Forgotten

Man am I tired. I feel like I could sleep forever if only someone would turn the lights out. This is something that, as I may have hinted at in previous posts, has been going on for a while. Two or three nights a week I will wake up anywhere between two and four in the morning, then find it impossible to get back to sleep until quarter-to-six which gives me about forty-five minutes of fitful slumber before my alarm goes off.

I wanted to talk to my doctor about it, so I took yesterday morning off to get an appointment. The way that my doctor's surgery manages appointments is a bit of a time waster to me. You cannot book an appointment in advance by phone, you can only book an appointment for the day on which you call. The surgery opens at eight-o'-clock by which time I need to be on the road and half-way out of Hastings if I want any chance of getting to work on time. In other words, if I don't get an appointment on the morning that I ring, then I'll be late anyway. There is no weekend surgery although I think they might have one soon.

Anyway, the earliest appointment was at ten-to-eleven. Not ideal since I had hoped to be back at work by then. Fine, whatever. I'll miss my chance to get something to eat during morning break (which starts at eleven-o'-clock) and just have a cooked school dinner at lunch time. I arrived ten minutes early and sat down in the waiting room.

There are signs requesting patients to turn their mobile phones off. I think I was the only person who did. Since my mobile was off, I don't wear a watch, and there is no clock in the waiting room, I could not see how much time had passed. I had almost dozed off when I thought I saw my doctor leave via the rear door.

I noticed that there was a clock at the back of the reception area that read ten-to-one. That meant I had been waiting for two hours and lunch break had just started at work. I told the receptionist that I'd been waiting for my appointment all morning and she told me "the doctor has been ill recently" which didn't really explain much. She didn't say "we forgot you were here" in so many words but kept repeating the same suggestion. "The doctor has been ill..." "I think he may have this flu that has been going around..." "The doctor has not been well..."

I was tired, hungry, and angry. They made me an advance appointment for Wednesday proving that it's not impossible to make an appointment for a day other than the day you book it.

My weekend walk in the woods was very pleasant. I took some photographs as I roamed around before falling asleep (again) in the shade. The camera, which I borrowed from my office, is absolute rubbish. The photographs aren't terrible but the bluebells (which were purple) came out too blue, and often the lighting looks too cold. The camera also had a battery life of thirty seconds and refused to turn on after a while. Later I saw some walkers in a sheepfold which ruined my illusion of solitude. There was also a lamb which repeatedly threw itself full-pelt into a chain-link fence much to my amusement. Sheep are bloody daft.

You can see the (good) photos I took by clicking on the Picasa link below.

Weekend Walk