Rare bird

There's a type of bird that the Australians call the 'lampost'. I'm not entirely sure of its scientific name but it something like that. Its quite a big bird, with a long neck and thin tubular body, which is where it gets the name.

Another thing that is distinctive thing about them is that they are normally a very solitary bird, spending long periods of time standing motionless by themselves. They tend to stand in places that humans would never stand in, and are as a result, almost un-noticed by people.

So there I am, driving to work one day, when I saw a whole flock of them together....and as luck would have it, I had my camera on the passenger seat.

So here's a very rare pic of a flock of lamposts!



The reason that I had my camera to hand was that I wanted to try and give you some impression of the trucks that I was talking about earlier....

Here's a typical one going past and the second picture gives you an idea of how trapped you feel, even though in this pic, there's not a concrete wall on either side as there is in Goodna near to where we live...





Notice that its pulling a trailer. Often you get a 40ft trailer pulling another one. Out 'woop woop' you get what they call 'land trains' which have 3 trailers!!! I've not met one of those yet!

Beaches and Rips.

Bernadette's clutch has been on its way out for a while, and this Friday it became almost impossible to back it out of the drive (which is pretty steep). So I spent Saturday from about 12, and this morning from about 5 am, fitting a new one. The job was a little more difficult than most of the clutches I've done before because the space is so limited in the engine bay that you can't get the gearbox out of the car without first dropping out the front sub chassis. I removed the old clutch and fitted the new one with the gearbox held out of the way just far enough, using galvy wire. Wayne tells me that galvy wire is standard fixitup stuff for New Zealanders, and that they use it for all sorts of repair jobs... He wanted to know WHAT I was using it for! Ha ha.
So I was going well, and putting stuff back together when I dropped a small gear shaft from the speedo cable into the open hole in the gearbox, from whence it came. Now I had to partially remove the sub frame after all, so that I could rotate the gearbox and get the thing out...



Prior to starting the job, and because I really don't like crawling around under cars with bits of asbestos shit falling over me, I decided to buy myself one of those trolleys that you lie on, and push yourself under the car with your legs. Now I could have bits of asbestos shit fall on me without having to crawl!

However, there are 6 wheels on the trolley, and two of them are in the middle...which makes sense mechanically, but if you're not careful, you can trap your arm between the wheel and the concrete. I did it 3 times, each subsequent one being less severe than the one before. I must have learned, because after these, which all happened in the first hour, I didn't do it again. I doubt that I ever will now.... here's what I'm left with:



The first one was like it was for Gill and the moment when she knew she'd broken her wrist... I thought 'Ah, that's going to be a bruise then!'... and...it was!

When I finished the job this morning, we went down to a place called Coolangatta which is about half an hour down the coast from Surfers Paradise. I'd heard from one of the lads at Channel 7 that it was a safer place to swim than most of the other beaches down the Gold Coast because there's a headland that stops the rip tide undercurrent that characterises the whole of that long stretch of beach. The problem with long straight beaches here is that they can form gutters a short way out from the shallow water that the kids are playing in, and the water in these gutters flows strongly, and often out to sea. Its a serious and significant problem for strong swimmers let alone kids and relatively weak swimmers like myself.



In fact, the cross currents were quite significant, and there were deep holes that left you dangling, so the kids spent most of their time in the sand, and gripping with all their strength to my boogie board in the shallow surf whilst I tried to tow them. We all had a lot of fun...



....and THEN we went to the DRIVE IN MOVIES!!! There's a place called Yatala, back up the coast about an hour, that has the last drive in movie house in Queensland. We planned to go there, and I'd been told to get there early and take folding chairs. We got there almost an hour early and got a good spot, but another 15 mins would have been too late, and we'd have been relegated to the edges. People typically go there in a Ute or a 4WD and turn the back to face the screen so that they can get comfortable in the back of the car on a mattress or similar. You hang the speaker in your car or you can tune in your radio to a frequency they broadcast on, and take advantage of the superior sound in modern cars. We just had the standard metal speaker between us. Watching a movie under the stars is a giggle. We all got snuggled up and blathered with insect repellant after we'd had chips and sweets, tea and coffee from the well stocked cafe. If you click on the picture, you can see that a white car between the ute and the Holden in the row after that has got kids on a mattress on the roof-rack!



