I woke in a cold sweat at half past four this morning
following a rather vivid dream in which I was unable to unblock my tent's drain
which was bunged up with a variety of geocaches.
I wasn't going to get back to sleep after that so I
got up, made toast and watched an episode of "Harlots" in
which the main protagonists were getting rather lesbidaceous (which was
rather entertaining). But one thing in the show made me wonder. Were there
really gentlemen's clubs in which members would get together to kill
prostitutes two hundred years ago? No one ever told me about them; if true,
that would have made Mr. Fletcher's frankly dull history lessons far more
interesting.
I got dressed, and set off to work. The road
works on Chart Road that delayed me for an hour last night were still there
this morning. One of the busiest roads in the town bunged up with traffic
lights and reduced to single file traffic whilst absolutely no work was taking
place. There were quite impressive queues at six o'clock this morning; it would
have been mayhem at rush hour. I really don't see why road works on a major
thoroughfare can't be worked on round the clock until the job is done.
Going up the motorway wasn't good either. With the
slow lane filled with lorries going at fifty miles per hour and the middle
lane filled with lorries overtaking them at fifty-one miles per hour I was
again forced into the fast lane and was constantly tail-ended by those anxious
to fly past at breakneck speeds.
As I drove the pundits on the radio were talking about
all the government's latest initiative
for cancer screening... Am I being cynical in thinking
that this will be dead in the water before it even starts? What the current (and
every) government needs to do is to leave the NHS alone and stop
re-organising. The NHS spends too much time having re-organisations at the
expense of doing what it is supposed to do.
I stopped off in Sainsbury to get a sandwich and
another bottle of the Malbec that I got yesterday. Getting the sandwich took
some doing; there was some bloke blundering about in front of the fridge who
was utterly oblivious to the world around him. The chap was genuinely surprised
and shocked when he crashed into the woman standing next to him and suddenly
realised he wasn't alone. He clearly had no idea there was anyone else in the
shop with him.
Again the self-service machine wanted verification
that I was old enough to buy a bottle of plonk, and again the woman doing the
verification refused to acknowledge me in any way. Would saying "hello"
or "good morning" have caused her physical pain?
I got to work and did my bit. As I did I had a
phone call. Jane from "Later Living
Help Line" was keen to tell me that if I needed to go
into residential care the fees could be as much as six thousand quid per month.
Did I want an initial free consultation with one of their experts. This expert
would then advise me on which sort of specialist expert I would need to pay to
tell me pretty much what I already knew.
If I need residential care it won't come cheap. I've
decided I don't want it and if I get to the stage of needing it, then would
rather have my plug pulled.
I told her that I wasn't interested, but she seemed
reluctant to be told to buzz off. To be honest I found her telephone manner
rather off-putting; she spoke to me as though I was already senile. I suppose
that's her target audience though, isn't it.
Also as I worked I saw something rather
nasty. Loa loa is a parasitic worm; about a tenth of a
centimetre long it swims around in your blood and can live for over fifteen
years. As parasites go they are rather good at it as (for the most part) they
are innocuous and you don't realise they are there. I'm told that "they
make good lodgers" (!), and also that if you've got an
infestation I'm told you can sometimes see them swimming in your field of
vision as they can get into your eyes.
Fortunately today's case was a quality control one; a
sample sent to us from the London School of Tropical Medicine to check we know
what we are doing. But it's still something rather nasty...
And if that hasn't turned your stomach enough, bear in
mind that it could be worse. I can remember deciding that I didn't want to be a
medical microbiologist one summer's day in 1982 when I watched the head of the
microbiology department holding up a bottle of diarrhoea, and several senior
colleagues were all delighted that they could see things swimming in it.
I don't often mention what I do at work. Much of it is
rather confidential, and much of it turns people's stomachs... being a blood
tester isn't for the faint-hearted...
Being on the early shift meant I left work whilst it
was still light, and with the road works in Chart Road finished I got home a
lot quicker than I did yesterday. And with the road works in Chart Road
finished it was quite clear that had they cracked on with it last night, this
morning’s delays would have been avoided.
“er indoors TM” boiled
up chicken escallops which we scoffed whilst watching more of “The Traitors:
Ireland” in which the contestants again spent much of the time bitterly
bickering with each other.
Having been up since half past four I might have an
early night…
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