Celtic Illumination, part 409, If you ever go across the sea to Ireland.

Dear old Oscar, that’s Wilde to you lot, once said, “With age comes wisdom, but sometimes age comes alone.”  So as time passes I do seem to accumulate more wisdom, I even believe that I understand why the double top secret cabal, preparing me to take my rightful place as High Chief of the Clan O Neill and therefore the true King of Ireland, would make me write this blog.  It’s not so much the writing of it that is important but the responses it draws from you lot, The Illuminati. Many of you will already be saying okay, it has to be that Colonialist again, what’s he done now?  So, see, even you lot are accumulating wisdom.  Colonialist hasn’t really done anything that bad, not this time anyway. It’s the emotional damage he causes that perhaps is the worst.

Here’s poor little old me, pouring my heart out, explaining the trials and rigours I had to face, simply so that if any of you poor souls had to face a similar situation you might be prepared.  I’m only sharing information, preparing you for what might happen, baring my soul to ease your pain should you ever need it; meanwhile Colonialist suggests that I should have been committed to one of the remaining nuthouses.  I know; many of you will be shocked to read that I was, but my time in the nut houses in Liverpool has yet to come.  I don’t mean I’m going there, I mean I’ve been.  The Florence Nightingale Hospital in Liverpool, Fazerkerly secure unit and Ashworth high security psychiatric hospital in Maghull.  Where else did you think an individual with a skill set like mine would end up?

It is quite obvious that the double top secret cabal want me to understand that each and every one of you is an individual, that you all have your own hopes, and dreams, and aspirations and that most of you should be locked up.  I can understand complaints about bullfighting, as I am sure many of you can.  Harming donkeys too is a shameful and barbaric practise but I never, not even in my wildest dreams, expected to be challenged to a willy measuring contest, by six of you.  Especially with one of those six being a female flavoured woman.  Perhaps those six, and the wimmen in particular, should be considered for nuthouse admission rather than my good self.  Not wanting to be seen as a spoilsport I would suggest that venue should be the gentleman’s toilets in the Philharmonic Rooms in Liverpool, deemed to be the grandest gent’s urinals in the world.  A pub in Liverpool with a cathedral at each end of the street should satisfy even the worst Heathens among you.

The toilets in the Philharmonic Rooms are world famous; why they are famous I’m not exactly sure.  They look like marble but are actually ceramic and the best story about them is that they are meant to be exact copies of the toilets from the Titanic.  In fact there is a suggestion that they were stolen from the shipyard while the Titanic was being built.  Highly unlikely as the pub was built in or around the 1900’s while the Titanic was built, in Belfast, across the feckin Irish sea, in 1911.  But why let a bit of geography get in the way of a good story.  I’ll contact each of the participants individually and arrange a suitable date, tickets will go on sale about ten days before the event.  I’m sure no matter what the outcome we shall all wake up the following morning with sore heads following a decent night of pillow abuse.

I suppose that is how many of us felt when we were roused at six o clock on the Monday morning with the old two stroke razor reverberating throughout the hospital.  I really did find my emotions swinging between two extremes.  On the one hand I couldn’t stop laughing at the memory of the Welsh preacher calling for the Lord and his angels on high to sweep the ward of evil while at the same time feeling sorry for the poor old fellow as his actions were only a physical manifestation of the turmoil within his head.  He must have been so confused, but it’s hard to feel compassion for someone when you are laughing so hard.  The nursing staff weren’t really trained for such a situation and they gently coaxed the old fellow back in to bed.  He lay there, or sat there, groaning and snorting while I kept erupting into sporadic fits of laughter.

The second time he woke us all up it wasn’t as funny.  He was still as animated and as manic but this time the staff manhandled him and his bed out of the ward where he spent the remainder of the night parked by the nurses station where they could keep an eye on him.  It’s nice to be woken from your slumber with a breakfast trolley being wheeled to the bottom of your bed, very civilised.  It’s not so pleasant to feel absolutely exhausted after what should have been a decent night’s sleep.  Whether it was having your blood pressure taken or you sins expunged there was always something happening.  The morning routine began and in a way I was looking forward to the day as it was a Monday, a working day.  The routine on the ward would be back to normal and something was bound to happen.

It was then that I realised that I had been in hospital for a week, I could see my stay being extended, I held my breath when I thought of those people who had said they had been in for months at a time.  I didn’t like the thought of a long stay in the hospital although I did want to get fixed or as the medics said, cured, not that I was a side of bacon.  The phlebotomist came and went as did the girl with the towels and toothbrushes, the magazine fellow, the sweet trolley, even the pill trolley made an appearance and then we had Doctors rounds.  If only we had been in the Philharmonic Rooms and it was Adrian buying everyone a drink, I would have looked forward to them.  Only one of the pretty doctors came to see me, she didn’t waste any time.  “We’re letting you go home today,” she said, at which point my mood lifted somewhat. She explained that most of my ‘levels’ were back to, or almost back to, normal and that I would be continued to be tested but as an outpatient.

I allowed her to finish and then asked at what time would I be ready to leave the hospital.  “Between two and three o cock,” she said, so I thanked her and began to make arrangements to be picked up.  I sent Irene a text message and explained that I would be ready to come home at three o clock that afternoon.  I then began to gather my stuff together and noticing that the bathroom was empty went off to give myself a good scrub from head to toe.  I was back on my bed pulling on a clean set of clothes when a nurse approached me and explained that they needed my bed, would I mind clearing out and moving to a waiting area.  It was eleven o clock in the morning and I didn’t fancy sat sitting in some high backed uncomfortable chair for four hours so I asked her, in her opinion, what time I could leave the ward.

I was surprised when she said that I could leave right there and then if I wanted but the only factor, that was beyond her control, was my medication.  I could always leave and come back later for the medication if I wanted.  My medication may have been outside her control but it wasn’t outside mine.  I asked if I arranged transport for twelve o clock, one hour away, if that would be okay, she said yes.  “Aoife!” I called, as the curtain was drawn back.  Aoife came in to the ward and stood beside me.  “Any chance my medication will be ready in forty five minutes my dear?” I asked, and with a smile she assured me it would and went off to get it.  I then sent another text to Irene explaining that the plan had changed.  I would be ready to leave the hospital in one hour, as we lived a thirty minute drive from the hospital, I didn’t think it would create any sort of problem.  My escape wasn’t planned with military precision, close, but no spot prize.

