The History of NHS (see appendix)

I am sorry, fair readers. Those of you who peruse my blog will have seen I have been surprisingly absent after all my binding promises to be as regular as clockwork. Electric clockwork, even. I have indeed, been gone.

Gone off my head on mind-bending drugs, at least. On the Thursday of last week, I rose to a warm, bright, happy-looking day. It was one of the few mornings I have experienced that ever did this quite right. Bands of sunlight streaming and suchforth. Unfortunately, it was a very brief experience, for almost directly after the world showed me this beautiful vista, it presented the far more narrow-minded vista of quite what was wrong with my stomach. It growled and shook ominously.

The day progressed as they often do. Forward in time and that. The 'twinge' in my stomach gradually became far more an 'ache', then a 'pain', then a 'throb', and finally, by the time I had endured a bus journey of brobdingnagianally painful proportions, a full-on throaty Knot Of Horror deep behind my navel. I collapsed onto my bedroom floor full of prayer that it might end quickly, and perhaps a prayer also that if I were to die, perhaps good friend Mike the Critic might inherit my computer rather than either of the Sarky Sisters. The Mother was of no use. She rather coldly threw the yellow pages at my head and told me to sort it out myself. The lasagne was on now, and couldn't be left. Apparently.

I crawled to a phone. Curled under wave after wave of pain I dialled the number of the local Surgery. To no avail. If you're dead, find someone else. This phone line closes at 4 pm.

Apparently.

After a short interval, my despairing mother forewent her lasagne and drove me to the hospital. And now it's all over. The angry writhing appendix that had been wreaking havoc in my intestinal tract is in the toxic wastebin where it belongs. I lie in my bed, or rather not my bed, as my bed is too low down for me to be able to get up again without helpers, and write this to let you know that the NHS is pretty awful.

Not so bad... well, I can't complain too much, can I, they did sort me out (well, in the end... I was deemed a "non-active condition patient"... was not too happy with that.) That's it, really. Oh, and they didn't have any shaving equipment either.

What do you mean, it's a children's ward?

What self-respecting six-year-old CAN'T grow a beard?