Here's the web site... http://www.drive-intheatre.com.au/ (or you can click it in the side bar)

Tomorrow we might go to a bookshop....but we've not decided.

Flagging with the nationalism....

Did you ever hear that someone famous said the Australian Flag is 'the Union Jack at night'? Ha ha. They hate that!

I only mention this because this weekend is 'Australia Day'. Saturday is actually the day, but we've all got the Monday off. Tonight, Kevin Rudd, the Prime Minister awarded a country and western singer the Australian of the year award, and what with Heath Ledger pegging it, (or whatever he's called) I'm a bit sick of all the nationalism. The day that the unfortunate actor died, we got a skin full here. The same happens whenever anyone 'Aussie' does anything of note, from dying to having a (*)hit. Actually, not ANYTHING of note, they have to be an actor, or someone that has something to do with 'fame' in some way. You know, just plain ol' blue and yellow shirt is no good, unless you're also a singer, or an actor.

It was, in fairness, the same in the UK. What IS it that makes people so enthralled with the idea of being on the box, or those that are on the box?

Anyway.... Aussies are suckers for the whole nation whooping thing. Bit like the Yanks really. Thank GARD for the Brits, and their grounded view of the world. (Don't argue!... We're better than them!)

Advance Australia Fair....

Auntie Sandra just came back from being sworn in to being an Australian citizen. She had to swear to GARD. She came back with certificates, an Akubra hat, a Coastal Rosemary plant, a little badge....and a BIBLE! Oh and a flag too. Apparently when Daile got Australian citizenship, they just lent you the bible, but now they give you the bible. So much for progress eh! Anyway, we're all very proud of her. Here's a pic ....

That's MR Martin to you....

One thing that the Australians do well, is 'bloke'. Some of the women do it almost as well as the men. There's something disarming about the way that distinctions between people that you'd commonly expect to find in the UK, are not really that prevalent here. For example, the custom here is that if you work with your hands, you wear blue shorts and a yellow and blue shirt. If you work in an office, you wear smart stuff, like in the UK, but us handy types are an amorphous spectacle. Many of the handy ones also drive utes too, which helps to emblazon your identity.
You'd half expect this to make a distinction MORE prevalent. But somehow it doesn't seem to. A blue and yellow person carries at least as much kudos as a tie wearer amongst the general throng. Women are referred to as 'mate' just as readily as the term is used for men, and they ask cute little questions like 'how you travelling?' followed with 'not too bumpy today?', referring to what kind of day you're having. People are not really all that stressed, and by and large they are law abiding and moderate in all they do. Machismo is not so much noticed here, since masculine is quiet and accepted as normal. I mean to say that in the UK, there has always to my mind, been an implicit apology in being a man. The state of masculinity in the UK has been in a long challenge with political correctness and it has been found wanting. I have found that this manifests itself in me at least as a pulling away from expressing my 'inner bloke', if you know what I mean. Here though, men have sheds, drive 4WD's, drink beer and fish. All is perfect in best of all possible worlds to misquote Voltaire.

Even the louts are self governing. If you pull up at a set of lights next to a boy racer, you typically find that he'll blat away from the lights as if NOTHING could stop him, and then suddenly level off at 80kph, the speed limit for that road. (50mph) The top speed for most motorways here is 100kph (60mph) although the very straight one to the Gold Coast is 110kph.

The main drawback for these speeds is that the trucks are very capable of doing them, even fully loaded. The roads are narrow in places and sometimes contained by massive concrete walls, so it can be disconcerting. In fact this is the main arena for displays of Machismo, and that is why Daile is not keen for me to get a motorbike.

So imagine that. Here I am, in a perfect land where at last I'm comfortable in my 'male-ness'. and what happens? .... I get stopped from having a bike!

I wonder if I can do a trade on a kitten?

Ginger Minger....Ming the cat?