One hospital rule was that I had to have a porter take me to the front door of the hospital in a wheel chair.  This was hospital policy and I still couldn’t walk very far so everyone was happy.  He turned up at a quarter to twelve as did my medication and without further ado I left the ward.  It was nice to get out in to the sunshine and fresh air.  The porter took me to a bench near the front entrance and I sat myself in the sunshine hoping that no one would notice I was wearing slippers.  Irene is a very pretty woman so it’s very difficult for her to think about things and remain pretty at the same time.  So it was no surprise to get a telephone call asking what was happening.  When I explained that I was sunning myself outside the hospital she got very angry and started telling me off for releasing myself from hospital, for a hospital would never ask anybody to leave.   Thirty minutes later they pulled up and loaded me in to the car but the telling off continued.  The hospital would never ask anyone to leave a bed or a ward, it was all my fault.  My fault!  I had been sat sitting in bright sunshine, relaxing and enjoying myself, harming no one, yet I was being told off for it.  As we drove off I began to miss the ward and wondered if I shouldn’t have stayed for another week or two.

Celtic Illumination, part 408, Saturday night fever.

Well; Saturday had arrived and unfortunately it was going to be, ‘One of those Saturdays.’   There was a definite change in the way the ward ran, but the human traffic that mulled around the nurses station had certainly diminished.  I am sure that if there had been an emergency it would have been catered for.  I was especially down heartened as I had been told they were not going to be pouring anymore blood in to me.  They wanted to allow me to stabilise for twenty four hours and see how my poor little body was reacting to what they had done.  When your day starts at six o clock in the morning with the commotion from a ninety five year old, over in the far corner, the day certainly drags itself along until it reaches midnight.  Don’t worry it wasn’t his routine morning exercise that woke us all up, not that his joints were squeaking and groaning, they were, although in hindsight that could have been the bed he was holding on to, it was the fact that after he finished he would bring out his electric razor, which sounded like a two stroke petrol driven chain saw, and rasp off his morning stubble.

I was quite surprised that The Scouser was still on the ward, still showing people how he had been taught how to walk and stand still, not at the same time of course, after all it was only the army he was in, well; the marines.  I did notice that a young lady with learning disabilities and or mental health problems was on the ward.  She had her own room and two support workers.  At one point it sounded as if there was a circus act in the room, that one person was supporting another, who would be running around the walls of the room, like a motorcycle on the wall of death.  You could see the hospital nursing staff react, once any commotion started, then pause and understand that the support workers would handle the situation.  It was like watching The Exorcist without the dog collars.  I relaxed, knowing I didn’t have to get involved, but in a way I missed it, strange that.

I had three books with me, all of which I had to read, but I just couldn’t be bothered.  I did try, but couldn’t get in to the books, so left them in my bag.  I suppose many of us often think how nice it would be to spend the day in bed, to not have to do anything.  But in reality it is so difficult, so boring.  And yet you sort of prepare yourself for the long haul and before you know it the nurse is at the bottom of your bed asking, “Have your bowels opened today sir?”  Sunday came and I actually expected for them to announce that I was cured and could go home.  They still had I suppose what most people would call, ‘Doctors rounds,’ and during my Sunday morning visit was informed that there had been some improvement but not what they were expecting.  I was to be given more blood.  I was feeling more and more like a geriatric vampire as they began tapping my arms looking for a vein and the routine started all over again.

Beds were still being moved around.  The old fellow in the corner, no, the other corner, the ninety five year old clean shaven exercise freak, was on the move to the heart attack ward, well; that’s what we told him.  He was replaced with a friend of the fellow next to me; the one who had ran the pub in Spain for ten years.  They then began holding conversations across the ward about people they knew and cats that they had had, oh yeah and a certain pub someone had for ten years in Spain.   Then they brought a new fellow in.  He looked as if he was sixteen, but he had so many tattoos on his arms and shoulders that he must have been much older.  He looked very young and acted it too, as he demanded that the curtains remain drawn around his bed. 

I hadn’t seen behaviour like it since boarding school, although if the truth be told we were much worse.  Although admittedly we didn’t hide away in case anyone saw our willies, how could you when at six o clock every Sunday evening we would be marched off for a shower.  A weekly wash supervised by the Dean, who would flash a bamboo cane across your arse, if you were not fully immersed in the deluge of fresh cold water.  Which was good for you.  I would love to get my hands on the idiot who announced to the world that cold showers were good for your health.   I bet it was the same feckin idiot who said salt was nice on porridge, especially on the lumps.  I always found it strange that in the centre of the shower room there was a huge bath and this was considered to be a luxury.  If you were teacher’s pet, you would be given a bath while the rest of us stood shivering in the showers, Irish logic I suppose; well it is when you understand that the bath was as cold at the fecking showers.

The school was populated by farmers sons and farmers and farming types, all  apart from me of course, a sophisticated urbanite, in fact we had our own farm at the school so that might allow you to understand the approach of the students and staff, which is probably why I was an outsider from the word, ‘Go.’  The fellow in charge of the farm was a priest known as Father Hackett.  We called him Big Ged.  He was six feet seven or eight inches tall, had bow legs, walking as if he had forgotted his horse, his eyesight was non-existent and he taught Latin.  He was duty priest one night and caught a bunch of us having a willy measuring contest in the dormitory bathroom, as you do.  It actually makes life most interesting these days for when you go home and you are in a social situation, introductions are being made, such as, “You remember Joe don’t you?  You two must have been at Violet Hill at the same time.  Joe’s now a barrister.”  And you do remember Joe, but at two o clock in the morning in a cold bathroom with his pyjama bottoms around his ankles stretching his willy out as if it were a rubber balloon he was about to inflate.   

Just as an aside, Big Ged was the most vicious of all the priests at Violent Hell.  He was an animal and I know that a good number of boys actually had a go at him, unsuccessfully I might add, but at least they tried.  There’s so many of the feckers I would have liked to have met afterwards but water under the bridge and all that.  In fact Big Ged became a parish priest in Lurgan and was my Aunty Margaret’s parish priest.  I remember, not knowing that she knew Big Ged, telling her all about the man and what sort of an animal he was.  Margaret then told me that he was now her parish priest, which shocked me as I had a mental image of Big Ged beating everyone up at a baptism as the baby wouldn’t stop crying.  But she added, “He’s all right now, as long as he takes his medication.”  Meaning that there must have been something wrong with him when he was in charge of us at Violent Hell.

