A Riot Of My Own

A and E departments can be quite fun to the casual observer. It's a shame that if you're in one you're generally not in any mood to notice. You wouldn't think, for example, that UCH Casualty would be especially interesting, but look more closely and you will find the following:
- A girl who has been bitten by a lab rat and has come in for her tetanus jab.
- A man who has collapsed on the tube and is claiming to feel really dizzy, and when questioned says he has drunk "a couple of bottles of wine" but insists he "only drinks socially".
- Best of all, two chefs, sitting about four chairs away from each other, each with one finger heavily bandaged. Maybe they were going head to head (finger to finger?) in the grand final of some world record attempt for chopping vegetables that was badly risk-assessed.

The visit also helps me prepare for giving blood again, which I intend to do next week: doctors get rather too excited by blood and the one that was given the unenviable task of stitching up my partner's face after his altercation with the pavement on Eversholt Street kept tapping enthusiastically at this hard thing at the bottom of the huge slash in his chin and saying "can you hear that? Do you know what that is? It's his jawbone!"

I will never feel squeamish again.

I am not frequently awake at 3am, and since I couldn't get to sleep, and having already finished reading "Adrian Mole and the Weapons of Mass Destruction" turned on the World Service just in time to be told what time it was in Sydney, Geneva and Addis Ababa (handy). This was followed by a chirpy RP woman announcing "And now, a programme exploring violence and the psyche."

I've clearly been missing out.

In case you were worried, those of you who didn't manage to see Westlife standing on top of Debenhams and turning on the Christmas lights didn't miss much. For one thing, the police treated us as though we were striking miners, shoving us out of the way and shouting at us not to "fucking swear at me."
"Don't worry," the woman next to me said consolingly, because I looked a little taken aback. "If you were Brazilian he'd've shot you."

My mother feigned interest:

"Is Ronan Keating there?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because he was in Boyzone."

"Oh. Are they not the same people?"

Quite.