I've had, to quote Wayne, 'A Win' with my computer this weekend, and I'm writing this with it now, as opposed to Wayne's computer, which is what I wrote the last post with. I did spend quite a few hours on it in fact, but finally managed to go directly to the problem in a way that I've not been able to do before with other computers. What I discovered was that the drive had been partitioned in such a way that the operating system resided on a small partition all by itself, allowing me to delete that part of the hard drive without any implications for the data that was on the other partition (everything else). I then repartitioned the drive, and installed the operating system into the new partition. Everything is working exactly as it was before and I'm feeling very pleased. Needless to say, I promptly backed everything up once I was back to full operation, and now I've got everything safe again.

We've had a really nice weekend. The walk yesterday was lovely and because we did it reasonably early in the day, we still had time to shop for Daile's stuff AND hang out a bit.





Last night we went out to a BYOB Vietnamese restaurant up town, and 10 of us had a fantastic meal, followed by driving to another venue for coffee and (for me) some sweet. But don't worry, I didn't blow the diet! (OK I realise that you're NOT worried!).

We had most of the same party around today and its been a chilled day of chatting and watching TV. Daile had a fine day, and the kids decorated a cake for her which we all ate a bit of....and some of us ate two bits! (I'm going with NOT worried here).





So that's that...and Daile is *%^"">+ years old. I'm not sure if I'm imagining it, but I think she's stopped going grey, and the hairs that I thought were going grey, have gone! Can't think how that happened!

Yesterday, I went into the local shopping centre to buy some trousers for work so that I've got some alternatives to the single pair that I wore last week. Whilst I was in there, I went past the pet shop, and saw a little ginger kitten that Daile had noticed last week. It looks quite a bit like Molly the cat, who we're still missing a bit, and I stood there watching it playing with the other kitten in there wondering what to do. In the end, I walked away empty handed...I reckon that it can wait, and that if I WERE to be rash, I'd be a sort of 'pre-meditated' rash, and get one from a home.

Ah, think I'll have a tea now. Work tomorrow then.

Blue Dress

Well, at the end of week one i'm exhausted! The new job is a steep learning curve and i'm only slightly closer to understanding what it entails this weekend, than I was last weekend. Notwithstanding this, I've found it fascinating and challenging to walk into a new company and all its complex systems, people, culture, and problems.

The route in has been different every day, and still isn't set. I've bypassed the motorways in favour of the option to get off after finding that the second one (the Gateway) is a car park for the last 15km of the trip. Interestingly, you can't very easily avoid this by going in early, since when I went in early on Wednesday (5.30 am) the Ipswich Rd was stationary. People here are universally early risers and early to bed. They are all up by 6 at the latest. People phone here at 5.30 occasionally!!! And at the other end, the streets are deserted at 9 pm. So i'm probably going to go in 'late' ... 9 am.

Wayne offered to let me borrow his shiny new sat nav, but after he'd just been telling us how it had a spack attack earlier, I wasn't so sure that I'd be better off for it. Apparently it says 'recalculating...recalculating...' rather like a distressed Dalek when you drive past a road that it wants you to go down, and offers an alternative. On this occasion, it just lost it altogether and had a 'recalculating' fest ...like a stuck record. He switched it off in disgust.

My laptop has stopped working. It seems like a small fault, but it's in the operating boot menu, so it won't start and i've not had the time to look at it. (Or, frankly, the inclination). The thing has been absolutely bullet proof for its whole life so far, so no complaints really, but since its just about to become Daile's computer when I get a new works one, it seems a bit unfortunate. These sorts of problems seem to happen to Daile quite a bit.... so it feels a bit like an omen. ... But after that it just feels like a COMPLETE pain in the tits!!! (There I said it)

Josh had a long chat with Daile yesterday, and has fixed his ticket so that he's now in Oz for 6 weeks or very nearly. So now he stands a fighting chance of earning some money here...assuming that he's able to find some work quickly.

Today, in a minute, we're going out to do a trail walk with the girls, and then the little ones are coming with me to do some shopping for Daile's birhtday tomorrow. Matilda has some things in mind...(can't say what for obvious reasons). So i'll sign off now and update again tomorrow.