But what made me think of Big Ged I suppose was our Little Welsh preacher in the corner, our little tabernacle trash talker.  Big Ged was a very animated man, and violent, did I mention how violent he was, it wasn’t uncommon to get a punch in the head if you were late with the communion bell when serving mass for him, I bet baby Jesus was pleased with that sort of behaviour.  Nothing like mass in Latin with a thump in the temple to make a Sunday evening go with a zing.  It was Sunday evening, the question had been asked and the correct response had been given, just like communion, except we were given medication instead of a communion host, amen, praise the Lord, seconds away, one a, two a, three a….  The lights came down; the young fellow was still hiding behind his closed curtain so the ward had a different sort of feel about it.  It was about half past eleven and I knew it was pointless trying to go to sleep as I would be up and down all night long, but I was tired and couldn’t be bothered trying to plan for a decent nights sleep.  The fellow next door had managed to scrounge five pounds off his wife, who used to run a pub in Spain with him for ten years, and was glued to some film on the television.    The preacher was in a dark shadow so I couldn’t really see him, but he was grunting.  The others on the ward were recumbent so I allowed myself to drift away.

Next thing you know is that it is one o clock in the morning, Monday morning mind you, which is what I found strange about the whole thing as you normally only get preaching on Sundays.  But there he was, Monday morning preaching away, to himself mainly as it was quite dark.  One of the staff heard the commotion and a door opened, sending a spike of light onto the ward which highlighted our Welsh pastor standing over the ex-Spanish publican roaring about God and Jesus and Satan and anyone else whose name crept into his poor befuddled mind.  I immediately burst into laughter. The ex-Spanish publican was crapping himself as he thought he was in the middle of an exorcism or sacrifice or the like.  The Welsh Preacher was giving it wellie, screaming about the Lord giveth and he taketh.  I was in stitches for not only did he look like Christopher Lee in full flow, that’s full Hammer House of Horror flow and not Bond, but he also looked like Big Ged.  Even the young fellow who had hidden himself away poked his head out to see what was going on.  I promise you, if you want a good laugh and don’t mind not having any sleep for a week then get yourself off to your local NHS hospital, much more better for you than cold showers and lumpy porridge and you don’t even have to have a willy measuring contest, well; not unless you want to.

Celtic Illumination, part 407, Gwahoddiad.

Saturday morning was thundering towards us and all I wanted to do was go home.  They hadn’t found out what was wrong with me and tests were still happening, as and when, but I just wanted to get home, well; one side of my brain did, and for those of you who have read this complete blog, you will know that an Irishman does not have two sides to his brain, like a regular person, an Irishman has four sides.  It’s why we lead the universe.  Normal people have only two sides to their brain, the left side, which controls logic, language and analytical thinking.   Then there’s the other side, the right side, depending which way you are facing of course, which is best at expressive and creative tasks.  But then we have the Irish with the two extra sides.  The frontal lobe, braininess frontiness, which is used for impaired sensory navigation otherwise known as, ‘Walking whilst drunk,’ or as many people refer to it, incorrectly, as staggering.  And then we have the rear section of the brain, the back side, which we use for talking through whilst drunk.

As an Irishman it would be normal to be told that you could, ‘Talk the hind leg of a donkey,’ and why someone would wish to disfigure some poor wee animal is beyond me and no, let’s not get into the bullfighting again.  But if the drink has been taken then it would be more common, as an Irishman, to be told that you were talking from the rear of your brain, or as it is more locally referred to as , ‘Talking out your backside.’   So I knew that there was a battle going on in my head with one side wanting to go home, another side wanting to stay and get fixed and the other two sides just wanting a drink.   While all this was going on, in my head, some fellow appeared beside my bed.  Don’t worry we are not talking divine revelation here, he introduced himself and we shook hands.  He explained that he was the chap who was about to shove a tube, with a camera, down my throat.

It was nice, for once, to have a young man offer to shove something down my throat and for it not to be accompanied by a threat.  He explained that there were two people before me and that I would probably be taken down within the hour.  Now I know many of you would expect me now to connect the term, ’Taken down,’ with British courts and justice and prison and then make the leap to acknowledge that Gerry Conlon died a day or two ago.  Gerry was one of the Guilford Four who was imprisoned for being Irish for fifteen years and during that time watched his innocent father die beside him in jail.  As there is no connection between British courts and justice, especially for an Irish person, then there is no point in referring to it, but at the same time the man’s passing must be acknowledged.  And talking about passing I suppose I was impressed that someone from a busy department would come down on to a ward and introduce himself and run through the basics of what was going to happen.   It was a first class service, as all of the care was in the hospital.

It was a little disappointing when he turned up half an hour later apologising that he wasn’t aware I hadn’t been fasting for long enough and therefore would not be taken down to his department until much later in the afternoon.   Still a great service and even though they waited until my afternoon visitors had gathered around my bed, before coming to get me, I would still have no complaints.  I only wish I had a camera handy to take a photograph of Irene and the others sitting around an empty bed space.  As an Irishman with four sides to my brain, and therefore much more brain power than the ordinary person, I had all four sides of my brain concentrate on the fact that my duty was to get better, so this camera down the throat business was a part of that.   I didn’t fear it in anyway whatsoever, in fact I welcomed it.  I liked the way I was able to remain on my bed; all I had to do was get on to my side.

There was a lot of gagging, but I promise you no pain and no real discomfort either.  I was worried in case I threw up, as there were females in the room, but otherwise quite a straightforward procedure and it seemed to be over in a flash.  They had sprayed my throat with all sorts of stuff and it wasn’t until I was back on the ward that I gathered myself together and wondered what on earth had just happened and begin to wonder why my throat was numb.   Not everything went to plan, for example one morning a nurse explained to me that I was to be given three pints of blood that day.  I knew that they wouldn’t conduct a transfusion on me during the night hours as they kept going on about the chance of me having a bad reaction to the transfusion.  It was a little disconcerting when they linked the bag of blood up to your vein and stood back as if the proverbial fuse had been lit.  But I wasn’t to worry, that’s what they told me.

And why wasn’t I to worry?  Well, if I was to have an adverse reaction to the new blood I was being given it would happen within the first fifteen minutes.  Great I thought, clock watching, along with the nurses.  But what flavour reaction would it be, would I levitate, have an epileptic fit or just find myself disco dancing for half an hour while throwing up green bile by the bucket load?  No one ever explained to me what form the bad reaction might take.   So you realise that the common denominator for the day will be blood transfusion, but then things start to go wrong.  More bloody rules for transfusion, this time the time limits for matching my blood with the stuff they wanted to give me was running out.  In order to establish that the match was fine and that the transfusion could go ahead I needed more blood taken and tested.  Three nurses later and we are now waiting for a doctor.

