Category Archives: Uncategorized

The air that I breathe

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The little dog has just completed 12 clockwise rotations before finally settling down on the bed. The bed, not his. For once, he is not lying on my knees or feet, but with some certainty, I predict I shall be stirred by an ache from my knee or hip due to his migration onto my lower limbs during the night.

Tonight, I am determined to combat the evil sprites that dwell in my nasal passages with fresh air: the bedroom window is open. The sounds from outside consist of the constant humming from the dual carriageway, the passing of the odd car on the road nearby and the strange mating rituals of the residents of Prestolee. I wish them a salutary high six!

Prestolee, over the river is one of those odd places that was cut off from the rest of civilisation for centuries before the bridge linking it to Stoneclough was built. For years, the strange, yet simple folk had take a long and arduous journey by dirt track or canal, or use their ape-like attributes to swing across the river on vines and ropes. Their homogenous gene pool has been diluted over the course of time, yet still they retain their charm, which is characterised mainly by their ability to consume twice as much alcohol as any other human being and also to shout their strange mating calls from over the river from about 11pm every Friday and Saturday night.

They try to mate with geese, so I’ve heard.

The area is, however, home to an outstanding school, rated in the top 100 in England. I think they kill the school inspectors and forge the reports in all honesty. I’d like to bet it’s the type of place where the children are taught “the old ways”, much akin to the school on Summer Isle.

The natives have gone quiet, for now. The air is delightfully fresh without being bracing, I shall sleep soundly tonight.

Party fears two
I have three consecutive weekends of parties. I was never invited to this many when I was a child – the parents of my classmates thought me strange and were wary of supernatural events ruining pass the parcel.

Tomorrow’s is a fortieth. Next week’s is a fortieth. And the following week’s is… a fortieth. All will be very different and I am looking forward to them all for a variety of reasons. Or so I keep telling myself.

It’s that usual problem that I have with socialising. I dread the thought of it, but actually enjoy it. The third party will be great because I get to go in fancy dress (costume yet to be decided), but that affords a degree of disguise and mysssssstery. Tomorrow’s party will simply be great. I’ll end up talking to the same people I always speak to, but I like those people and, no matter how hard I try, I run out of conversation with people I don’t know too well. Maybe I put the brakes on before I make a complete tit of myself, but one thing I should remember is that they’ll be drinking and I won’t. Perhaps that’s the problem; I should just have a couple of drinks and relax. Alas, I can’t tomorrow, so I’ll be saving myself for getting shitfaced at party number 2.

I must take these opportunities to meet new friends, acquire at least 2 new people into my contacts, add them to Facebook. This is my challenge in the year of being a little braver.

Boxed in
I shouted at a woman for blocking a box junction this afternoon, although I did refrain from calling her a dim fuck. She got away lightly. Well, I say she got away lightly, but she did bear a striking resemblance to just about everybody over the river, so needless to say, she’s carrying a fairly heavy weight around in her chromosome makeup as it is.

Blesssssss.

Beigotomy

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Neutral. That’s what I like. The best colour to decorate your house? Magnolia. The finest colour knitwear? Beige. Neutral colours go with everything and beige cardigans and jumpers have been a constant in my wardrobe for years. They bring me comfort, warmth, familiarity. Apparently though, they don’t bring me an air of excitement because they make me seem as if I’ve given up.

It’s got the stage where I am now harassed for wearing derivatives of beige.

There was a beige woman who lived in a beige house, she ate beige food and dreamt beige dreams.

With this in mind, I feel forced to explore different hues and inject my life with some colour. During my youth, I relied heavily on navy blue, but I fear that this too is one of those colours that screams lack of adventure, a willingness to hide in the shadows and not be seen, which is fine with me because I’m more than happy to be as inconspicuous as possible.

Reds and greens should be preserved for traffic lights.

Yellows and oranges are for those of a sunnier disposition, people who like juggling and world music… and French foreign exchange students.

What does that leave? Purple? Fine if you’re a Goth.

Pink? Not with my pasty complexion.