Satdee

Daile went to the coast because Carlene and Ian were busy all week and needed someone to be there for the kids, (and police their behaviour). Our kids spent the entire time in the pool or pulling the dog about. Carlene accidentally pushed Gus down the stairs, and he seems to be really hurt, so having two little kids pulling him about was probably not his idea of a good time.

I spoke to Josh and Molly earlier in the week, and discovered that Josh has been out and bought his ticket. It was a lot more than he thought, but given the specific itinerary, not surprisingly. He's going to have an extremely tight budget, so it will be quite an experience of hardship methinks. Excluding transit countries, he's planning to travel (with his friend Emma) to, NZ, OZ, Thailand, Singapore, Sri Lanka, and Hong Kong. Blimey, I wish I could do that! 2 months on a beach in Thailand sounds too amazing to contemplate. Thailand looks stunning. There's a standing recommendation from the UK and Oz governments NOT to travel to Sri Lanka at the moment, so I wonder if he will... I don't think he's due to go there till May, so perhaps the situation may calm before that. Not sure how long they'll be here yet. Long enough to earn some loot with luck. They'll be staying in the playroom/office I reckon. They MAY take one of the cars and go up to the reef, depending on work and stuff like that. If they do, I'll have to get a motorbike...shame!

We got a HUGE parcel from Nick and Sarah this week. It was for Christmas, but had been retained by customs. (Took a long time eh?) It had tea bags, marmalade, chutney, mustard, chocolate, and kids stuff. Fantastic. More like a relief parcel - ha ha. Thanks chaps!

I read a book this week - 'The Disappearance of Childhood' by Neil Postman. Daile very cleverly pointed out that this is the same book that we got for Sarah Martin for Christmas. I hadn't made the connection, but had got the book because I'm worried about the effect that TV has on the kids, and for that matter on the adults. Did you read it yet Sarah? I've been reading a better one since called 'After the death of childhood - growing up in the age of electronic media' by David Buckingham ... which presents a much more balanced perspective.

No pain in the kidneys for almost a week. Hopefully that's that then.

We've all gone on the G.I. Diet... again in my case. We did this last Friday, so I weighed in today, and I've lost 8 lbs. Wayne has lost 4 lbs and the other two haven't declared. Daile at least reckons that she's into it for the health not for weight loss. As I mentioned in a previous post, I'm into it for the health too...but already I can't believe how attractive I am!
The thing that I've noticed more recently actually, is that the skin is not so elastic as it used to be. I'm sort of adjusting to this fact, and instead I'm thinking about the fact that I'm nearly 50! To a person that INSIDE feels like a thirty year old, FIFTY just seems like there must be some mistake. But no, that's what the bar code says!

The trip to Moreton Hire and back (I start the new job tomorrow) is going to be a round 100km or so, via two motorways that both charge tolls.... The Ute is not the most economic vehicle that I've ever owned, so it's not going to be that cheap. In fact, the tolls per day will be around $8 and the fuel will be around $20 methinks. On this basis it would be worth shelling out for a motorbike purely on the savings from less fuel and half the tolls. I've filled the tank and I'm seeing how far it gets me. It cost $70 to fill, which is up on when I first got it. The fuel has gone up a fair bit in the last 3 months and it looks like its going to stay like that. It's now $7 a tank more. A strange thing about petrol prices here is that they fluctuate daily. I don't remember that ever being the case in the UK? The day to buy petrol is Tuesday. It was Tuesday when I filled up and the price was $1.26 per litre (57p), but by Friday it was 1.38...(63p). That's worth $10.80 (£5) for a tank full. By Tuesday it will have gone down to 1.26 or thereabouts... You could save $44 (£20) a month by filling on the cheap day.

