The Grumpy Old Blog

Yesterday was quite "exciting". I took part in the "+ Our Future Health" research organised by the NHS via an external agency, so no using valuable Angels (nurses) time. This was in a converted truck thing parked in a relatively proximal Asda superstore on the edge of town. In essence, this research is to ascertain how overweight, unhealthy and near to death you are and to advise the denizens of the locality to reduce their alcohol intake to 6 pints a day, chain smoke less enthusiastically, enjoy kebabs only every other night and to at least walk rather than order an Uber to take you to the curbsite outside your flat to retrieve your recycle bin after the Council collects it. The affable young lady undertaking my test was a rather personable Liverpudlian (she pronounced "chicccchen" authentically) and enjoyed conversations on all topics. Upon my suggestion, she googled and watched the famous "blood donation" sketch from Tony Hancock (she had neve...

Apropos my recent and ongoing stomach ulceration, the NHS have really otherwise been on top of it. Fair play to them. Apart from the 19-hour marathon between entering the hospital to shutting my front door, the service in between, despite the incredibly lengthy time it took, was exemplary. What I cannot understand is, where there is an obvious lack of action overnight, they don't "semi" discharge you at 11pm with the instruction to come back in the following morning at 9am or otherwise THEN be discharged. Instead, you end up sitting on a hard metal chair overnight, without sleep, a shower, or meals, until the hospital medical staff return for the following morning shift, which although starting at 8am does mean you are unlikely to be seen until at least mid-to-late morning. If you do self-discharge (one patient I was with did that) during the wait, you have to return and start the entire process again upon your return. This includes queuing for, and retaking, triage, ...

  Headed off to A&E at Bolton with a stomach ulcer (to be confirmed, although medical staff suspected same from the "tarry" state of my presented human remains, delicately gift-wrapped in a ZipLok bag) at 7.45 Monday, c/o phone call with emergency doctor telling me to go immediately to hospital, not to pass "Go" and not to collect £200. Had bloods taken at 22:45. Enjoyed night sitting and dozing on wonderful, haemorrhoid-inducing metal chair in A&E with some 45 other overly-patient patients. Gentleman arrived writhing in pain from a kidney stone at 12.30am and was allowed to comfortably writhe on the floor for 40 min before someone was free from clearing up from the gang warfare that people with nice clean knife wounds and their police "observers" were causing. Gentleman with obvious issues wandering around the ward at 2.45am in a silver preservation blanket doing his impression of Father Jack from "Father Ted" ("Drink, drink, feck, ...

 My new book has escaped onto Amazon https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0BRSDQJ7G?ref_=pe_3052080_397514860 A disordered chronicle of my life and times including ins, outs, ups and downs with a smattering of my time as features and diary editor of Dublin's "Social and Personal" magazine, the 70's/80's equivalent of "Hello" magazine, long before Hello was even a glint in the publisher's eyes. It is a book of life stories with a healthy/unhealthy dose of observance, satire and cynicism thrown in. So not exactly a traditional autobiography by any stretch of even the most fertile of imaginations. It's all about the things I got up to, down to and sideways to, with an unhealthy dose of total irrelevancy thrown in. It includes when we, as a family met one of Ireland’s most recognised TV personalities and became firm, family friends, their daughter being responsible for my unceremonious entry into the 4th Estate. Off to the Canary Islands in the days...