The doctor didn’t turn up for four hours so the clock can start all  over again but you understand that you are not going to get your three units of blood this day and therefore will have to stay in hospital that little bit longer.  I suppose a normal person might get angry but I understood that there were people in the hospital who were of much greater need than myself and had no qualms about understanding that when it was my turn they would get to me.  The poor medics were working their socks off and deserved some leeway.  I still felt that the doctor who made my right arm swell up so that I looked like a comic book version of Popeye the Sailor man, was a little off centre, but as he wasn’t Irish he didn’t have the option of being perfect.

The only other Celtic patient was of the course the Welsh preacher man opposite me.  As a ninety five year old man I felt sorry for him, it must not have been nice for him to have been in hospital and to tell you the truth he did look a bit lost.  However he did make me laugh.  Very cruel of me I know but the television screen that draped over each of our beds, like Triffids, also had a telephone.  Each time a telephone would ring, out by the nurses station, the Welsh preacher man would leapt out of bed, well; leap out of bed as best as a ninety five year old gentleman can, race around to the far side of the bed, which for me was funny in itself as all he had to do was remain where he was and reach up to the telephone.  But of course he would now be stood standing by the side of his bed yelling into the telephone hand set “Hello?  Hello?  Hello?”  And of course with him now on his feet he could have done the decent thing and given us a song, a good old Welsh Hymn, or his version of a Welsh male voice choir with a jaunty version of Cwm Rhondda, which for the Heathens among you has nothing whatsoever to do with the Beach Boys.

I do like a Welsh Male voice choir but only at a distance, fifty yards would be best, so I had no wish for his congregation to turn up and serenade him at his bedside.  A Welsh male voice choir came to visit us once in Germany.  Being serenaded in a rugby club, in Germany, by a Welsh male voice choir is an experience in itself, but it didn’t quite fit right.  With a sound like that, you need space for the voices to grow and expand.  I however wanted to speak with the minister; I wanted to begin to question his beliefs, which normally I wouldn’t do, but I was angry with this Pentecostal lot now.   Live and let live is my motto; well; as long as you are not a rabbit.  Something Irene hates me for I must be the only person in the United Kingdom who invites Mormon missionaries into their home.  She would often come home and find me with two smartly dressed American young men in the room at the front of our house with the big leather seaty things.  I would invite them in, sit them down, furnish them with tea and biscuits and then begin to question the very core of their belief system.  In fact, if you ever have some Mormon missionaries knock at your door ask to have a look at their guide book.  Look at the third page, at their, “Rules for survival in the field.”  Number seven.  Beware the Irishman, for he doth talk out his backside.

Celtic Illumination, part 406, Murder most fowl.

You would think that yesterday’s blog, on a scale of one to ten, would be reaching at least eleven on the old Spinal Tap amplifier.  But no, can you believe that some people were still not satisfied.  They say that as we get older we learn more and we get wiser, more understanding, more tolerant, not me, I want a gun.  I could write the perfect blog, mind you, I seem to do that most days, but I am sure I would still get complaints.  I even got a complaint yesterday from my daughter who tells me that she is home on Thursday not Friday, as if that is important in the great scheme of things.  But the line that caused most concern yesterday was when I admitted that I wanted to attend and experience a bullfight.  I found the response to this most interesting as recently, last week in fact, another writer was in hot water over the death of a rabbit.

When I say hot water and bunny rabbit, I’m not talking bunnie boiler here, but real life blood, guts and gore, veins in my teeth, I wanna kill, type violence.  The good sort.  Jeanette Winterson, author of the bestselling novel ‘Oranges are not the only fruit,’ found a rabbit eating the parsley in her garden and murdered the little fecker.  Not only did she murder the little fecker, but she murdered it to death.  Now, unfortunately we live in a world where using social media is like having a nervous tick, and I don’t mean a dog flea sitting on your arm worrying that he might upset you if he bites you.  She went for a wander in her garden, as you do, well; as most writers do, just after the mid-morning champagne and just before lunch time gin, and saw a rabbit.  One is assuming that, like most writers, she lived in a palatial mansion in the countryside and would have been carrying a shotgun, broken, unloaded and carried in the crook of the arm, if you don’t mind.

The rabbit would have identified itself as a rabbit, by being all brown and fluffy and she would have identified herself as being the Lady of the house by loading her gun and blowing the feckers head off.  Now, nothing much out of the ordinary there, not if you are a Lady of the manor, or indeed a rabbit.  Jeannette then posted, on Twitter, a photograph of the skinned rabbit on her kitchen counter stating that the rabbit had eaten her parsley now she was about to eat the rabbit.  I thought it quite clever, I mean in terms of originality it’s leap years ahead of a photograph of someone’s dinner, saying yum yum or nom, nom, nom.  She then began to issue more photographs as the rabbit progressed from carcass to meal.  She even cut the choice bits out of the entrails and fed them to her cat, again pictured.  Unbelievably there now follows a long line of attackers and abusers who threaten never to read another word Jeannette may ever write.

People argued that she should be feeding her cat, cat food, a statement that shows just how far we have moved from the realities of life, where people pretend to care more about their pampered pooch than the human beings next door.  How sad.  So yes, not only would I be happy to murder rabbits to death and then prepare and eat them but like my great hero Hemmingway I want to attend a bullfight.  As Earnest once said, not to me of course, I think he was talking to the barman, “Anything capable of arousing passion in its favour will surely raise as much passion against it.”    So I understand that as there will be people who are against me on this, there will be those beside me, in favour of it, this is something we understand more and more as we get older.  The oldest fellow on the ward was ninety five years of age.  A good innings you might say, but he scared the bejesus out of me, like a bull charging at full pelt, the first morning that I saw him.

It was six o clock in the morning.  This old fellow didn’t really join in with the rest of us, he would sometimes listen and I could see him smile and that made me happy, but I think the banter was too fast for him and his hearing wasn’t up to it.  But at six o clock in the morning he got himself out of bed, which I promise you appeared to be quite a struggle, and then I thought was having an epileptic fit, standing up.  I initially prepared myself to summon help for the old fellow but as I watched, I saw that there was a certain routine or repetitiveness to what he was doing and realised that he was running through his morning exercises.  He was ninety five years of age and doing his morning exercises.  I was a lot younger and could hardly walk; you certainly start making promises to yourself when you experience stuff like that.