Whilst I was just writing that stuff about relative prices, I was thinking that they didn't look right! However, the current rate offered at XE.com is only 2.19 dollars to 1 quid! Last April, when we bought the land, it was 2.36. That may not sound all that impressive, but the money that we originally spent on the land ( about £100k) would be worth circa £117k if we'd left it in an Australian bank, or £83k if we'd left it in a British bank, (relative to the other currency) just on currency change. If we'd stayed in the UK for another year, the land would have cost us more, the value of the house in London would potentially have fallen, and sterling would be worth less here.
We feel very lucky to have timed that as well as we have.

This week, Wayne bought a new 32" flat screen TV for their bedroom and a Sat Nav. As a result, justice has been meted out on him. Whilst he was cutting the grass yesterday the ants got him. Its good to know that GOD is watching over us all isn't it! (He tried to claim that it was for Bernadette....but GOD can see through him).

The next door neighbours came back this week, and were chaffing at the bit cos the girls were down the coast. As soon as the nippers came back there was kiddy bedlam. FANTASTIC! Did you know that the neighbours were Brits? I can't remember whether I told you that.... That's where they went for Christmas.

And finally, the Girls all went to Movie World, and Water World, yesterday....and had such a good time, that when I got home from a long and exhausting week last night to be greeted by Matilda, she said; 'Dad, are you working tomorrow?' I thought 'Ah, how sweet she's missing me and wants to hang out with her old Dad'.... then she says 'Cos Mum says that if you're working, we can go down to Water World again, but if you're not, we can't!....' NICE!

Oh...one more thing...talking of being 50 and feeling younger...here's a picture that Dad sent of Gill and I when we were...oh god knows, perhaps 13 and 14? Younger? Anyway, I've put a crop of me against the same pose now....HA HA.. What an old fart!

Weather

One of the things that I did whilst I was working at Complete Fabrication was spritz fruit, and spritz bottles of stuff. Not that I did ALOT of it you understand....but well, it was one of the very technical and difficult things that I did... It was a VERY demanding job as I'm sure I've mentioned! Anyway, the idea is that when something is covered with condensation it's more attractive and appetising and punters are more likely to want to nip down the 7-11 and get a bottle, or a whatever. Well today, I realised that this is something that happens by itself in Oz when you take a thing out of the fridge. I guess its because of the high humidity and heat? Here's a picture of my lunchtime apple after about 3 mins out of the fridge at work....amazed huh?



OK then, here's something else: This is a picture of some toadstools that I took THIS MORNING....


Fantastic looking things that have just suddenly appeared in the back garden. One day there's nowt, then this! So imagine what a WHOLE extra day can do. This picture was taken when I got home. So about 12 hours between the pics.



The weather has been pretty odd around Queensland lately. The place where I went to have my first kidney stone, Beaudesert is now under water! Areas of it are having their food flown in by chopper. We've had cyclonic weather on the coast for a couple of weeks, most of which has largely past by as far as Brisbane is concerned, but which we hear about. The long sandy beaches around Main Beach, Surfers Paradise, Broadbeach and south of there have been subject to serious erosion.
This is what it looked like until a few days ago (an old and low rez pic off the old web site - now in the side links....)



..now it's got a step in it that's about 6 or 7 feet deep.

Today there were two heavy downpours followed by the bright sun, pretty much back to the standard weather for the summer here. Everything is green. When we got here in September everything was brown and red because they'd had the longest drought for many years. But its rained a huge amount since then and more rain is coming. Needless to say, we're all still on 'category 6' water restrictions. (140 litres per day per person) about a 4 minute shower after taking what you need to drink. That's not too bad to do actually, especially if you're a dirty bastard like me. But it does make you wonder how the hell they managed to miss all this water! :-)

Rain doesn't drain into the reservoirs here!

So I'm driving home from work in the dark the other day, and its absolutely pissing down...and the windscreen wipers are on double speed, which I'm never sure is worth doing, but that's what they were on. In Brisbane, they have illuminated road signs over the road, that have messages on them that are more 'inspirational' than factual. So they don't generally say 'junction 5 closed' or that sort of thing, but more like, 'Speeding? .....[off....new line] 'Police cameras are watching'. So there I am, and I can see one of these signs, all blurry and out of focus because there's so much bloody rain that even at double speed you can't see much, and there's no chance of speeding!!... I lean forward in my seat, squinting at it....and then suddenly as I'm going under it, I can see what it says! It says;
'SAVE WATER'!!!

