My, lots of things are happening this week! Well, for a hermit, lots of things are happening. For instance, I sat in on Wednesday, doing sums and waiting with bated breath for this Potential Flatmate to view this other flat and then text to say, Yea or Nay to mine.
Which he didn’t. However, when I checked my email, embarrassingly enough, there was one sitting from Tuesday morning saying, Nay. Hmm. Methinks, the ‘other flat’ he had to check out was a bit of a Myth then. Was I overly keen, overly formal, was there some sort of manic gleam in my eyes? Should I have mentioned my extensive collection of homebrewing? Was it the massive pile of books on the history of paganism? I tried to look normal!
Oh well, it’s early days yet and remember – one little setback isn’t a Symptom For The Rest Of Your Life and all that. I hope.
But there was not time to dwell on it, for all hell was breaking loose. It being Hellday and all. Le sigh. You know, I have clinics on Mondays (four of them), Tuesdays (two) and Wednesdays (one) as well as the one on Thursdays, and yet for some reason, Thursday is Clinic Day and All Hell Will Break Loose. Today it did so with a particular vengeance – the sort that begins on Wednesday afternoon as people start running around screaming in the build-up to the event itself. These people assure me that, for them too, Hellday is a nightmare, and they, too, have clinics every day to deal with, so what gives?
Well, today, when I went in with the weekly Pile of Stuff that I hope and pray Dr Anonymous will be in the mood to sign or look at (it’s like working for a supreme dictator with a really short attention span, sometimes), the place was already all a-flutter. Apparently, some ‘really handsome guy’ is in, one of the younger nurses told me. A patient? I asked, handing over the Pile of Stuff.
Lawks, no; a new junior!
And what’s his name? asked the slightly older nurse I was handing the Pile of Stuff to. Ooh, couldn’t make it out, but he’s terribly exotic-looking.
Oh crap. Exotic-looking and you can’t make out a word? What are the bets that he’s my sodding responsibility? And everyone else gets to drool over him all day, while he manufactures a sodding incomprehensible dictation tape that I get to deal with. Le sigh. And not of picturesque romantic yearnings.
Matters were confirmed a short while later; he had no dictaphone, so I was commanded to nick some keys and rob the drawer in someone else’s office for one, and hand it to the nurses with strict instructions not to let him go off with it or it’s my arse that’s for the high jump. And then I had to find out how it worked, and show him how it worked, and pack up all the non-working Dictaphones that were littering the clinic base so we could see if it was the batteries or what. In the midst of all this was a little cloud of nurses fluttering around him (and suddenly waving boxes of chocolates under my nose for being the Hero of the Hour, I kid you not); and in the midst of all that there were phones ringing and folk shouting, Why was I not at my desk, everyone was looking for me. Sheesh.
The day continued in much the same vein until it was time to pack up and do Sums, and then time to pack up the Sums and slope off into town for Lirazelf’s Interactive Spoken Word thing. I’m sure it has a better title than that, but this is why I’m not a True Arty Type, what!
For said Arty Thing, I was late, and woefully ill-prepared. Ha, I somehow had the impression we’d be sitting around Being An Audience, but no, we were ushered into the basement in little groups (and by the most remarkable fortune, Connor O’Bain turned up as late as I was, so we went around together and I had somebody I Knew, yay!)
Lirazelf greeted us at the foot of the stairs, dressed as some sort of faerie and we had to have turns at throwing a giant dice, prompting various poetry readings. I got a 6, hurrah, so I got a lucky dice instead. Here’s hoping! And we were ushered from place to place, where we heard monologues and dialogues and snippets read from books and watched videos people had made. There was an impressive amount of variation for the medium (she says, having been to precisely One of these sorts of things, if there even are ‘sorts’ of these things, and that would be… this one). I particularly enjoyed the lassie reminiscing about being late for the revolution because of the pre-revolution party the night before. Of course, everyone else was late for the same reasons. In fact, everyone stayed home with a hangover, and the revolution failed to occur at all.
The experience carried on outside, somewhat to my consternation – I lost Connor O’Bain to some folks who hailed him, and went out for a fag, where a couple held what looked for all the world like an entirely staged conversation about conversations overheard on trains. As they stopped and went in, they passed a guy coming out, who got out a mobile and yelled into it, Hello! I called you! I can’t remember why! Call me tomorrow!
… this is part of it, right?
To add to the sense of weirdness, Connor O’Bain came out as he went in, and told me he had no earthly clue who those folks were at all, despite being called by name and everything. So that was a nice, odd note for both of us to end on, I suppose!
I took a train home, oh sod the expense. It was sooooo good not to be schlepping through the dark and cold for four miles. And going to bed, that was awesome too. God, I’m such an ungrateful cow – three nights this week, I’ve had wild and interesting times (at least, for me) and all I want to do is get my head down!
beshemoth 