Someone turn me around / Can I start this again?
2:33 pm Monday, 30 July, 2007
Right, let me prefix this by saying that I didn’t get much sleep last night. I don’t know why. I went to be around 11.30 and I pretty much didn’t fall asleep until sometime well after 4am. This was not good, especially as I was up early this morning.
So I’m not feeling too hot right now. So a good start to what promises to be a long (is it the weekend yet?) week. Hurrah.
In other news, I’m searching for a book. I’ve read a few good books lately but nothing that has reached out and grabbed me and now I’m loosing interest in reading. I went back and read Kingdom Come again last night and it remains glorious but I need a novel. I had a couple of interesting sounding books recently but due my complete lack of paying attention and some well placed stickers in the store, I appear to have bought two children’s books and so I’m totally put off them. Oops.
So. I decided that I’d put aside the pile of semi serious modern literature and dive back into modern sci-fi in the hope something would really grasp me. On the tube on the way to work this morning I started M. John Harrison’s Light. It’s talked up quite a bit and so it seemed like a good place to begin. However it has left me totally cold. I’m onto page 48 and I have this dread that I’m going to struggle to finish it. So not really too pleased about that. It’s not so bad as that I’m not going to finish it
I’m also reading, and this is the only time it’s okay to read two books at once, a short story collection called The Last Book You Read by Ewan Morrison. The first two stories were excellent. I’m generally not a short story fan, I prefer to sink my teeth into something a little more but recently I’ve read and enjoyed a few collections (of particular note Elliot Perlman’s The Reasons I Won’t Be Coming) and I’ll come back to a story in this every now and again. I have a little tidying up of books to do at some stage this week so hopefully I’ll be able to pick out something for my next book which will do better than this.
After realising that the song I kept hearing around the place and liking is the Editors Smokers Outside the Hospital Doors, I’ve gone back and given their first album The Back Room another listen and I think it’s going to grow on me a bit. It’s also good to not listen to Stars again for a little while. Onto my new obsession :)
Now having just tried to make an appointment to see my GP, I find that because I’ve been so considerate as to not need to see him for about two years, I find that I am no longer registered with him and need to go in and register as a new patient again. Then once that is all done I’ll be able to make an appointment. For all the bad things (and I know there are a lot of them) about American health care, I was able to just walk in the door, pay some money and see a doctor. It’s the same in Ireland. None of this registering in the right area and then making an appointment or any of that crap. Just go in, say your name and take a seat. Now in fairness the guy did say he could sort it out if it was urgent but I mean for fuck sake. I was sure that all my records from America were sent to this guy, so I wonder now where they have ended up.
Now in fairness, when I had my tumour fun at the start of the year I did have to pay some money myself and the insurance bill was not small but it was still a case of seeing a doctor on day 1, a specialist 2 hours later and then I went home with scans and the surgery already scheduled. So while I know there is much America could learn from the British health care system, it would seem to me that there is something the British could learn too.
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