Is there a doctor in the house?

My appointment was 9.05. In the morning.
This would seem a logical time, for so many reasons. Firstly, it means a quick detour before going to work, minimising the time away from the tedious, mortgage paying nonsense. Secondaly, first thing in the morning means the Doc has little time to overrun his alloted time from previous patients, so should be just about on time, right?
So, I arrive at 9, knowing his time is valuable and not wanting to be the first cause of overrun, so that everyone else can be saved from waiting in the, umm, waiting room amongst the single mothers and pensioners who are only there to pass the time and stink out the place with their deep scent of depression and hopelessness.
As a sidenote, for the technical people amongst us, the practice (why is it called a 'practice' anyway, I want to go to one that's called the 'perfect') has a new system installed. To save valuable time and resources, the doctor no longer buzzes reception to let them know he's ready for a patient. He now clicks on his EDS supplied GUI, which is connected to one of those long, red LED display boards. The main purpose of this is to waste a few seconds, then phone reception, explaining how his computer thing has 'crashed' again and allowing the IT expert behind the desk to show her technical prowess by telling him to 'go out, and then back in again'. A couple of minutes later the buzzer goes and a name appears on the screen. Good job we've got these advancements going in to save time.
Anyway, as 9.10 appears and leaves, a body passes me from the front door and proceeds directly into the doctor's office. "Wait a minute, that's a bit unfair." is my initial thought, before realising it was, in fact, the doctor. So, he's late. Fantastic. I get a little peeved that I make sure I'm not holding anyone up, and realise that he can sometimes be held back through working on a more serious problem on someone else, but I'm not sure not getting his arse out of bed in time to neck his first half-bottle of whisky of the day counts as unavoidable.
Oh, there goes the buzzer. My buttocks strain from the anti-ergonomic chair in anticipation, as someone else's name appears on the screen. Great, now I need to wait on the old boy trundling into the doctor's room and straining to supply a piss-sample from his wrinkly old tadger. So, have to wait another 15 minutes before going in to get a course of antibiotics for the sore throat.
He doesn't write prescriptions any more. He clicks on his EDS SuperDoc system, which prints it out and he just has to sign. Or doesn't. He pulls out his old-fashioned pad and fills it out. "Have you tried coming out and going back in?", asks I, helpfully.

Day 225: A forest in disguise

Some time ago I made brief mention of the fact that I bought a 32 year old Volvo for use as a runabout while I am in Scotland. I, then, singularly failed to mention it in any further postings, so I will rectify the matter here.

Before getting this car I had been renting one each Monday morning from Edinburgh airport and returning it on Friday. I had thought that there must be a better way of organising all my weekday travelling needs than forking out for a hire car each week, so during a quietish time in Germany around 18 months ago I started looking through all the makes of second hand car that were available on autotrader to see what took my fancy. I only had 2 criteria: it had to be cheap and it had to be cool (i.e. not just some bog standard normal car). Oh, and also it had to be Swedish (well it didn't really need to be, but if it was it would be worth an extra 1,000 points on the deciding whether I wanted one or not scoring system). So while browsing I came accross a car called a Volvo P1800. It looked quite cool, but the front of it reminded me of a car I used to really like when I was younger and had even tried to get my Mum to by one. I had never known what the model of this car was, I just referred to it as a Volvo Sports Estate or some such thing.
So now I had a plan. I needed to try and find out what the model of the Volvo sports car was and then buy one. The first bit was the easiest - after a bit of searching I saw it was called a Volvo 1800ES and it was the best looking car ever made. Buying one was a bit harder. I managed to track one down, so rang the seller who said he couldn't say it was in showroom condition, but it very nearly was. he said it was kept in a garage and had had a full bare metal respray 7 years earlier. So I drove over 100 miles to go and see this car to find that it smelled of damp and looked like it had been painted with a brush.

Anyway after seeing 1 other car that turned out not to be all I first thought it was I managed to get hold of one with a full years mot that didn't cost a huge amount of money. I bought it in London, drove it to Yorkshire, then Scotland and then from Scotland to Yorkshire and back all in the first week. It had a few dents in it and a few bits of rust, but on the whole I was very pleased with it. Infact I far prefered driving this to the near new rental cars I had been spending my money on. I even found that someone had shoved a caristhestar business card invitting me to register the car at their site one day. I worked out that if the car lasted me for 19 weeks and then blew up I would have spent the same in those 19 weeks as I would on a hire car. So far I've had the car for 25 weeks, so in my books it has already paid for intself and I haven't been shy about going around saying how reliable its been and other famous last words such as how I haven't spent a single penny on it since I got it etc etc....