There was a new fellow in the middle bed opposite.  He had very poor eyesight and actually sat with the television screen right up to his nose, which he watched constantly.  He was complaining about bad headaches, see, even most of you are now coming up with diagnosis and you’re not even on the ward!  Another old fellow was escorted on to the ward, and he too was ninety five years old.  Deaf as a post, dressed like Al Lewis’ character, Grandpa Munster, from the television series of the same name, he walked proudly onto the ward in his bright red dressing gown and silk cravat.  I knew I was okay as I didn’t have much blood left in me but I worried about the others.  The staff were fussing about him, settling him in to his bed and chatting away when he announced that he was a minister of the church.  My heart sank.

For some reason I immediately placed him in a negative position in my mind.  You see the previous week we had the big story about Pastor James McConnell, another self-styled, self-appointed, clergyman, like dear old Ian Paisley, from some tabernacle in Belfast, who claimed that Islam is satanic, Islam is heathen, and Islam is a doctrine spawned in Hell.  These statements annoyed and embarrassed most people with a brain from Northern Ireland; they also annoyed quite a lot of Muslims throughout the world.  I wasn’t angry that idiots like Pastor McConnell would make things up, week after week, just to keep his collection plates full, like Paisley and his ‘silent collections.’  I was angry that people actually believed the crap he came out with.  So you can imagine how many millions of Irish people covered their faces in embarrassment when Peter Robinson, the First Minister of Northern Ireland, came out and defended his words.  Especially when he added insult to injury by saying that he wouldn’t trust a Muslim but he might send one to the local shop to buy him something.

This is the same First Minister, Peter Robinson, who bought the land to the rear of his back garden for five pounds then sold it to his property developer mate for three hundred and fifty thousand.  The same fellow whose forty five year old wife was shagging a nineteen year old, while arranging a suspect business loan of fifty thousand pounds for him from the same property dealer, for which she charged her toy boy lover, ten thousand for the privilege of doing, while stuffing as much cocaine up their noses as they could find.  Of course when she was caught and charged, her psychiatrist said that she was so depressed with the prospect of the court case that she might consider suicide so she was never taken to court.  Well, guess what, Pastor James McConnell said that Jesus forgave them.  That for me sums up the whole world of these pastors, and I’m sure many of you remember the stories about Jimmy Swaggart, Pat Robertson and Jim Bakker.  I really do want a gun.

So Pastors and Ministers all fall into the same category for me now and one of them was now lying opposite me.  I don’t mean he was preaching I mean that he was reclining on his bed.  I immediately felt so sorry for the hundreds upon thousands of innocent people who are lied to, week after week, in the name of Jesus.  I of course would never lie.  Not unless there was a very good reason for it.   I didn’t have to lie about anything anyway, the training I had received to enable me to take up my rightful position as the High Chief of the Clan O Neill and therefore the True King of Ireland, meant that I had powers beyond the wildest dreams and aspirations of the normal man in the street.  I already had Aoife, the ward pharmacist, on the top of my new good friends list.  Nurses from the other wards, where I had been, were now unable to pass my bed, or ward, without entering in to some form of banter with me.

From being the quiet fellow in the corner bed, the one with the black and blue arms and the loveliest legs in Ireland, I was now becoming the centre of attention on the ward.  Not that I did anything to attract this sort of attention.  I hadn’t told anyone that I was the King of Ireland, I didn’t want to worry any of them, but what I needed was to get the head nurse on my side.  Head nurse on the night shift, the one with the pills; she was a key player in the politics of the ward so I waited for the right moment and then made my move.  Many of the nurses were young females, and by young I mean thirty years of age or thereabouts.  All very pleasant and all very nice and professional.  The head nurse was about fifty years of age, a sturdy woman, with dirty blonde hair, who looked like a smoker and reminded me of a young Peggy Mount.  It was that time of the evening, the one with the pills and the question, yes that question.  She glanced at me as I opened my eyes and smiled at her.  “How are we this evening sir?” she asked, aware that her question the previous evening had seen the whole ward in stitches of laughter for five minutes.  “I’m all right now I’ve got a big leggy blonde at the end of my bed.”  I said, which I promise you saw a fifty year old woman giggle and squeal like a twelve year old and me get the best medical attention a man has ever received in that hospital from that moment on.

Celtic Illumination, part 405, He who laughs last, laughs longest.

They tell me that ‘blogging,’ I still don’t like that term, anyway they tell me that blogging is a two way affair.  So protocol demands that I mention the fact that Colonialist has been trying to be funny.  Normally it’s just barbed comments, meant to hurt and annoy me, that he posts, but this time it’s actually humour he’s attempted.  Despite the fact that I’ve been pouring my little heart out, recounting the nightmare situation I’ve just been through, Colonialist has decided that my near death experience, for isn’t that what Man Flu is, would be a fair subject for humour.  His approach was quite decent, as in, he not only used humour but he set it up with a little smattering of timing.   Perhaps one day I’ll give him a real lesson in timing.  He started off by trying to wrong foot me, which is always a great precept for a joke, by saying that the medics were taking so much blood out of me that my poor little body didn’t have time to restore the blood so cruelly taken. 

So you think, “Ah!  How nice, and perhaps there’s some truth in it?”  then you read on and realise that he wrong footed me because now he states, “Searching for veins in vain doesn’t help.”  What a clot.  This is a very serious subject and you won’t find me making fun of it.  I simply want to tell my tale so that any other person, male of course, who suffers Man Flu, will know what to expect.  So let’s just skip over this unfortunate incident and hope no one was too badly insulted.  I had all sorts of interesting stuff to tell you about instead of having to deal with this literary hooligan, for whom I shall have to apologise, for as the old saying goes, you can’t choose your family, but you can choose who joins The Illuminati, or was that Ghandi?

Many people think that the grandest time of day for the patient, like me, near death in the hospital bed, is visiting time.  On this ward there were two periods of visiting time per day; one was three to four o clock in the afternoon.  The second period was in the evening between seven and eight o clock.  I have always been a great believer in the saying that rules were meant to be broken so every morning at half past nine my son James, that’s number two son, would stroll on to the ward beaming his infectious smile.   You could see all the nursing staff go weak at the knees, even the female ones, for James was just like his father at that age and is exceptionally beautiful.  He really is a gentle giant and all six foot six of him would stroll down the ward and grab me and give me a huge bear hug.   He would sit on the floor beside the bed, so that no would could really see him and try to get me to agree get into a wheel chair so that he could take me for a whizz around the hospital grounds.

