You will all be very pleased to hear that I have now been to the hospital and I have learned that I am not going to die.
I am very pleased about that as well. Indeed, I am having a very cheerful evening, having celebrated with half a bottle of Merlot between us and not going to work.
I am not sure how much to tell you about the day’s events. I suspect you would prefer not to know the details. Certainly I would prefer not to know the details, even though they happened to me.
It was all very unmentionable. The powders supplied by the hospital worked brilliantly, which was awful. By lunchtime today I was emptier than Jeremy Hunt’s NHS piggy bank.
We will not go into details. Suffice to say that the Lake District’s only day of hot weather in practically the last fifty years was not a good day for every mouthful of water to rush through the system without passing Go or collecting two hundred pounds.
I occupied myself in between times staggering around being white-faced and sorry for myself. I managed to wash Mark’s breakfast pots but it took me three goes to hang the washing out.
Enough of such detail. In the end I loaded myself anxiously into my taxi and chugged off to the hospital through the queues of departing holiday makers. This turned out all right although I had been afraid that it might not.
The staff at the hospital were very kind. I would not be as kind as they are on their wages, I can tell you. I can barely manage Good Evening if I don’t think there is a reasonable chance of a tip. Anyway, they were lovely and friendly and laughed at my jokes, which probably they had heard a thousand times already, and stuck a needle into my arm and we will not discuss the rest.
I learned some new things, though, like the horrible powders occasionally being misused by people who want to get thin, frankly I would rather need a Size 22 and have my knees beginning to buckle before I contemplated it. In return I sang them the Sigmoidoscopy song* that I learned from a mad radiologist forty years ago, which made them laugh a lot. I had a look at my own inner tubing which is weirder than you might expect, and in the end finished up lying weakly on a trolley whilst a nurse brought me a cup of tea and some toast.
I don’t think I have ever been more pleased to be home and not drinking vile powdery stuff. Indeed I was feeling so very pleased with my world that we thought we would go out, and took ourselves off to watch the sunset from the side of the lake. The dogs came to. They had been a bit subdued and concerned, and it was lovely for them to be bouncing about in the last rays of sunshine.
I did not do very much bouncing but felt happy with my world all the same. It is nice not to be dying.
As a final note, and as a complete change of subject, I have been asked to make a speech at the Awards presentation at Cambridge in a few weeks. Probably I had better not tell them about today’s experiences so I will have to think of something else to say, it will be easier in a few days when the memory has faded.
I am both pleased and terrified about this. Life is full of exciting adventures.
PS: Lucy’s offer has been accepted on her house.
*Sung to the tune of Cliff Richard’s Summer Holiday.
We’re all going on a sigmoidoscopy
Up your anus for a foot or two
KY Jelly and a bit of Vaseline
Makes it easy for me and you
Helps it all slip through.
We’re going where the light shines brightly
We’re going to get a really good view.
We’ve seen it on the X Ray
So let’s see if it’s true
Everybody needs a sigmoidoscopy
Pushing past the odd pile or two
So let’s go and have a sigmoidoscopy
Careful what you do
Or you’ll go right through.
