but couldn’t find anything wrong with it. So to be on the safe side they greased it all up and said we should all hope for the best. They did find that one of the light bulbs needed replacing. So we walked round to the garage to get the car. They only charged me for the new light bulb; I was pleased about that.

Home again, and over a spot of lunch I tried (and failed) to solve some puzzles. And I fell asleep. I hate that. I’d been wide awake for much of the night when there was nothing to do, and I had so much planned for the afternoon and slept through it instead.

Being Tuesday the clans gathered – this time in Folkestone. Terry was with us this evening; it was really good to catch up. If only we could do it more often…

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