So after being told by countless people that I am tempting fate and me ignoring it completely my car now has a petrol leak. It was discovered last thursday when I picked Al up to go to the Gym. Someone had seen us drive off and noticed that I left a trail of liquid behind me as I sped into the distance. After they let me know I had a look under the car, but nothing seemed to be dripping so I took the car home on Thursday night and looked under it again on Friday morning before I left for work. There was still no sign of a leak, but when I got out of my car in the work carpark I couldn't fail to notice a line of liquid leading all the way around the carpark to my car. I imagined that my petrol tank had probably rusted through and the only option was going to be to get a new petrol tank, but I had no idea who on earth I would be able to get to fit it. I was beginnning to think that as the car had already paid for itself (compared to the cost of renting a car) I may as well just take it round to the nearest scrap yard. But at lunchtime I went out to look at it more closely and yet again there was no sign of any leakage whatsoever. So I turned the engine on and went and looked again and there was now a steady drip of petrol. I turned the engine off and after a few moment the dripping stopped again.

So at themoment my conclusion is that it may not need a new petrol tank after all, but as I know nothing about cars I guess I could stil be wrong. I have it booked into a local garage for Wednesday morning so I will post an update once they have had a look.

I think I should add, that after this post I feel a bit like a train spotter, but in reality I'm not really into cars at all - I just couldn't think of anything else to write about - so sorry, but there you go - life's like that, so deal with it.

Quizzes are bad, m'kay?

Oh dear. I'm not feeling so good.
The Company had a quiz night last night. A few of us went along.
I think the rest is pretty obvious, but I'll labour the point for the bored amongst us.
Free drink (first three, terms and conditions apply), free food (unidentifiable foodstuffs, tasteless) and a bundle of questions. 160 people, teams of six.
My team sucked. It's not that we were stupid, we just didn't know the name of Britney Spears' husband. We had a decent mix of ages, but no girls, so the Sex in the City questions were a waste of time too. To cut to the chase, we finished about 13th out of, umm, 160/6. This was made worse by the other half of our department, who were sitting right in front of us, taking the lead before being pipped by 1 point in the very last round.
Highlights - The team that took the sheet asking for the phonetic alphabet and filling in "ay, bee, cee, dee, eff, jee,etc". One of our team mates answering the "heart of midlothian" author question with "William Wallace", then arguing his case by mentioning the Wallace Monument.
Sample questions -
Next line of the song required....
There were voices down the corridor, thought I heard them say...
I want to reach out and touch the flame...

Who was the architect of the Scottish Parliment?
Name 5 inert gases.

That'll need to do, I'm tired.

I got the bird

Just a quick antidote from last night...

I was sitting quietly, strumming away gently on the guitar trying to master a chord change or two when I heard something fall over in another room. I wandered through, expecting to see a picture on the floor and a hole in the wall, but nothing seemed amiss. There was then another crash, this time identifiably from the bathroom. As I stood in the room, trying to figure out what had fallen, twice, there was another one. It seemed to be coming from under the bath itself!
As visions of the bath collapsing through a water damaged floor into the foundations of the house, I removed the front panel of the bath. As I took it off, a black object scuttled from the darkness across the floor. "Shit! A Rat!", was the pant-filling thought running through my
head. Then the black thing took flight. "Shit! A Flying Rat!" was the next moronic thought. "Oh wait, it's more likely a bird" was the schizophrenic conversation going on inside. As I scuttled through the house, with the pose of an inexperienced helicopter passenger alighting, I opened all the doors and windows until the occupying forces found a retreat route.
Underlying question - how on earth does a bird type object get into such a position to start with?
The investigation continues.

Day 208 - The lives I've never led

Prior to joining the Gym I needed to get kitted up with gym type stuff, so the obvious choice for me was a Sweden football shirt. My fellow team memebers thought a football shirt was not the correct thing to wear to the gym, but when I get an idea in my head it isn't about to get shifted by other people talking sense to me. So I went to my local JJB shop and went straight up to the Sweden football shirt section to find that they had 1 in stock. Unfortunately it was XXL and I think that even though I need to lose a few pounds it may just have looked a bit baggy on me. I asked if they were getting any more in stock, but they sucked in their breath and said "You just can't get hold of Sweden shirts at the moment. They can't be had for love nor money". I wondered again if I should get the XXL one, but after a couple of hours pondering I thought I'd better leave the shop, so I did. I then spotted that a Marks and Spencers food hall was in the latter stages of being built and would be opening soon. I though that this was good as I was getting a bit fed up with what Safeway and Asda had to offer in the old food department.

So over the next week or so I visited the sports shop a few more times to buy socks and check if they had any more Sweden football shirts (and also take the oportunity to see if the M&S food hall had opened yet). A couple of times I nearly bought the XXL one, but something always held me back. I didn't even buy it when the price was reduced by £10.

Last night I did the old checking if M&S is open yet routine and I found it was now open. Despite the fact that I have a streaming cold I though I needed to celibrate with some nice food from M&S, a bootle of Cava and a DVD. So I bought the food and Cava from M&S and then went to Asda to buy a DVD.

I ended up buying the butterfly effect as I had heard from few people it was good, although I knew nothing about it other than that. So I sat down with my glass of Cava and small bowl of piri piri cashew nuts and began watching, and I must say it was a really good film. It got me thinking about such things as what would have happened if I had stayed in Sweden in 2000 rather than going back to do some work in Yorkshire. I guess one thing that wouldn't have happened is the creation of this blogg. I have watched a few films since starting this blogg and in the most they have all been, not only good, but also films that could change your life.

Something big is going to happen........