I’m running out of colours. What are they again?

Red, orange, yellow, green, indigo, violet

I suppose I could dress in the colours of the rainbow and look like a children’s TV presenter. Or maybe a vibrant check, with dungarees, and a tool belt.

This isn’t going to be easy and make take me until my hair has turned grey, which would then require a whole new rethink on the matter.

I can see this whole dilemma ending up with me being arrested for going on the rampage in Marks and Spencer. Overwhelmed and confused by colours, my brain fuses and I end up running blind amongst the knitwear, shouting “RICHARD OF YORK GAVE BATTLE IN FUCKING VAIN”.

Maybe maroon might be a safe colour to start with.

Of course, I’m focusing on knitwear here. I’m not sure whether people have a problem with my colour of knitwear or the fact that I’m so reliant on it. My reliance on knitwear stems from a desire to show as little of myself as possible and to stay warm in this bloody freezing country of ours.

Sinusotomy
I’ve been struggling with my passages since December. The problem is usually dealt with after about half an hour of expelling generous amounts of blood and gore through my nostrils when I first wake up in the morning. Some days this clearing of my tubes comes too late to prevent a killer headache that rapidly takes on migraine qualities and renders me useless for an entire day. Once it reaches this point, my pathetic constitution shuts down completely such that I daren’t even take water or tablets since my stomach just rejects all incursions and returns them from whence they came.

There’s only one thing for it: a Sinuclens washout. This is essentially pouring a warm solution of baking soda into your nasal passages and clearing out any irritants that are lurking there. Unfortunately, I don’t think it will be particularly effective against the nose tumour that went undetected when I had my chest x-ray the other month.

People may take away my beige knitwear, but nothing can take away my sunny disposition.

The secret life of dogging

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There’s nothing nicer than taking the little dog out on a walk in the sunshine and letting him off his lead to go running free in a wide open space. Like most dogs, he spends much of the time exploring and sniffing the environment to see who has gone before him and also to check if his scent still remains from his previous visit. This is essentially checking his wee-mail, seeing who’s left him a message and replying to theirs.

He’s not interesting in balls or sticks, he doesn’t stay beside me, he just likes to run and sniff. The ultimate, the absolute BEST, is encountering other dogs. He sees them approaching, flattens himself to the ground and shuffles along until he’s within a quick jump of them, and then the sniffing really begins in earnest.

Dogs are social animals, they are pack animals, they love to see other dogs and have a sniff, a bit of a chase, maybe even attempt a little bit of bum rape. Generally though, they love encounters with others and none of them find my little feller’s exuberance particularly worrying. The bigger ones just stand on him to put him in his place, terriers are happy sniff along and have a bit of a chase. When it’s time to walk on, I just move ahead, he says his goodbyes and comes with me.

Today’s walk was lovely. The day was crisp and sunny and we embarked on a full circuit of the woods. As we started our homeward stretch, there was a couple with a dog not too far away. Rocky started his run towards them, they stopped and put their dog on its lead, the woman then shouted over to me: “Can you call your dog back?”

Well, I certainly can call him back, but given the choice between another dog who he’s never seen and me, who he sees every day, there was only going be one winner. He approached the dog, and had a good sniff. Its owners were really pissed off with me, but I was indignant and annoyed at their attitude. They have a dog, they take it for a walk where loads of others take theirs, then instead of allowing it to be a dog and socialise with others, they stick it on its lead when they see another dog and get annoyed at other dogs (and their owners) for doing what dogs do.

You know what, miserable fucktards? Fuck you to hell with a spiky stick. And for good measure, die on fire.

The secret life of smokers
For the sake of convenience, familiarity and better NHS services, I use my parents’ address for my GP registration. I tried to be honest and change my address with them, but their services don’t stretch over the local authority boundary between Salford and Bolton.

This brings another benefit in that when I get a prescription from my doctor, I can visit the adjoining pharmacy… and we know who works there.

The downside is that all my health-related correspondence gets delivered to my mum and dad’s place. So I get nagged for not going for smear tests, questioned about mysterious hospital appointments and the content about other letters.

