Catharsis

I've had a really crappy day. Dialysis this morning, everything is hunky dory with the exception that I've developed an infection around the catheter in my chest so I need to have a course of some fairly heavy duty IV antibiotics. The catheter goes in my chest just above my boobline, tunnels up under the skin and dives into one of the large blood vessels that lead directly into the heart so getting an infection is potentially bad news. The line is there on a semi permanent basis and it's used to remove and return my blood to/from the dialysis machine. I've had several surgeries in my arm to beef up the blood supply and make a permanent access point for the dialysis but my arm isn't holding up its side of the bargain so we have to use the line for the time being. I shall be so happy when I get the blasted thing out even if it does mean that the alternative is a couple of rather large needles being inserted in my arm 3 times a week - fun, fun, fun till her Daddy takes the TBird away .... not.

I manage to get away from the unit at around 11:30 and I roll into work at 12:15. I'm completely pumped, raring to go knowing that as I had to leave the office at 15:00 in order to make a doctor's appointment and tomorrow I shall be covering for the Maintenance Group Commander's secretary, I only had a little under 3 hours to get my loose ends tied up before going on leave for a fortnight from Monday. What happens when I get to my desk? I'm locked out because I need 5 patches installed. Chuffin' terrific! I lost half an hour waiting to have those installed.

I was able to get most of the things on my list accomplished but 15:00 rolled around pretty fast and I had to leave with a couple of things left to do - I'll have to go in ultra early tomorrow and send the files to myself by email so I can work on them across the street when I'm covering the other job. By the time I save everything and shut it all down I'm ten minutes behind schedule but I wasn't too worried because the doctor I'm seeing usually runs late.

I arrive at the surgery and check in adding as humbly as I can that I'm 10 minutes late. The receptionist says we'll have to see if the doctor can see you. I ask if the doctor is on schedule? She says no but there's a gap after your appt so you should be able to see her then. I say but if the doctor hasn't got to me yet how come I have to be fitted in at another time? She replies with because you're late and there are people after you. I say but if the doctor was 20 minutes late and I was on time she would see me so what's the difference? She says it's because you're late.

We go round and round in circles for a while like this, I'm trying to be assertive without being nasty. The last thing I want is to be barred from this practice for abusing the receptionist, she's getting all defensive and wouldn't even look me in the eye. Eventually she flounces off saying that she was going to see the doctor, so I say sweetly that's awesome, thank you, and I sit down. The next thing I know is she's back this time with reinforcements to tell me that yes the doctor would see me. The backup gave me a steely Paddington stare so I can only imagine what the receptionist told her.

Now I could understand it if they had already moved on to the next person on the list after me but if the doctor was late anyway what exactly is the problem? Of course what I really wanted to say to the receptionist is that I had to wait 3 weeks for the appointment which was made for a day that I had requested specifically to avoid. Having already missed the morning at work because of dialysis, I didn't want to miss the afternoon of the same day as well. I'm trying to maintain some credibility not be perceived as off sick all the time, and I'm working effin' hard to keep everything together under some pretty shitty circumstances and you don't have a clue what it's like to work full time and to have diabetes and kidney failure. And that was bloody well why I was 10 minutes late!

Twisted Pines

My previous post led me to thinking about times gone by in the small Suffolk town where I have lived virtually all my life. For the sake of anonymity I shall refer to it as Twisted Pines - it seems that the Brecks landscape that surrounds the town gives the pine trees a curious gnarled appearance that no-one can explain, apparently the exact same species in other parts of the country grow poker straight. Strange.

When I was a child there 3 supermarkets in town, at least 2 greengrocers, 2 butchers, 2 banks, a clothes shop, shoe shop, bakery, 2 fish & chip shops, a barbers cum fishing tackle shop, 2 dedicated sweetshops, a dry cleaners, an electrical store plus the Co-op sold furniture, household appliances as well as the usual grocery. There were 2 banks not including the Co-Op Handybank, a proper Post Office and approximately 13 pubs, even a betting shop and a wool shop. We even had a miniature department store of sorts. There was a market on Thursdays and Saturdays. Unless you needed a dentist or something really exotic there was no need to go out of town for anything, but despite this there was a great bus service to the surrounding area. There was a lot more to offer of course but I can't remember it all.

How strange that now, in the 21st Century we have 1 supermarket, 1 butcher, 1 baker, 1 bank, 11 pubs, a bowling alley, and approximately 12 junk food shops (3 Chinese, 3 chippies, 1 pizza/kebab place, 2 Indians, a Portuguese place, 2 fried chicken places), 5 estate agents, 2 charity shops and 2 "discount" goods type shops. The markets still set up on Thursday and Saturday but they are a shadow of their former selves.

I would love to blame it all on Tesco's but to be fair the rot set in sometime in the late 70's long before they ever rode into town like the 4 horsemen of Apocalypse. I think it must have something to do with Women's Lib - as more women went out to work they had less time to the shopping so the big one-stop supermarkets became more attractive. I know this is the case for me, I'm ashamed to admit it but it is true - I rarely shop in my home town. For one thing it doesn't have much to offer, for another I don't have time to mosey round and look at what we do have, and finally most things are more expensive.

I must sound like a pensioner - ooooooh thooooose were the days dear - but I'm actually relatively young at the tender age of 39. If it bothers me that so much has changed in the last 30 years what must it be like for the elderly? Pretty mind boggling I should think.

