Thursday muddles!

Well, 2018 has started well. We’ve had Storm Eleanor, bus fares and train fares going up - some people pay upwards of £5000 for a season ticket just to get to and from work - what does that do to your cashflow? - and we have the NHS in crisis. Jeremy Hunt can squeak all he likes about this not being a crisis and about how many more people are being seen in A&E departments but if hospitals are having to cancel no-urgent operations that sounds a bit like a crisis to me.

Just to add to the fun, I got up bright and early this morning to catch a bus - that’s how I discovered fares had gone up as loads of people kept asking for £4.50 day saver tickets, only to be told they now cost £4.80 - and then a tram and then take a longish walk down a road in the rain. I was going to the dentist. My diary for today said: Dentist - 10.30. Except that I got there And found that my appointment is in fact for tomorrow.

When I got home later I checked the print-out the dentist gave me on my last visit. “Friday 5th January at 10.30.” The desk diary in the office says the same. Only my own personal little diary says anything different. When I received a reminder by text on Tuesday I glanced at it and did a kind of “Oh yes, 5th January, Thursday! Right?” because I had Thursday firmly in my head. How do these things happen? Well, at least it was a mistake in the right direction. Imagine turning up to discover that the appointment was in fact yesterday!!!

So I had a bit of a laugh with the receptionist, who was most apologetic that she could not squeeze me in this morning but my treatment demanded a long time slot. Just as well there was no space really, after all,, you don’t wan’t a crown fitted too hastily.i need my crown to be squeezed in properly! And off I went, doing the longish walk back up he road into the town centre.

There I took advantage of the opportunity to pop into the library to look for a copy of “Waiting for Godot” for my next reading group meeting. Amazingly it was exactly where the catalogue said it should be, which is not always the case. Clearly Samuel Becket is not a writer whose works get much attention, and subsequent misplacing on the shelves, in Oldham.

 All was not lost and, after all, tomorrow is another day!