I went to the doctors. I have a problem with my knee. He referred me to a physio, though I had to bloody well fight for it. 'You can afford to pay,' he told me. How do you bloody know? I said. I've got an ex wife to pay maintenance while she shags 'im off the telly, plus three kids to put through university. Plus I've paid taxes since I left college just so's the NHS can be there when I need them. Then he offered to take my blood pressure. No thanks you bastard, I told him, you haven't taken my blood pressure on any of my previous visits over the last fifteen years and you're not doing it now just so you can tick a box and get a twenty quid bonus from the state. Scandalous! Same if they advise you about smoking. Tick a box, another bonus. GPs today earn 100k +, basically for four half days. PLUS these tick-box bonuses. And if you're ill at week-ends forget it. You have to drive mid-haemorrhage down to some festering slum in the town centre that looks like a Third World disaster area, full of children wrapped in blankets as you wait to see a "relief doctor" which means one who can't hold down a proper GPs job and who can't speak English.
'You seem angry,' my quack said. 'Angry,' I wanted to say, 'I'll show you angry.' Then he asked me how many units of alcohol I get through per week. 'You get another twenty quid if I answer that?' I asked him. 'No,' he said, 'that's not on the government programme yet'. I told him to mind his own business and reminded him that I'd come about my knee. Doctors. Jumped up plumbers. Just as hard to find a good one, too.
Anyway after five months of waiting I get a letter asking me to call a certain number to make a physio appointment. If I don't call within two weeks, it says, they will take that to mean I no longer need the appointment. So I try to call. Engaged. I try again later. Engaged. Over the next two weeks I make twenty four fucking calls to this number and fail to get through. So now I'm off the fucking records. What an ingenious way to cut down the waiting lists. And I'll have to return to my quack to get back on the list. And he'll ask to take my blood pressure and ask how many units do you have per day? Ker-ching. Twenty.
I'm going to tell him: you are forcing me to drink. Forcing me. Incidentally I'm just savouring an Albert Bichot Gevrey-Chambertin 'Les Corvees' 2004 Burgundy that a friend recommended to me. Cherry, spicy, okay but a bit light for a Burgandy. I paid £24 for this and I want a little bit more of a rich fruit savour for that price. Not complaining. Much.
Oh and I hear American wine merchants are whimpering about the cost of the new Bordeaux and will skip the en primeur barrel tastings next month due to the high Euro. Good. The price then has to drop for the rest of us. Titter.
This awful Jersey thing with the paedophiles. I'm not surprised. Nasty little racist red-neck pseudo tax haven. When I was over there I saw lots of demons hanging around. Not on the paedophiles, but on the poor children. Very unpleasant place.