Had an interesting day yesterday in a funny sort of way.
The day before, I decided that, since it would be windy crossing the Severn Bridge I needed a sun/rain hat that wouldn’t blow off. I had thought of wearing my normal hats and holding them in place with a coloured silk scarf tied under my chin like the ones you see women wearing in old pictures of open top cars. The problem was what colour best suited me, so I decided to buy a cross between a Crocodile Dundee and a Huckleberry Finn in a sort of pale khaki. It has a high tech thingy to tighten the straps under my chin and it cost me less than £7 so you can see I went for quality. The shop apologised that they were quite out of dangly corks so I shall need to drink 12 bottles of wine between now and July 1st – the things one does to get the right image! I’m not sure whether my hat is more a Croc Finn or a Huck Dundee.
Yesterday I spent the morning lounging in the sun in my garden reading and drinking coffee. When I showered and got dressed I noticed that my ear had been bleeding again (I had noticed it first last Wednesday) and, since I had been feeling under the weather these last few days, made a mental note to make an appointment to see the doctor next week.
In the afternoon there was a Macmillan Coffee “Morning” in the village so I decided to go. It was not well attended; there were only about a dozen names on the sheet and mostly women who were having a makeover at the bottom of the room. I took off my Huck hat (there were no dangly corks on it at this stage) and asked if they could do anything about my hairstyle at which they laughed. Some people are cruel.
After my coffee I decided to go for a short walk and went as far as Cwmhedd Fisheries. This walk is uphill most of the way and traffic on the narrow road was quite busy, so I often had to stop to let the traffic pass.
I returned home and decided that I would check on the internet about the causes of bleeding ears and was horrified to be advised to see a doctor urgently since it could be due to a perforated ear drum or even cancer. Why do these things always happen at the weekend?
I rang the out of hours service and spoke to someone who went through a questionnaire making a note of my symptoms. I was then told that someone would ring me back.
An hour later, a nurse phoned to ask about my symptoms and had obviously been given the wrong information. She then asked me to visit the out of hours service in town and offered me a 6.30 appointment or a 6.40 appointment. I opted for the 6.40 appointment since it could have taken me at least 20 minutes to get there. I could have taken a 5.30 appointment if it was available since when I arrived they were running 2 hours late. There were supposed to be three doctors there, but there had only been two. When one doctor got to the end of his shift he just walked out leaving a waiting room full of patients, including three parents with young babies. Luckily the lady doctor stayed and valiantly soldiered on whilst more and more people arrived. Later 2 more doctors arrived and real progress was made in the queue.
I was lucky since I was called to see the lady doctor only 90 minutes later than my appointment time. She was efficient and had checked my symptoms (she had also been given the wrong information – it was like a game of Chinese whispers!) assured me that my eardrums were intact but there was some inflammation so she gave me some penicillin tablets. When I checked the information leaflet inside I laughed out loud. One of the side effects was “... your faeces (otherwise known as poo) ...” I think these instructions must have been written by Little My!
Of course another side effect is no alcohol whilst on antibiotics, thus delaying the collection of corks for my hat.
Thankyou to all those wonderful people who have donated to my Just Giving page in aid of Macmillan. I was sorry to hear that some of you have had difficulties in donating on that page, but these problems have now been sorted. For those that need it here is the link again:
www.justgiving.com/Colin-Dancer
Thankyou for reading this far, or for skipping the boring bit and jumping to the end to see if the butler really did do it.
Odin xxx