Today saw the arrival of the copy letter that was sent to my GP following my consultation at the hospital the other week. I opened it and didn’t have to read it before the words “smokes 10 cigarettes per day” leapt out of the page at me. Normally I’d leave these letters at my folks’, they’re not really of any interest to me once I’ve read them, but today, I kept my beady eyes on the envelope to make sure my mum didn’t go anywhere near it, until I could safely ensure its exit from the property.

I keep having to remind myself that I’m 42 and that Mum probably knows anyway, but admitting to being a smoker to her would be a gaziliion times worse than coming out. It’s not going to happen. The only reason I’m scared of getting lung cancer is because she’d find out I am a smoker.

So kids, let that being a warning to you. Don’t start smoking if your parents give a rats ass about you. It’s just not worth it. It really isn’t.

Moderation

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Being in bed at 11.40pm on a Friday night used to be the norm for me, in fact, I used to come to bed much earlier than this when I was attached. Since being single, I write this as if this is a relatively new status for me, my nocturnal nature has kicked in somewhat and getting to bed before 1am on a Saturday morning would be classed as early. Tonight though, I’m tired. For once I have decided to listen to my body and come to bed. I should be getting to sleep instead of writing drivel, but some habits are more difficult to kick.

Friday night.

I allow myself some booze on Fridays, if I fancy of course, compulsion to have a drink has thankfully passed me by. Tonight I had available to me: two bottles of Merlot and a Shiraz and I opened bottle #1 at about 7.30pm. By 9pm, I was half way through the bottle, but then something really odd happened: I started to slow down. By the time I’d finished watching a film at 10.30, and no more than three quarters of the way through the bottle, I’d had enough – more than enough.

What the hell is going on with me? This the person who just a few weeks ago would drink into the early hours, until all senses had been obliterated, yet now, my brain just says, I’ve had enough, stop now.

I suppose this is a better late than never scenario, but I do wish this would have kicked in twenty years ago. So much embarrassment, so many horrific hangovers, they would have never blighted my life.

I’d still rather be teetotal. So why not do that? Perhaps I will.

Perhaps, peut-ĂȘtre, forse.

Perhaps is one of those words that I have forsaken in favour of maybe. Perhaps sounds nicer. I must train myself to use it more.

Having been very much under the control of alcohol in my twenties, I did give up and was teetotal for over twelve years. The first few months were a bit of a struggle, what with my thirtieth birthday approaching and having to explain my temperance to those who had known me as a drunken fool. But giving up completely and making that promise to yourself that you will never drink again is far more easy on the soul than just cutting down, or setting a target of not drinking for a set period of time. Just saying, that’s it, I’m not drinking again, helps a person to draw a line under their past so that they can move forward and plan things to fill those goddam awful and lonely boring evenings with.

For me, I started writing rubbish like this; each day, keeping an online diary that helped me reflect on the situations I’d found myself in, ponder on the absurd, wage war on humanity. Not being numbed by booze opened up a life to me, one in which I discovered myself, my love of photographing things, my enjoyment of the world around me. It was easier to balance those things for which I had disdain with those that brought me peace. In just a short space of time, I became fucking awesome.

I’m sure most people have the potential to be fucking awesome, but some hide this so terribly well.

Food? Food is just great, isn’t it? I anticipate sausage this weekend and it will be good.

Do it like a dude

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The few most recent times I’ve spent with my niece, she’s proclaimed that I’m “SO like a BOY!’. I’ve asked her to explain and she’s said that it’s because I don’t wear dresses and skirts and don’t wear makeup and because I like gadgets. I’m 42, I don’t think I’m supposed to be playing with Barbie dolls, but I think I can see where she’s coming from.

She said it again tonight and I responded by telling her that it’s just different and the world would be a boring place if we were all the same.