James, of course is a man’s man, and doesn’t really know what to talk about in hospital.  We couldn’t really talk about much anyway as there was a constant stream, of nurses coming to the bottom of my bed, ‘reading my notes,’ which when James was about seemed to become very interesting reading.  Irene and sons number one and three would visit during the prescribed times and bring sweets and fruit which they would then sit and work their way through.  I knew if I attempted to eat any of them I would immediately start throwing up so I opted for the choice of lying back and listening to descriptions of them eating the goodies for me.  The one person who didn’t visit me in hospital was my daughter Jane.  No excuse really, although she seems to think that by living over four hundred miles away gives her some sort of legitimate excuse. She also seems to think that I should mention her more in this blog as she claims to read it every day and says that she finds it exceptionally funny.

I don’t believe her for one moment, I mean yes, it is exceptionally funny, well; according to Ken Clare, but as for reading it every day, we’ll soon see.    She’s home this Friday and I’ve prepared a written test for her; we will soon see who’s telling the truth.  I meanwhile, being battered by the staff and mal-treated by my family, kept my spirits up by continuing my social experiments on the ward.  I noticed that the day staff and the night staff seemed to be somewhat permanent.  The same faces kept popping up.   The staff seemed to be as bored with the routine as we did.  Despite this they went through each procedure in their professional way, but that didn’t mean that I had to.  The ward was always quiet, ish.   So you would have a nurse stood standing at the end of your bed, perhaps pushing a huge medical cabinet full of pills, tablets and lotions, with probably the odd unction or two.

It was the same situation when you are in a room of people and something ‘funny’ is on the television.  You watch the programme and suddenly everyone is laughing, while you are sat sitting there wondering what just happened.  I especially hate the American programmes where they tell you when to laugh.  I will laugh when something funny happens or is said, not when some fecker pushes a button, like feeding fecking monkeys at the zoo.   So the ward is quiet, ish.  I have a nurse, female, stood standing at the end of the bed.  She opens my file and begins to flick through the pages.  She then sets the file down, with the appropriate page open, and begins to drop pills and tablets in to a small paper cup.  Now and again they would ask if we wanted a sleeping pill, an offer which I would immediately accept, although I felt asking for some Prozac and a small single malt might be pushing it.

Then came the question, every night, the same fecking question, which surprisingly I found rather embarrassing and, for me, unnecessary.  “Have your bowels opened today?”   I know it’s not a social situation and wouldn’t exactly fall into a chat up line, even of the worst variety, unless of course you went to one of them specialist clubs.  It wasn’t the old, “Did you hurt yourself much?”, “Pardon?”,  “Did you hurt yourself much when you fell from Heaven?”   I know it was medical and perhaps relevant, or appropriate, but really I could have been handed a piece of paper and asked to tick a box.  So, on reflection, I suppose when she would move on to the other bed I would do the equivalent of sticking my fingers in my ears and humming as she ran through the motions, if you get my drift.   So, as I was suggesting, different people react in different ways to various situations.  Many sheeple simply follow the crowd, and good for them, not everyone can be a world leading go getter, like myself.

It had been a long day, drifting in and out of sleep, watching family eat my sweets and fruit, simply wonderful having the grand children bounce on the bed and trying to get to know my new neighbour in the bed on my left.  The fellow who had been great friends with the chief executive of the hospital had been released and he didn’t know if he should go home or not.  He I found very interesting for I had gathered that he was a sixty ish year old male who lived on his own.  We were having great craic on the ward and there was no power in his flat.  It was apparent that he didn’t want to leave, strange how you can feel sorry for people when you realise there isn’t a pill you can take to combat loneliness.  We encouraged him to go home and waited to see who would take his place.  Again, the most interesting thing was to sit back and listen and watch how a person introduced themselves.

One of the guys opposite was mid-seventies and an old truck and crane driver.  He was great fun and told excellent stories; he had no pretence about himself or airs and graces and was a lovely man.  The new fellow was wheeled in and I drifted off to sleep.  I wasn’t being ignorant I just didn’t want to be the one who would have to tell him that he had his hospital gown on back to front.  He wasn’t friends with the chief executive of the hospital but had ran a pub somewhere in Spain for ten years.   I have never wanted to visit Spain, which is a lie.  I want to visit Spain and pay homage at Salvador Dali’s house, all of them, and I want to experience a bull fight.  I am a huge fan of Dali’s work but more importantly  loved the fact that he bought his wife a castle where she could live, while he lived in cottages and shacks, but that she would write to him once a week, asking him to visit her at a specified time to perform his marital duties.

Every time someone would attend to the new fellow in the bed next door he would, by the third sentence, or response, have told them that he used to run a pub in Spain.  You can’t help it when you are lying there on your bed with nothing to do but listen to what’s going on all around you.   I was even tuning in to The Scouser who was showing people how to march and stand still which he had been taught to do in 42 Commando, although he didn’t quite finish basic training as there was something wrong with him.  I didn’t wish to make any suggestion as to what might have been wrong with him as I am sure the doctors and consultants who were encouraged to watch his marching and standing still skills had their own prognosis at hand.   So it was now my turn to be listened to.   She asked the question and then looked at me.  “Have your bowels opened today?”  “Opened?” I asked, loud enough for the ward next door to hear.  “They broke the feckin world land speed record.”

Celtic Illumination, part 404, Twinkle, twinkle, little star.

Hello all.  Sorry that yesterday didn’t really happen, but it was just one of those days.  Usually, especially these days, I find myself taking a wee forty wink nap, on the big seaty thing in the next room, normally during the afternoon, whereas yesterday I was there for about six hours’ worth of forty winks, which was more like a very long game of hide and seek.  Don’t worry, I won.  And there was so much to talk about yesterday, no point now as it’s only the same as today’s fish and chip wrapper, whatever the electronic equivalent of that is.  Despite the fact that there were reports which stated the NHS provided the best health care in the world there were the little niggling stories about doctors receptionists refusing to call for ambulances when people were having heart attacks in front of them.  But doctor’s receptionists are not medics, harridans, hags, bullies even, but not medics.

I would then use that point to leap in to the statement that I wouldn’t have a bad word said about any of the NHS staff I met, or received care from, in the hospital.  It was the best care possible delivered in a friendly and professional manner. I might have one or two slight grumbles, most of which are being dealt with by my legal team at the moment, but nothing sensational.  I had hoped that my third ward move would be my last, but I was wrong.  I didn’t mind my next move, as two of the fellows sleeping in my ward could have been dead, but I didn’t want to say anything.  I was taken to another six bed ward where this time I was settled in to a corner spot.  I was surrounded by sick people and medics.

