Emergency Ward TLF

Yes I know.
I am plus tard.
The L in TLF currently stands for Late.
I have shown a desultory attitude to my rambling and am both tardy and slack.

In my defence, m’lud I can confirm that the accused’s blog was drafted on Friday night. Admittedly the various paragraphs were scribbled in a haphazard fashion in assorted note books, on the backs of various envelopes and the margins of the front cover of the Law Society Gazette, but they were merely awaiting typing up, which was pencilled in (BOOMBOOM!) for Satday morning. My body had other ideas however and performed its own intervention:

“Typing up a blog after an early morning swim? So DULL, so 2014, so Milliband my little TLF. What you need is an early morning visit from a paramedic, a trip in an ambulance (including that humiliating bit where they wrap you in a blanket, strap you in a carry-chair and carry you down your stairs and out of the house) and a visit to Watford General Hospital A&E, where you can be hooked up to a drip, and take lots of tests that give no conclusive reasons as to why you are so dizzy you cannot sit or stand up, think that you will vom if you move your head and are barely conscious. That’s how to liven up your weekend.”

Yeah thanks a lot body. Great idea.

As a major fan of Casualty and Holby City (collectively known as ‘sh*t telly’ by Mr TLF) I thought I was fairly clued up about all this medical malarky. But where was the dramatic build-up and plot devicing which would leave the viewer unclear if the 999- calling Mr TLF was hero or villain? Why were the staff at the hospital not distracted by their own personal traumas or internal politics? And most importantly WHERE WAS CHARLIE FAIRHEAD???

Despite all these distractions it did occur to me that maybe those programmes aren’t as real as I thought (ahem). No patient in the care of Holby’s finest has ever noted that ambulances are weird because they have windows but you can’t see out. It’s true – they have blinds. At least I think they do. It was a bit of a blur. And I have never seen a patient confirm that, “Yes”, they are wearing their Snoopy pants under the duvet in response to the question, “Are you decent down there?”,prior to a paramedic attaching the sticky whosiwotsits to the ankle as required to do an ECG. To be honest concerns about decency go out of the window when you feel like your head is exploding but maybe that’s just the kind of TLF I am. As well as being the kind of TLF that apparently needs to rest and take on lots of fluids (sadly of the non-Stella variety).

My only previous visit to Watford was of a footballing and heart-breaking nature as I watched Lesta City lose in a play-off semi final. This visit was in some ways more traumatic.

But at least no one missed a penalty.

Down but not out Fox