The other week I got a letter saying “Please come to have some tests” from the Neurology department of one of the neighbouring counties hospital. This afternoon I went along.

Now. Liverpool hospitals tend to be 1960’s affairs with all sorts of long straight corridors with the exception of Broad Green, Whiston and Walton which are old and ancient monuments to barber surgery. Complete with rickety floors and 200 year old spiders. To be fair, Broadgreen is better than it was when I first went there in 1992. Then it was a collection of crumbling victorian buildings with a couple of polythene lined wooden sheds in the grounds. You know when foriegners say “British health service is the best in the world”. They must be going to hospitals other than the ones i’ve been to.

Pinderfields in Wakefield, my destination for the afternoon, is similar to Broadgreen and Walton Hospitals. Brick built, Victorian affairs with wood panelling and matching dirt and filth. You can imagine ghosts of injured miners wandering about covered in soot clutching broken arms and whatnot. You can even imagine the doctors smoking away on their pipes and being all British and sexist to big busted Babs Windsor Nurses. You can also imagine the hard work that is required to clean and modernise the bloody place but this would probably make you lethargic and that is probably why nobody has bothered to even consider a bit of moping since Sister Nightingale.

But I digress. I arrived at the clinic early. I was the only one there and they saw me before time (not like when there was dinosaurs and primaeval sludge oozing about the place…like before my appointment time). After they had ressucitated me from my shock at being early they strapped me to a wooden chair and made me wear leeches while a doctor in a blood soaked coat forced me to have a lobotomy I was directed to a room where electrodes were attached to my finger and a series of electric impulses were sent through my hand. Some of these caused me to jerk my hand about and I accidentally twatted the nurse on the nose causing her to die so I had to hide the body felt a bit iffy. It was to get worse though because I had to have the same thing done to my arms. Horrid horrid horrid. Though not as horrid as that fucking GASTROSCOPE they made me have a few years ago (literally_rhi would probably agree with that).

Making a run for it I made my way back into Wakefield through Eastmoor which is a bit like something out of one of them zombie films. You know? where the shemps are all just loitering about slobbering until fresh brains walk by and they all start walking toward them…yeah well its like that… I passed a place the name of which I kind of recognised and immediately thought of aladdin_sane. I looked about for a block of flats and a lime haired weirdo with black teeth but I didn’t see him. He must have been out cottaging or something.

Anyway, I made it back to the bus station and tried to get on the bus. When I realised the door to the bus was at the front and not on the roof of the bus I boarded the 195 only to be told by the driver that although he went to Hemsworth it would take him 30 minutes and I’d be better off waiting for the 496. Which is what I did. Getting into Hemsworth 10 minutes before the 195. I then boarded a bus to Baaaaaarnsley via Brierley and went home. I managed to read about half of the book I’m reading at the moment, The Trick by George Layton.