This would appear to be the room where I was to be treated as they descended on me again and took even more blood.  Myself and the staff reached an unwritten sort of schedule, or routine, when it came to taking blood from my arms.  Three nurses would each try twice to find a vein and then they would give up, now, their rules stated that a doctor would have to take the blood.  The first doctor was a young female trainee doctor or junior doctor.  She was very careful, very gentle and managed to extract three vials of blood with no commotion or bruising.  There was a very simple and straightforward solution which I didn’t know if I should point out to the staff but every morning at half past nine a phlebotomist would pitch up and take blood from me.  Again, no fuss, no pain, no bruising, why couldn’t they be employed to take it during the rest of the day? 

My arms were black and blue and I mean black and blue.  First thing people would say when they say me was, “You look awful!” but then their eyes would fall to my arms and all sorts of expletives would be expressed.  It was the second doctor who took blood from me that caused the problem.  I had dragged myself back from the toilet and was sat sitting on the edge of my bed when he came up to me.  I could tell from the equipment he was holding that he was there to take blood.  I asked if he wanted me to lie down on the bed but he poo pooed the idea and began to tap the back of my right hand.  I watched the needle slip in through my skin and, like the doctor, was surprised when water seemed to ooze out around it.  He then began to raise and lower the needle, but following a fan shape, looking for a vein.  Eventually he found a vein and managed to take the blood.  I was glad that he had managed to get some, so that my transfusions could continue, but in the hours that followed I wondered about his oath of Primum non nocere, first do no harm.  All I could do was watch as my right arm began to swell up, which I can assure you was far more interesting that anything they were showing on their television screens.  

It was explained to me that most of the blood tests were like dipping the oil on your car, making sure that there was still some in there and seeing if my own systems were beginning to build my reserves back up.  Then the tests began to see if I was compatible with the blood they had brought up from the laboratory.  I was then hooked up to bags of blood which was fed in to my body.  One nurse explained that they had to be extremely careful with the blood as it had a four hour life.  That from leaving the laboratory the blood had to be transfused within a four hour period, which included travel time.  She explained that although the blood had been donated free, the processes it had gone through to clean it up were very costly so that had to be taken in to consideration as well.  On top of this you had all the monitoring and checking and double checking, which I felt was them politely explaining, because of the exact systems they had to follow, that I now wasn’t exactly anaemic to them but perhaps more of a pain in the arse.

I wasn’t sure if I would move ward again but settled in to ward life by listening to the other men there.  I found it very interesting watching and listening how different people tried to establish themselves within the group.  Of the six men on the ward four of us would actively participate in conversation.  Well; for them it was conversation whereas for me it was social research, or as we used to call it in the forces, ‘Taking the piss.’  The guy in the bed next to me kept telling all who would listen that he was great friends with the chief executive of the hospital.  I think he thought that this made him something special, that the doctors attending him should only wear bow ties and he would receive special treatment.  I never once saw the chief executive come to visit him on the ward and wondered if I told him that I was friends with a porter, who regularly came to see me and ask If I needed anything, that he would understand his pretend little world of ‘I am better than you,’ was quite hollow and empty.

In a way his typical English attitude of, ‘I am better than you,’ encouraged me to act myself, which was pure Irish working class scum, despite the fact that I am King.  But as everyone shall be equal in the new Ireland then I can be either one or the other, or both.  It started with the two pretty Indian doctors and it was day two of the blood transfusions.  In they came, drawing the curtains, and you knew that everyone else on the ward was listening to their prognosis or your problems.  “Have you been bleeding?” asked one of the doctors, I’m not sure which one.  “No,” I said.  “But your blood count is not going up?”  Here they started getting all technical talking about haemoglobin and stuff like that, although why they would start talking about the film the Lord of The Rings is beyond me.

I could see that the process they used was very similar to the thought process I used myself, which was to shout at things or at least run though my options out loud.  “Doctor,” I asked.  “Is the blood you are giving me English blood?”  The two girls looked at each other and really didn’t know what to say.  “Not a bit of wonder it’s not working,” I said, mainly for the ears of everyone else on the ward.  “I need decent Irish blood, not that foreign English muck.” They smiled nervously at me and began to back away.  “Look I said.   If you don’t have any decent Irish blood knocking about just give me a couple of cans of Guinness and I’ll be fine by the morning.”  Then I heard an Irish accent.  Way off in the distance I heard a little female voice that hailed from the same part of the world that my voice did.  She responded to the name Aoife, (pronounced Ee Fa) and was the pharmacist on the ward.  Of course the first thing that shoots in to my mind it that this could be a sister of mine.

Stranger things have happened, so the next time that she was checking the file at the bottom of my bed I engaged in conversation with her.  After the basic pleasantries I got straight to the point and asked Aoife where she was from.  Normally in Ireland this is one of the methods used to determine what religion you are, or as they say over there, what foot you kick with.  She said Omagh and I expressed a sigh of relief, explaining that I was worried that she may have been my sister and hoped she understood that I couldn’t have cared less what foot she kicked with if she kicked at all, I mean she may have been a biter.  I was still being woken every fifteen minutes to have my blood pressure taken, something stuck in my ear and a plastic clothes peg type thing put on one of my fingers. 

One of the beds became vacant and I tried to get the other patients on the ward to agree that we would tell the next patient to be wheeled in that everyone on this ward was expected to die within two days and we were all putting five pounds in a kitty so the last remaining patient would scoop the lot.  Staff were expecting me to start leaping about the place with the huge amount of fresh blood they were pumping in to me but I wasn’t having any of it.  I was still falling in and out of sleep like the Dormouse at the Mad Hatters tea party.  Unlike the Dormouse when I was woken, and thankfully not by having tea poured all over my nose, but by a heafty Turkish male nurse at the end of my bed shaking my foot, I didn’t start singing Twinkle twinkle little star.  “Do you mind if take your blood pressure sir?”   My head was still befuddled with sleep, so I didn’t reply, but when he was wrapping the cuff around my arm, he asked, “Did you have a good night’s sleep sir?” I couldn’t help myself but say.  “I feckin was, till some shit woke me up.”

Celtic Illumination, part 403, Someday my prints will come.

It should come as no great surprise to many of you when I admit that I have slept in some weird and wonderful places, from snow holes to ditches and back again.  One I remember was a purpose built room where the bunk beds accommodated six people at a time.  We had come in, as you do, a little bit exhausted and dined on babies heads followed by a decent cup of coffee with possessed cheese on rolled oat biscuits.  We were then instructed to line up by the door that led into the bed room and wait for a bed to become empty.  The moment you were next in line and saw someone pull themselves off a bed you made your way to it, rolled on to it and slept.  There was no messing about.  We were still in full combat gear and would even have cuddled ourselves around the rifle, or machine gun, we carried.  In such a macho, methane flavoured, environment I had one of the best sleeps ever.

