Well I didn’t get to the gig on January 22nd , nor indeed the one the following fortnight. Whilst making my way down a slope covered in ice, I managed to slip up and crack a rib or two. I had the wind knocked out of my sails for a while and then started to haul myself up just as a young middle-eastern guy wearing a union jack tee shirt offered to help. I thanked him and continued on my way to the newspaper shop, which had been the reason for my journey. I got my paper and walked home, avoiding the slop by detouring. As the day wore on, the pain increased so much so that eventually I called an ambulance. By a curious coincidence it turned out that the father of one of the ambulance crew had exactly the same birthday as me, down to the actual year. When I chatted her up I was told I was old enough to be her father…A&E on a Sunday evening is never a great place to be.
Eventually I was discharged about 2.30 in the morning, with some pain killers. They weren’t very effective and I had to call another ambulance on the following Wednesday. The examination was more intensive this time and I was discharged with much better painkillers and a letter to my GP. The pills ran out a week later so I trudged off to the doctor and was given more pain killers and also antibiotics for a lung infection. That meant another missed gig at the Alley Cat but Jim Mercer told me that Gordon Smith went along to help out so I didn’t feel at all guilty. Suffice to say that I did finally get to the latest gig on the Tuesday just gone. Yes, I did drink and no I wasn’t drunk when I fell over on the ice. This is the third time I’d cracked a rib and only once had I been drinking, just to set your minds at rest.
Now back to the less mundane. Is it just me or is there a certain irony in that DNA evidence was used to verify that the burial site of Richard the Third had indeed been discovered and that DNA evidence also led to the discovery of horsemeat being used to augment beef products. Perhaps if a cow had been at hand at that battle, he could have saved his kingdom and we wouldn’t have needed DNA to tell the story. On the other hand, “A Cow, a Cow, my kingdom for a cow” wouldn’t have suited Shakespeare, though it seems he too had his sense of humour. The news coverage of the confirmatory evidence about Richard also mentioned that a plaque had been placed at a nearby river bank where it was alleged his body had been thrown in by an angry mob. In the discussion about where the bones should be laid to rest, seems to have occurred to no one that they could have been thrown into the river where the plaque was. Oh well, I have my ideas of how to do things and nobody takes any notice…