Ha ha.

Man gives birth to twins...

When I met that nurse the other day, she said that it is commonly held that passing a kidney stone is like having a baby! She meant that the pain is of that level of intensity of course.
I held onto that thought as I 'laboured' on the examination table, having no idea of what I was in store for otherwise.
Today, I had a very productive full day at work, but when I came out and began to drive down the mountain, I had a very sharp 'contraction' and had to pull over. When I went to have a CT scan on Thursday at Logan, they declared that the original baby was 3.6mm and that I had twins! The second baby was 3mm and presumably would be ready for 'birth' imminently!
Well, I'm proud to tell you that I've just given birth to my second stone, this time I opted for a home delivery, and just breathed through it, with the dubious help of some carry out drugs that I waited an hour in the pharmacy for yesterday. Given the size of my little tike, you'd have thought that the labour would have been over and done with in a second or two eh? Er no.
It took 29 minutes. The pain is like i imagine it would feel if someone spiked you with a flint spear and then turned it.... I considered whether there was a 'scale' for measuring this kind of pain like the scovil heat index or the sting pain index I referred to in an earlier blog.
Anyway, it shows what a saddo I am, that barely have the shakes subsided and the newborn gone to sleep in its final passage to the bladder and ultimately being adopted by the Ipswich sewerage corporation, and I'm on here reporting the hot news to you all. How blessed you all are to be cherished like this. I guess you could consider this the 'Gas' part of 'Gas and Air'.
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PS
I had a look for something on pain index and there's nowt. However I did find an interesting article about it and its in the side index called 'The Problem of Pain' - Worth a read, especially the pain ceiling bit, and salt versus Morphine.
In the definition offered 'psychical' refers (I think) to the influence of the human mind, and 'adjunct' refers to 'a drug used in a combination of remedies which may help in the total therapeutic effect' - although in this case the drug is a 'subjective' one. ( I am SO good to you ....looking up the definitions an' all! ) BTW some of you may not know that to find the definition of a word using Google, just type 'define' and then the word in the search box. Its BRILLIANT!!

Phoebe loves to cuddle...

Personally, i've never been much into it! Ha ha... She's recently taken to squeezing really hard! (At least she thinks so!)

Here's a pic from the mountain as the weather closed in....

'Planning the route'

Here's another pic from Dad. This little car was the inspiration for the little red one...

Happy No Beer...

Happy New Year!


Well as this year came to an end, to another end came a kidney stone.

I’m writing this from a hospital bed, where I am charged with flushing out a kidney stone to my front end. (The original front end as opposed to the front (ne back end)).

Yesterday I’d left work earlier than I’d intended because I felt quite rough, slightly nauseous with a dull ache in the offside kidney area. I decided to make myself popular by not going to Andy and Lee’s house to see in the New Year, and instead lie in bed. Everyone made their way over there at about 6 pm. I was woken up by something at about 10 pm, and then the mutt started barking at a passing windmill or something even less visible, so that was that, I was awake.

So I decided despite my aches to gird my loins and head off to the party, and after cleaning myself up, got there at 11.45 pm. It turned out that it wasn’t a ‘party’ of the kind that I’d expected, but a family get together. I had one glass of wine to knock the edge off my stark sobriety, but didn’t really feel like any more than that. I got a text from Mum and Dad at about 30 seconds to midnight which was really nice, I wasn’t expecting that. By about 1.30 am, we were all more or less lying down, trying to get to sleep. The dull ache became a sharp and full on pain, and I couldn’t get comfortable at all. I felt a bit like a dog trying to find a comfy position…constantly going round and round if you know what I mean.

At some point, going to hospital presented itself, and seemed like a sensible idea, to find out what it was (or wasn’t) at least, and, after insisting to Daile that I could drive myself, I set off to Logan Hospital, about half an hour away to the North.

