General Chat

Some days things just don't go well.

This morning I was crawling around in a wiring closet when my sholder went "ping" and the oft made critisism that I look like a walrus came true and I was reduced to flopping around barely able to move. I have been shot and it was not as bad...

Considered options and after sending out latest work experience person for ibuprofen etc rang up NHS 111 or rather 8 as it seems to be with my network provider. They answered quickly (!) and then put me through a long triage which I think was designed to see if I had had a heart attack. I did my best to be nice :-)

NHS111 decided that I needed to see my doctor something I had tried to avoid as he usually needs a month's notice. Ah tell them 111 says you only have 6 hours and rang off.

Work experience returned with a small packet of ibufen explaining that you can only buy so many at a time. There is no shortage of pharmacies in Islington so she was sent off to try harder. By this time I am contemplating the upside of jumping out of the window as a way of dealing with the pain.

Downside of ringing the doctor is that he is 90 miles away but try anyway and quote the 6 hours to reception. Amazing he rings back in 10 min and says he has made a prescrip for all sorts of highly desirable painkillers next time I am passing. Great, I cannot move still less drive.

Then inspiration. Rang the magic number for my 24/24 7/7 travel insurance. Bad move not valid in the UK for minor ailments. Apparemtly being reduced to a gibbering wreck is a minor matter.

Time passes drop coffee forgot that the bad shoulder is connected to left hand. Work experience gets hoover and makes more coffee. Tells me that 2 ibprofen does not mean 2 packets.

aaagh

NHS111 now tell me I can see a local GP in Islington. Ha bloody ha finding one who speaks English will be a big ask. Why would they see me unregistered in advance of the needy thousands? Nothing for it but to struggle off to the Whittington eyes tight shut as work experience navigates the Holloway Rd. Shows a high level of skill with SatNav less so on signalling, traffic lights etc. Nowhere to park of course so I am tipped out onto the pavement from the tiny bug that work experience says is a car.

Soon she is back with a crutch and we lurch off to A&E.
Being bored I start sketching the customers on my phonepad. Security man gets suspicious and tells me I can't do that. Why not? 'cos I sez .... hummm.

And then when the sun has set I get to see a real live doctor. He whips off my shirt, has a prod or two, I yelp in pain. I get a shot of something ( hate needles ) and a prescip. for a box of pain killing stuff (Kapake).

But work experience has gone so I lurch out into Highgate Hill with the idea of getting a cab. No chance so decide to experiment with Uber.

Brilliant! Car in 10 minutes who takes me via pharmacy to a place of safety (aka dark comfy trad pub ) where I fold up and call it a day.

Tomorrow is another day. Just so long as it is not like today.

Moral: getting old is a very bad idea. If you must make sure that you have yr smart phone with you and don't rely on work experience. Read your insurance documentation. Guiness and painkillers do mix.
:-|

poor you - we have an excellent GP out of hours service here in Cardiff - have used it a few times

Blimey O'Reilly, Rollo has made me laugh :-D :-D :-D

Hope you feel much better soon!

I feel for you Rollo

Nothing worse than putting your shoulder out, it's a really sickening pain. Hope it heals up quickly.:-)

"Moral: getting old is a very bad idea" my brother and I say this every time we phone each other lol, right after the lie where we say "I'm fine" .

Well that made me chuckle and has brightened my day if not yours Rollo. I hope your night is better than your day and that the painkillers do the trick!! :-)

Ouch, sounds painful, these things are always worse when away from home as I assume you were, being 90 miles from your doctor. I hope the injection works and that you have a comfortable night. And, for once, you made me smile too. :-)

Me too :-D :-D :-D:-D

But hope you will feel much better soon, Rollo :-)

Nudge

To see if Rollo has survived :-)

Hang on to the Work Experience lady - she's performed above and beyond the call of duty ;-)

Hope you aren't in so much pain today RR.

Work experience was chosen ( not by me ) to improve the the look of the offices ( not mine ) rather than her technical skills. To be fair she is pretty nifty with FB and has done some stuff which mightily pleased her current employer. I think he is going to have to bid a lot more than his budget given what she spends on nails, gym fees and other essentials.

Daddy pays the rent on a small flat conversion in what is now fashionable Hackney. I will never get used to the idea of Hoxton as a respectable address. Young people who locate there are also finding that for the London Met old habits die hard hence Teresa May trilling about excessive police stop n search. It was Hoxton she was talking about not Brixton.