Which brings me back to where I was headed in the first place. Twisted Pines when I was a little girl was a small rural town with maybe 7,000 inhabitants (I need to look it up in the county records for an accurate figure, this is just a guesstimate). Then we started to receive what was referred to as London overspill. A large council housing estate was built on some arable land (asparagus as far as I can recall) and a great many Londoners were rehoused. A few years later a local builder started what can only be described a s a housing boom and suddenly pensioners from down south were selling up to come and retire in the country. We didn't even have a beige zip up jacket shop so I'm not sure what the attraction was. This went on for some years, people from the Home counties selling up at a huge profit and moving to East Anglia on the proceeds.

Latterly, we, like the rest of the country, are now home to European immigrants from a host of different countries, not to mention Indians, Chinese and South Africans. Let's not forget that close by Twisted Pines are 2 US Air Force Bases whose personnel mostly make their homes in the surrounding towns and villages. My street is about 40% American occupied, with another 20 or so percent European migrant workers. It's all quite cosmopolitan, and I don't, I stress, actually have a problem with it except Twisted Pines with all these extra souls on board simply does not have the infrastructure to cope with it all. Insufficient doctors & dentists (I had to wait 3 and a half weeks to see my GP and that was after I'd beaten the receptionist about the head with my chest catheter to prove the point that I really have a need to see the doctor), a poor public transport system and bugger all in the way of shopping.

What on Earth does the future hold for us I wonder?

What's that coming over the hill? Is it a monster?

No it's only Tesco. I hate this shop with a passion tempered only by need - it's the only food shop of any consequence in my small home town other than a poorly stocked Spar which cohabits with the Post Office which itself used to occupy far more salubrious premises. It's the world domination that gets my goat, that and the fact that it drove the Co-op with its lovely cuddly ethics, Handybank and fond memories of my childhood out of town.

I only go in there when I can't wait till I do the weekly shop at Sainsbury's in the neighbouring town. Today I couldn't wait for a loaf of bread and a couple of packets of crisps (Yes you could! Scream my hips, but I digress) so I nipped in on the way back from dialysis. Cheese & Onion crisps are a little treat I award myself when I get home from a Saturday dialysis and I nosh 'em down with a large cup of strong tea as soon as I get home. Technically I should have them while I'm on the machine as they are laden with potassium (presumably the potassium puts the pot in potato, man) but somehow I just don't fancy them at 8 o'clock in the morning.

So there I am with my loaf of Kingsmill and my crisps fighting my way through the Poles, Portuguese, Latvians and Lithuanians (PPLL) who always seem to inhabit Tesco's like it was the United Nations Assembly and I'm trying to find a till that isn't too busy. I get cut up twice at the 5 items or less and I hurrumph off to a more promising regular checkout. When my turn comes I think to myself that I'll just stuff the crisps in my handbag and carry the loaf, should earn me an extra clubcard point seeing that I didn't use one of their bags at the checkout. My total comes to £1.56 and I duly hand over a £10 note along with my Clubcard which happens to be a Clubcard Plus and proves to be my undoing.

At this point I suppose I should clarify how I can hate Tesco's and possess a Clubcard Plus at the same time. It's all down to economics and making my measly junior civil servant salary go a little further. I pay £100 into the account every month and I get interest on the balance (not a lot) and double points for every £ I spend on the card. I'm spending the money there anyway so why not make it work hard for my difficult to uphold principles. Plus Barclays give me precisely nothing in return for trusting my money to them each month - zip, zero, nada, which is also why I use a credit card for all my other purchases and pay it off each month ... salary goes in, big cheque comes out. Cripes I'm even saving them money on the bank statement ink.

Anyhoo nice, if slightly bewildered lady behind the till slides a slip of paper towards me and asks me to sign. I say I don't need to sign anything, you've got my £10 note in your other hand. She of course looks at it and appears surprised to see it. I look closer at the slip of paper and it says that I have £8.44 cashback due to me as well. I query this and she, still holding my tenner, says no that's what you're paying, £8.44, I say that's an awfully expensive loaf of bread. She gives me the tenner back but doesn't seem to comprehend what's going on so I try to explain what I think has happened which is that she hit the Cashback key and punched in £10 so now the till thinks it should debit £10 from my account and give £8.44 change. She doesn't comprehend and insists that she's done everything right. After much to-ing and fro-ing in this fashion she decides to cancel the whole transaction and put it all through again so I give her the food and she rings it up again. This time it comes to £3.12 so I say that I've now been charged double. She says that can't be because she cancelled it all and that will be £3.12 please. I'm getting a little exasperated by this point but I'm proud to say that I was able to maintain a tolerant and pleasant front, I'm even being very British and apologising to the queue that has built up behind me. She has the brainwave of calling over a supervisor. Finally.

The supervisor comes over and she can't make out what the problem is until I point out that I was trying to pay with cash, and thankfully, pun intended, the penny drops. She explains to the cashier what I have been trying to tell her all along and we finally get it all sorted out to my satisfaction ... with the exception being that I didn't get my measly extra point for not using a bag!

Time to get blogging

After vicariously living other peoples' lives through their blogs, I guess it's only right that I should share a little of myself. This isn't going to be a set the world on fire blog, in fact I expect this will be the site people turn to when the Nytol isn't doing the trick. Now to find out if this infernal thing is switched on ...