A day sitting in a chair...

Playlist
Various – Jukebox Shuffleplay
Creek – Demo Beats for 2008 Album
CBQ – A Day Sitting In A Chair

In 1998, I wrote and recorded an 18 minute instrumental piece of music entitled “A Day Sitting In A Chair” – I can’t remember exactly why I called it that, no doubt it’s a line from Brian Eno’s 1995 diary, “A Year With Swollen Appendices”, but perhaps I named it for today...

Up at 6:30 and left the house just after seven...

Drove round the City Bypass to the poorly positioned Edinburgh Royal Infirmary – for today was to be the day of my right shoulder operation...

It may have been an omen that we arrived, as instructed, at the Day Surgery Department, only to be told I wasn’t on the list....

A quick check of the computer and I was advised I’d been transferred to Ward 208...

We walked back outside to the main entrance, through the labyrinthine halls of the hospital, to said ward...

“We’ve got a problem with the beds” I was told “We don’t have any free at the moment so everyone’s having to wait in the day room”....

I took a look into this small room to find it packed with all the other poor souls waiting on procedures and no space for me...

It was 7:35 am when I was given a seat out in the corridor...

At 2:30 pm after having read most of Mr Eno’s diary (again) and several of the swollen appendices, I asked what was happening, because the battery in my trusty Jukebox was dying a death...

At this point the staff discovered a bed had been lying empty for some considerable time...

And so I was led to Ward 209 and told to get into the gown provided, in preparation for the op and was fitted with my ID wristband...



Around 3:35 pm, the anaesthetist came by and took notes and told me what would be happening during the procedure...

And then I waited, with some trepidation, for the process to begin...

I psyched myself up - I projected myself forward to the point where I woke up in Recovery - but, alas, it wasn't to be...

At 5:15pm the surgeon’s assistant came by and told me, rather matter-of-factly, that the operation was cancelled as they’d run out of time...

Very disappointed, and not a little hungry, having eaten nothing since 7:30 last night, I welcomed the evening menu - the food provided however, left much to be desired - over-microwaved soup of an indistinct nature, cod in a cheese sauce which had a certain je-ne-sais-quoi about it and a so-called fruit trifle, the fruit element of which was still frozen...

Not tasty...

Anne phoned to see how I was getting on – she set off immediately to pick me up, arriving around 45 minutes later – and a further 45 minutes later we were back home...

Apparently the surgeon’s secretary will “write to me with a revised date”...

Compare and contrast with last November’s op at the private Murrayfield Hospital (even though the op was done on the NHS using Murrayfield under a special initiative to alleviate waiting lists)...

Arrived 7:30, to theatre 9:00, recovery at 11:00, discharged at 5:00...

How much money does the NHS actually need to make it work efficiently? Where do our taxes go exactly? Down the drain it appears...

On the upside, webmeister Craig has produced a second and indeed a third new rhythm bed for the 2008 Creek album – now that's what I call tasty...

And so I'm back home and, in the evening, we watched the first of the new "Ugly Betty" series - it'll take me a couple to get back into it - then "CSI Miami" - the usual nonsense - and "Newsnight" within which the latest spin and subterfuge of the Labour Government was not quite exposed as much as it ought to be...

Highlight of the Day : Some new Creek beats...