The road from Jimboomba to Logan is called Beaudesert Rd, but its not all that smooth. If you’re in a standard car (with suspension) its not too bad, but if you’re in my ute you feel every bump. The car has a stiff rear suspension anyway to handle the loads, but to make matters worse, I’d recently over inflated the tyres to 42 psi instead of the more conventional 34, so as to improve fuel efficiency. I don’t normally mind a hard ride as much as I mind an empty wallet, but last night it was a bit too much.

I mention all this because I was driving slowly to mitigate the jarring ride on my by now very sensitive kidney, and was tucked into the side of the road to make it apparent to the cars that occasionally came up behind that I was happy for them to overtake me. But one of the cars didn’t seem to get the message. I gave a quick indicate left to underline my point…and the car behind put on its Police lights. The officer that came over to me was clutching a breathalysing tool, and was expecting me to fail it… but of course I didn’t. He said that he’d said to his partner that this one is DEFINITELY drunk! I was a bit offended to be honest with you! Ha ha. So I told him why I was driving slowly (60 kmh in a 100) and he’d obviously had a kidney stone himself at some point cos he urged me to turnaround and go to the hospital in Beaudesert. He said that the hospital at Logan would have a queue. So I did.

When I got there, it looked shut. I drove round it and was about to move on when I spotted the ambulance entrance and got out with my rucksack, which suddenly felt like a sack of spuds. The doors were locked but there was an intercom. I had to explain why I was there, how long I’d had it, and the mating habits of the lesser spotted wongaronga bird before she let me in. Whilst I’d been explaining all this, the pain had been increasing at an alarming rate, so that when I got in and handed the nurse my Medicare card, she handed me a sick bag, and I promptly filled it! I was on an examination table in minutes, and writhing around in agony. This pain was the most intense thing that I can remember having. They called the doctor on the phone to see what they could give me for it. He said some drug or other, and the nurse said to him (I know it was a bloke by the way) that it was going to need more than that! So he agreed that I could have Morphine, but only 5mg. She gave me that, but it didn’t help at all. She then put something else in my leg, but that didn’t help either. Then the doctor came down from wherever he was, looking sleepy and they decided to give me a drug that came as a suppository! This despite having just thoroughly established that I had a bag, and how long I’d had it! I said ‘….er, and where’s that going to go then?’, to which they both went ‘Aah right’ and then went to get it! I had to then spell it out! ‘I don’t have a rectum, or any suitable orifice for that…of course!!’ Then the penny dropped and I finally got a decent shot of Morphine, which STILL only just made a little difference! But after about 10 more minutes of them scratching their heads, the pain started to abate, as quickly as it had scaled up, and what a relief that was.

They admitted me to the hospital and I got a room, the door to which they left open. By this time it was 4 am. At 6 am they started to have a conversation that woke me up. I’d actually got ear plugs in already, so you can imagine that they were not being all that quiet. The nursing station was directly across the corridor from my room. At about 6.20, a man came into my room with really squeaky shoes on, to empty the bin! WHY is it that hospitals are so impossible to sleep in? In my (considerable) experience of them, they always do this, and they always serve food that you’d never eat anywhere else! When my breakfast arrived about an hour later, it was consistent with that Uber-standard. It seems to be an international one.

My cannula fell out of my right arm, and they were all tutting about that. I didn’t like to point out that since it was on the fold of my elbow, I’d probably pushed it out because I suck my thumb! They seemed unable to get another into the other arm, but finally after 3 attempts by two nurses they did….only to be told by the morning doctor that I could go.
Notwithstanding all of that, the staff were excellent, and I was very glad to be there. I’ll have to go to Logan after all tomorrow to have a ‘CAT’ scan? This will establish where the stone is, and whether its going to make its way out via the ‘old chap’ unaided or whether they’re going to have to ‘bombard’ it, which I believe they do with ultrasound, to break it up. The stone is a crystalline thing I that is jagged, and is made from protein.



They think that its happened because I’ve been eating too much meat, drinking too much beer, and saying ‘gday mate’ too much. In other words, the sham is up…and I’ve got to start behaving like an Englishman again!