The time will come when we’ll have the talk about girls liking boys, boys liking girls, and the accursed sexual deviants who need electric shock therapy to stop them liking people of the same sex. Growing up in the seventies, it was never talked about: girls liked boys, boys liked girls, and people like Larry Grayson were just made up for telly. When I was Con’s age, maybe a bit younger, I had a friend at school and we were very close. She once said to me that when we grew up we could get married. I can’t remember it freaking me out, but I can’t remember my exact response, or how I felt, if I felt anything at all. Maybe it shows that kids of that age don’t really care about anything like that until adults put their own vicious ideas into their heads. She remembers Ali though and knew that we were together, but a year or so on with me on my own, and with the influence of other children, her natural acceptance of what “just is (was)” might be tainted by what others say.

“My Auntie Tina is… a SPINSTER!”

Gawd.

Curiosity
Talking of stalking, I’ve been visiting my local pharmacy on a regular basis over the past year or so. When I haven’t been popping in to pick up my own prescriptions, I’ve been going there to pick up my mum’s heroin supplies. Each time I go, the pharmacist catches my eye and I’m left thinking, is she or isn’t she? And I’m not talking about Harmony hairspray here.

In those situations, you do things like look at her shoes: flat, but that makes sense (it always makes sense to me, whatever the situation). Is she wearing any rings? No. What about those glasses? They look a bit like mine. Dress sense? Always trousers, with a feminine top, but nothing particularly girly. Fingernails? SHORT! Makeup? Never.

Of course because she’s the resident pharmacist, her certificates are up in the place, so I know her name. But even worse/better, I noticed her behind me in her car one day – she actually drives into work on part of the route that I take, coming from the Whitefield direction. I know what car she drives, roughly what time she passes near my house, I could wait for her to pass…

STOP IT RIGHT THERE!

“We met over a box of citalopram. It was the slightest brush of her fingers against mine as she handed me my medication. Then our eyes met and it was then that we realised… we were wearing the same glasses.”

I have no idea how to strike up a conversation with people. I don’t know when I’m flirting and I certainly don’t know when people are flirting with me. There is no hope. A spinster I shall be.

OCD

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People with obsessive compulsions that lead them to be excessively cautious about hygiene and cleaning should be given a very special place in this world. I’d have one. Just imagine how clean the house would be.

This thought was prompted as I went to a cash machine to withdraw some money before nipping into Sainsbury’s in Salford this evening. Cash machines must harbour so much disgusting filth and yet we use them regularly without a second thought. I looked around me at the people and thought about the demographic of the area and then I had to enter my PIN and press more buttons to request my cash. It made me feel slightly poorly.

Do the people who maintain cash machines clean them? If not, I might suggest that sanitising stations and hand gel are available for after using them.

But then there’s cash itself. Those notes and coins have been touched by hundreds and thousands of people, some of whom have no idea or simply don’t care about personal hygiene.

Have you ever seen the state of chip and pin machines at supermarket checkouts?

Then there’s the partially or fully exposed “artisan” bread that’s at a level for toddlers to maul and cough and sneeze over, for adults to do the same to.

I could go on.

Everybody should be made to wash their hands thoroughly before entering a supermarket, restaurant or cafe. Any child with a snotty nose should be quarantined for the duration of their visit. In fact, all children should be quarantined in supermarkets, preferably in a sound proof room, with the Childcatcher to look after them while they’re there.

There’s a massive public health disaster just waiting to happen and nobody is doing anything to prevent it.

I might write to the chief executives of all our major supermarkets and ask them to pilot having hand wash areas near the fresh food sections of their stores. I bet Waitrose would be right on board, they and their customers would love that sort of thing. Asda customers would probably think such an area was an open toilet and just pee in the sink.

It’s about time I got my customer service champion hat back on and did something like this. I can see me ending up on the honours list for services to public health, or maybe with a restraining order.

Anyway, you read about it here first. Give it ten years and it’ll be available in every supermarket around the globe. Except possibly in Scotland and France.

Thinner, lighter me
No, not yet, but lifestyle changes don’t take effect overnight! I’m absolutely certain that, once my new way of approaching food kicks in, I’ll be down to my genetically programmed weight within about fifteen years.

