Hospital

All finished at the hospital, but it's not much of a pleasant experience going. Here are a few samples of the trip.

1. From a sign in one of the rooms where blood is extracted for tests:

Please do not use needles and vacutainer tubes to ajar this windows

2. As a woman sobbed in the corridor a concerned member of the public came to ask what could be done to help her. This person speculated that:

She has a bit of the dementia

3. As a man in front of me in the queue for the tests seemed to be having problems he explained:

Last time they tried in my hand

Despite this, a phone ringing constantly, rooms that are tiny and poorly decorated and a constant stream of patients the phlebotomist who took my blood was friendly, smiling, caring and put up with my squeamishness and silly faces. Given she has to work there all the time I haven't got much to complain about, and I was as thankful as I could be to her.

Seeing red

I'm not a fan of blood tests at the best of times. There's something very peculiar about the unpleasantly decorated waiting rooms, the tickets to enforce waiting in turn and the fact, as is always the case, there are far more people using the facility than it was designed for.

Someone just left the reception area because they couldn't speak English. Another patient offered to interpret, but the woman wasn't interested.

I'm pathetically squeamish. I loathe the thought of my own blood, but they presumably they won't take much today. I'm on number 92 at the moment - only 47 left.