I can now assure you that one of the most uncomfortable night’s sleep I have ever endured would have been my first night in an NHS hospital next door to the duty drunk Scouser.  A slushy, dripping, snow hole would come a close second but at least I didn’t have someone waking me up every thirty minutes taking my blood pressure, sticking something in my ear and putting a plastic clothes peg type thingy on the end of my finger.  Gary proved that not only was he a decent fellow but that he wasn’t a liar as he arrived in the middle of the night to take me off for an x ray.  The only good thing about this was that I was encouraged to remain on the bed which he expertly wheeled along the dimly lit corridors.  It was obvious that the technician at the x ray department had been roused from her sleep as she yawned and scratched her way around me.  For some reason I was asked to stay on my bed and was x rayed there.

Gary brought me back to my ward where our friend The Scouser was hanging over the side of his bed throwing up.  Of course he wanted to tell everyone in the hospital that he had thrown up and was yelling at the top of his voice, between wretches, “Nerse!!  Nerse!!”  Gary expertly navigated my bed away from the spreading pool of vomit and parked me up an extra two or three feet away from The Scouser, who I think had begun to wonder not just where he was but who he was.  Then there was the pain from the stab wounds which allowed him to roll back on to his bed and begin to whine for someone to attend to him as he was a very sick boy indeed.  He plugged his ears back up again with the television headphones and stuck his face in front of the television screen, it really was Orwellian.  I knew that I was exhausted as the constant waking up, with people sticking needles in me, or taking my blood pressure, and the noise from the others area was just too much.

It was as dawn was poking through the windows, and I don’t mean that blond girl from Hazelhurst, when Gary arrived again to inform me that I was to be taken to another ward.  In a way I was quite interested to experience the working of an NHS hospital as it was so often talked about in the news.  You had the likes of the Commonwealth Fund, a very highly respected organisation, which produces analytical reports on the performance of different countries’ health systems, declaring that the NHS is the world’s best healthcare system.  http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/jun/17/nhs-health?CMP=EMCNEWEML6619I2   And then you have the Tories selling it off piece by piece, lining their mates pockets and robbing the British tax payer blind, as normal. But let’s not talk about politicians as that would start a rant you would probably never hear the end of.

Once again it was a six bedded ward and I was slotted in to a central position.  It was bright and busy and more people were surrounding me and sticking things in me.  I wasn’t sure if I should have accepted the breakfast I was offered as I couldn’t guarantee that it would stay down, so I declined the cereal and orange juice and opted for the safe option of toast and tea.  They even gave me some little pots of marmalade.  Someone was selling newspapers from a trolley while another person was offering every patient towels and soap, with toothbrushes and toothpaste.  It was like market day in Norwich, except there was no sheep.  A nurse came in and wrapped the curtain around my bed, not in a parcel type of way; she enclosed the area so that I could have a bit of privacy.  She then went off and returned with a large bowl of hot water.  I assured her that I could perform my own ablutions and would not require her bed bath.  She left me alone so I stripped off and began to scrub myself from top to bottom.

 It was as I was at the bottom part, and I don’t mean my feet, when a young nurse came in and I am sure, from the way I was contorted on the bed, was probably put off her lunch.  I hurried up with my ablutions as they tended to enter through the curtains like they were pantomime capes, swinging them wide open so that the bored patients dotted around the ward could have something different to gawp at.  Eventually I found myself clean, dry and dressed in fresh pyjamas sitting on the edge of my bed, enjoying the anonymity the closed curtain gave me when it hit me.  Nothing physical, it wasn’t a flying bedpan or the like, but the sensation that I needed the toilet.  Now for normal people this is usually no great problem, you experience the sensation that suggests you should consider making your way to the nearest toilet, you go to the toilet and perform whichever function you need to.  With me I knew that from the moment I got the sensation, to needing to be firmly positioned on a toilet bowl, was three seconds.

I launched myself off the bed and flew through the curtains.  I didn’t know where the toilet was, so wasn’t sure if I could make it and was so pleased to find that as I moved along my toast and marmalade were coming back up.  “Toilet?” I asked a passing nurse who looked at me and she pointed to a door which I made a beeline for.   More came out of my mouth than my bottom.  In fact it would be safe to say it was all a case of nothing more than hot air, but we all know, many from experience, that you can never trust a fart, especially in company.  Normally I would have been mortified in case anyone passing outside had heard the rumblings but I was in no real state to care.  I cleaned myself up, had a wee rest and then made the return trip to my bed.  The other patients were being moved about like pieces on a draught board.  The commotion on the ward seemed to phase itself out and it became calm and quiet.  I could feel myself begin to drift off to sleep when none other than The Scouser was wheeled in to the bed space next to mine.

My fears that I was to be hounded by this fellow, for my remaining time in the hospital, didn’t last long as a male nurse arrived to take me, my bed, and my possessions to a new ward.  There were only three fellows in this new ward, all of whom were sleeping so I decided to join them and allowed myself to drift off.  Despite being in a new ward and drifting in and out of sleep I could still hear The Scouser complaining away about the fact that the television had eaten his five pounds when he hadn’t even watched the thing.  It did cause me to smile but at least I was in a relatively quiet corner of the unit.  Next I was woken by a gaggle of doctors who wrapped the curtain around our little gathering and began to fire questions at me.  Had I noticed six pints of blood pouring out of my body?  Not only do I think I would have noticed such an event but I may have made a note of it and I am sure Irene would have told me off if I got any of it on the furniture.

It was decided that I should be tested; this unfortunately had nothing to do with MENSA but was more along the lines of a gastroscopy, an ultrasound examination and a flexi sigmoidoiscopy.  Flexi Sigmoidoiscopy is not something I had come across before so I had to ask.  One of the doctors translated it for me and said, “Colonoscopy,”  a term which I didn’t need any further translation of.  I was still slightly uncomfortable with the notion but knew it was the right thing to do.  The curtains were swept back and the doctors moved on to the fellow in the next bed.  I couldn’t be bothered listening in to what was wrong with the fellow next door as I was more concerned with my upcoming photo session.  It was nearly three o clock in the afternoon, I had almost been in the hospital twenty four hours, visiting time was almost upon us so I did the only thing any decent patient would do and went to sleep.