I wonder what my genetically programmed weight is. To achieve a “normal” BMI, I’d have to be about 9st.

This is going to take forever. Maybe a dose of typhoid from my local supermarket isn’t such a bad idea afterall.

Brown

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So, in the sense of “so” I suppose, I’ve been trying to collect my wee all day today. Two things are apparent:

1. My aim is poor
2. I’ve not had enough to drink today

I know number 2 is true because my collection is brown, rather than yellow. Maybe I should dilute it a bit to make it look more normal. Maybe that would be the most idiotic thing I could do.

Hopefully I just have one more collection to go and I’ll be able to take the piss (ha ha ha) into the hospital tomorrow morning. I say hopefully one more collection because I really don’t want to be doing that palaver in the middle of the night.

The whole thing hasn’t been as traumatic as I’d imagined and I’ve managed to get through the day without weeing on myself any more than I usually do.

Go me.

Hunger
I’ve not been hungry today, despite eating about a fifth of what I normally would. This includes eating only one minty Viscount at Mum and Dad’s as opposed to the five or six that I’d normally demolish. Go me again.

The one concern about this new eating regime is: how does the chew each mouthful twenty times before swallowing apply to soup? Since I’m now doing soup for lunch on a regular basis, this is something that I really need to know. Am I supposed to swish it around in my mouth twenty times as one would taste a wine? If I do this, will I get confused and spit instead of swallow? In addition, what about stuff like fruit? Do I really need to sit down at the table and put my cutlery down between each mouthful when I’m eating an apple? I think I might contact Paul McKenna to find out.

Irrespective of these quandaries, day one of hypnotised Tina has been fine. I really enjoyed my dinner tonight and I really did feel satisfied having eaten about a fifth of what I’d normally have guzzled.

And I’m doing this without counting calories or points or worrying too much about fat content or paying a subscription fee to a diet club. Because it’s not a diet I suppose, it’s effectively a new relationship with food.

How do I approach a burrito from now on? Surely there’s only one way to tackle a burrito and that’s to shove as much in your gob as possible before the whole thing falls apart. We’ll see.

This questioning of lifestyle change is very much akin to how things were when I gave up drinking so many years ago. What about my 30th birthday? What about going out for drinks after work? What about Christmas and New Year? What do I do if somebody offers me a drink?? It all turned out to be remarkably easy as it happened, I just asked for pop and told people that I didn’t want to drink any more. Some people were fucking arseholes about it, but the vast majority just accepted it as I had done. The pressure on people to drink alcohol in social situations is utterly ridiculous, society needs to grow the fuck up.

Idiot
I e-mailed my ex this morning. Something in me hopes she sends me straight to spam, but you know how it is when there’s something eating you up inside and you just feel compelled to get it off your chest? Well, short of driving to Derbyshire to find her and have it out with her, then ending up a blubbering wreck instead of a strong and forthright person with a valid argument and lots of pointy hand gestures, this was the best option.

The upshot of it is, if the e-mail doesn’t go to delete unread, she knows I’m desperate for revenge (answers, closure), but I’m not going to do anything about it, however, I’ll be starting to reduce my dose of antidepressants starting next month.

That’ll keep her on her toes.

I shall now toss and turn and metaphorically punch myself in the head for two hours while I try to find sleep.

I thank you.

Pork

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Pigs are the greatest animals on earth. I shouldn’t really need to explain this because it really is so obvious, but some people just don’t realise it and need it spelling out to them.

Tonight’s dinner was pork chop with roast parsnips and undercooked steamed sliced runner beans. I dislike undercooked vegetables and the green part of my plate still had a squeak and that irritated me. Some people like that sort of thing, but quite frankly, they’re morons. Look at Steve Jobs, for example.

The squeaky beans irritated me because I am now paying full attention to my food as I eat. No distractions at all, just concentrating on savouring my food, chewing it properly and eating slowly. Maybe if I’d eaten the beans even more slowly, they might have cooked in my mouth.