I will run out of pills tomorrow and hope that by then I shall be able to travel south and resupply from my own doctor. Luckily I have my wheels here 'cos I could not cope with the third rail right now.

Hoping to be mostly mended by Monday or at least sufficiently strapped up to look that way.

cheers



She will probably be famous one day especially if she learns the art of driving-in-London-without-joining-the -walking-dead. Young people in London drive (if they can legally drive at all) in a sort of zombie trance governed by SatNav and loud music ignoring other road users of any size or shape that I find terrifying even after years in such places as Cairo Baghdad and Paris. At any event if gives a foretaste of what being driven around by Google might be like.

A young(ish) relative flat-shares in Hoxton. He loves it. it's a pity that even with a reasonable London salary he can't afford to buy.

Before starting off on your drive down south, sit behind the steering wheel and 'pretend' drive. If there is discomfort then, it will get even worse. You might have to pull over in the middle of no-where!

You should ahve gone to Richie Road walkin centre,they would have seen you within a short time.

I marvel at you comparing the pain to worse than when you were shot,,,,,,,,,as a young man I know got shot in a war zone and know he suffered a worse pain than a pulled shoulder. :-D

Getting shot doesn't hurt all that much at the time ( obviously it depends where and what with ) 'cos the body's emergency systems kick in with the hope you can remove from danger and get some treatment.

I had a 9mm MG round through my lower leg (ricochet) and out again which fractured my shin. I was able to move myself around 150m which turned out to be enough. Sure it started hurting plenty after that but I got a jab and after that same as any fractured leg. On balance the last 24 hrs has been worse tho' maybe 30 year gap dulls memory a bit.

Having had all sorts of injuries over the years I'd say that muscular/tendon injuries are more painful than broken bones and flesh wounds hence the antics of premier footballers on match days.

What is for sure is that the disasters of youth which one hopes have gone away tend to return as you get older :-( so maybe the advice not to sit on the sofa and watch tv has a downside.

Clearly I need to be more careful.

thank you for all yr kind thoughts I reckon I'll be ok by the weekend. Planning a lot of time in the jaccuzi.

IS it me

Our family own a few houses dotted around what was once the East End including one in Hoxton where one of my grand aunts was born.

They have all been moved into a trust for tax reasons and are lived in by perfectly ordinary families who have mostly been there for yonks. No way could they pay anything like market rent.

The terms of the trust don't demand that income is maximised but do require break even rents. In the past I have done a lot of work on some of the houses myself as have others with an interest.

East end houses having serious value is a recent and novel development. What to do next is becoming quite an issue and quite complicated. The irony is that whatever happens next it is unlikely that I could move back into one of the houses.

Hoxton is already being taken apart by the developers and ordinary Londoners booted out. They are well on the way to becoming an extinct species inside the old GLC boundary.

A good example is the closure of the Foundry which has been replaced by a large and horrible round hotel
http://www.artotels.com/londonhoxton

Roots what roots they have been torn up by the developers and the lawyers of the property developers by two faced politicians ( yes, you Mr Corbyn ) by the greed of mortgage spread betting and Black-Scholes Greeks.

Cry my beloved city.

??????????


The goldfish is happy with his/her bowl, and the spider likes the web - I believe he's rented out his old, dusty one to a crusty old fly - though I can't be sure..
Thanks for asking!! :-S :-S

Rollo he said his stomach where he was hit felt like it was set alight from the inside and after the first 3/4mins he went out cold through the pain and shock.

Being hit in the stomach he is lucky to still be alive must have had some top notch medics treating him. To survive the shock he must have been pretty fit too. Look after him.

A leg wound is trivial by comparison.

A close friend of my father's who I liked a whole lot flew Huey helicopters in Vietnam hauling shot up GIs out of trouble. I remember him saying they always tried to go that little bit faster with stomach wounds. He was shot down during the Tet offensive jan '68 at Da Nang. I was really cut up.

Poor goldfish I thought that classic round bowls were no longer considered the right-thing-to-do.

I'd love to have a tank with fish taking it easy but someone other than Mr Cat has to be there most days to look after them. Can yr goldfish be trusted with the spider ?

... she must have been a dish imagine that to swallow a fish

miaow
:-D

Too true about muscular damage being B awful.
I pulled my left shoulder strimming a year ago and it's not right yet, although the physio signed me off.
I tried bell ringing again for the first time last night, doing only a few rounds, and it definitely isn't back to normal!