The whole slowing down while I eat thing is all part of a new way of eating that should hopefully retrain my body, or train it in the first place, to feel satisfied when I’ve eaten enough food. Anybody who has seen me eat will have marvelled at how I demolish food, cram it in as quickly as possible and finish everything on my plate. Apparently, you’re not supposed to do this as it means your stomach doesn’t get the chance to send the “stop it, you greedy fat pig, I’m full” signal to the brain. Plus it’s terribly bad mannered. Eventually, I’ll be trained to be satisfied with smaller portions and consequently lose weight and maintain a healthy one.

That all makes sense, it’s simple physiology. I am of course mixing all this with a bit of mumbo jumbo that has now installed a hypnotic gastric band. This involved me listening to a recording that took me through the procedure of having a gastric band fitted. In order to be able to do this, you have to be able to descend into a deeply relaxed trance-like state, something that’s quite difficult for me and my fizzy head. Nonetheless, I did feel very relaxed as things proceeded, until the moment when Paul McKenna pronounced anaesthetist as anaetetist. “What did he just say?” and I was pulled out of the trance slightly. Then he said it again, and again. Now wouldn’t you think that if somebody was doing an audio recording that was intended to relax people they’d be very careful with their pronunciation of words, you know, just in case the audience contained people like me?

Anaetetist, for goodness’ sake.

But back to pigs. You’ve thought about them, haven’t you? Thought about how much of them we can eat, about bacon, sausages, other sausages, prosciutto, salami, sausages, crackling. I like to be assured that any animal I eat has had a decent life prior to being brutally slaughtered, so I don’t buy foreign pork (unless it’s salami or prosciutto because I’m a hypocrite) and I only eat the British stuff where the animals have been reared outdoors and allowed to gambol through meadows of flowers all their lives… before being brutally slaughtered.

I have a spare pork chop from tea tonight. I love you, porcine god.

Soup
I’ve taken to eating canned soup for lunch at work; it’s fairly cheap and moderately filling, and warming during the winter months. As I was working my way through a bowl of Heinz cream of chicken the other day, I wondered how long the chicken in the soup had been separated from living creature. I’d be happy to hazard a guess at four years.

Chickens are stupid, they almost deserved to have their flesh mechanically reclaimed and stuck in a can for years on end. You’d never get that happened to a pig… apart from in tinned ham, or whatever spam is made of.

Pee
It’s the 24hr wee collection tomorrow. I’ve been practising weeing into a jug. It’s been going OK, but I am a little apprehensive of those dual purpose toilet visits that happen in the morning. Let’s just leave it at that.

Winter wonderland

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It’s finally snowed here in Bolton, quite a lot too. There’s about four inches of the stuff settled out there and the tarmac is no longer visible on the road. It’ll all be gone by the end of tomorrow once the rain comes to wash it away, but nonetheless, it’s been a pretty sight.

Tonight I discovered that, while their grip is amazing, Crocs are totally inadequate in the snow. Full of holes, you see. I also discovered, or confirmed to myself, that I need to learn a language. Parce que le weekend (here we go), I tend to try to use my best Franglais on Fridays. Je ne sais pas pourquoi, mais c’est le weekend, n’est pas??

Anyway, even my Franglais is tainted by Italian, as my French had been when I was studying the language properly at school all those years ago. French is such a doddle, but I was always pulled up for saying un po (Italian) instead of un (on) peu (French) and getting days of the week mixed up. Of course, since it was us who won the war, all of Europe should really be speaking English as a first language, but those bloody Frenchies are so obstinate with their “Non, non, non, non, non!!!!” to everything. Saying that though, their “Non, non, non, non, non!!!!” attitude has helped them preserve an identity that we should envy. Maybe they realised they had something worth preserving.

But that’s my view on Europe: they have better food than us, better weather, and they don’t take shit from Brussels. Maybe if Britain didn’t take shit from Brussels, we’d be happier with our relationship with all those stupid sodding countries that never vote for us in Eurovision.

Samedi
Tomorrow, I need to practise peeing into a jug in readiness for collecting all of my wee on Sunday. What a drag, but it’s for my own good.

I won’t be doing much else tomorrow apart from clearing snow and doing housework. The latter activity is needed desperately: on Christmas Day as we say at the table to eat dinner, I noticed a cobweb hanging from the dining room ceiling right above the table. Father Christmas might as well have forced his way into the house and pood on the table, the embarrassment it caused me. So I shall be out with my feather duster, no doubt cursing lots.

For now though, I need to sleep in order to allow my dear old liver and kidneys a better chance of clearing the bottle of wine I had tonight.

Bon nuit, mes amies. Or whatever.

At the hospital

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“I must remember they’re only a Band 2.”
“I must remember they’re only a Band 2 and they’re hassled.”
“I must remember they’re only a Band 2 and they’re trying to help other people.”
“I must remember they’re only a Band 2 and it’s not their fault there’s nobody else around to take telephone queries while I’m waiting in for them to acknowledge me and now I’m late for my fucking appointment!!!!”

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So today I realised that, if a hospital appointment letter tells you to “go to main outpatients”, it actually means “use your psychic ability to work out that you actually need to go directly to the endocrinology clinic in another hospital building”.

My hospital visit had started well; I got a parking space straight away and with fifteen minutes to spare. There was no queue at the outpatients reception and I was seen straight away by a woman who couldn’t figure out that when I said “Cristina with no h, so that’s C-R-I-S…” I meant it was spelled with a C and not a K and, no it still didn’t have an h. She looked slightly confused as she tracked down my appointment, but told me that I should’ve gone straight to the clinic in the Ladywell Building. I knew where that was, it was fine, thanks, no seriously, I know where I’m going, thanks for the map, yes, I know where it is, no honestly. STOP TALKING!!!

There was a queue at the Endocrinology department reception and I waited with growing impatience and thinly disguised agitation as the poor receptionist had to deal with people who shouldn’t have been there, people who should’ve got to the back of the queue, people who phoned up with a lengthy enquiry as the time of my appointment came and went.

Now, I HATE being late for appointments, absolutely hate it. I’d rather get somewhere an hour early than run the risk of being late (apart from today of course and most days at work), so when my turn came, and I could hear myself saying it and still couldn’t stop myself, I said “I’m here for an appointment at 11.30 and I had been on time, but was sent to the wrong place and then got caught in the queue here.”

Why did I do that? Why have a veiled dig at some poor hassled woman who had just been trying to help people?

She looked at the clock and acknowledged the time, then she got her vengeance on my passive aggressive dig by noting on my appointment form that the time of arrival was 11.36 and my appointment time was 11.30. “Take a seat in the waiting area”, she smiled benignly.

Too short
After just a few minutes I was called into a small room where I had the indignity of my blood pressure, height and weight measured.

BP: 135/70
Height: 161cm
Weight: OHMYFUCKINGGOD!
BMI: You should be 19 feet tall for that weight

So that was good.

Soon after I was seen by the reg. He was lovely, took a few lifestyle questions, bashed his head on the desk when I told him I’d been given an aggressive course of vitamin D therapy by my GP, and he explained things perfectly (there is the possibility of surgery). For now though, it’s more blood tests, DEXA scan to check my bones aren’t made of sponge, kidney ultrasound to make sure they’re not full of pebbles, 24 hr wee wee collection. Hang on… 24 hr urine collection, into a bucket? More or less.

So that’s my Sunday sorted: collecting every drop of pee over a 24hr period and storing it in a 2.5L bottle then taking the whole sloshing lot to the clinic on Monday.

Anybody who knows me will know how much of a problem this can be for me. I can’t wee outdoors, I can’t wee into a toilet that’s the wrong height. Let’s just say that Sunday will be a good day for picking nettles because there’s no way I’m going to be able to aim into a bloody jug and I anticipate much coming together with my own excretions.

It’s only a bit of wee. Imagine the fuss I’d be making if I’d been diagnosed with a terminal illness. For everyone’s sake, that really doesn’t bear thinking about.