27.05.2010 - 3:50 p.m.

There's never any point to making yourself clearly understood, if the only people who may be in earshot will only look at you like you've just produced a string of non-winning lottery tickets out of your mouth. J's current radiotherapy is being conducted via a great big zappy machine under the control of techy people barely able to cobble together a working appointments system, actually, that's not really fair, the people who serve the machine have no responsibilities outside of serving the machine (but don't praise the machine)

I assume that the technicians working it are clueless as to how the people arrive in the waiting room each day, they stumble chaotically from pillar to post while slowly increasing the 'delayed by x minutes' sign. You'd think that not one person with even the most limited ideas regarding queueing theory was involved in setting it up a list of who is done when. Although this is the NHS so we have to assume that the system was set up by a focus group of middle managers who've never seen the inside of a waiting room as they compromised on an appointments system pulled out of the arse of the junior member who paid for the biscuits. As i naturally hate metaphors i was mentally assaulted by one as we sat waiting for the techs to evolve into a being with some kind of social responsibility, in my waking dream i saw the techs as tiny confused sausages trying to wade through the worst conglomeration of potato mash possible, and not the european mash with has negotiable lumps, i mean the quicksetting american slurry mash that pulls on your boots as you traverse it.

In the dangerous world of competitive bangers n mash, the confused and wobbly (although for the most part, quite pleasant) bangers are free floating in a mashy mess of piss poor administration, without a firm grip on the situation which would be afforded by, say, a big plate of metaphorical chunky chips, they are doomed forever to be at the whims of consultative stirring of the pot, which keeps the bangers but periodically rearranges them into a different order just for the hell of it. Pot stirring in general only benefits the grey ones, the auditors and the ones they serve, the equally grey faces (if they have faces) of the civil service vainly trying to execute flawed ministerial plans or achieve unreachable targets.

When you throw into the mix the personality type 'Doctors Receptionist' you've a guaranteed receipe for anger. The 'DR' type pops up everywhere and are characterised by an unquenchable need to know the ins and outs of your medical history combined with a complete inability to do anything rational or access to any useful information. No, she (it's usually (but not exclusively) a she) can tell you they're delayed but can't say by how much or why, and no, she definitely can't find out, and absolutely NO, she won't do anything to help you, this is their power trip and you're on the receiving end of it so you better get used to being humiliated by someone who you'd not piss on were they aflame, and 'Sir it's no use shouting at me i can't/won't supply you the information or relief you need and there's no way i'm trying to change the system, it's more than my jobs worth'

Anyway, channelling the ghosts of the keystone kops is not a good look when involved with making people very sick in order to make them better again, my beautiful J is suffering for her future health, the future better look after us or i'm going to punch god in the dick.

I did wonder if unfriending people in dland is the same as unfriending them on facebuk, although i've yet to unfriend anyone on ficebook (but i'm thinking about it). In my minds eye they travel through the many stages of grief before finally accepting that they no longer serve the purpose they were selected for. That's highly unlikely, i would think that most unfriended people moan and whine to anyone who doesn't walk away or kick them in the head about how unfair it is and they don't deserve it and wah wah wah, while engaging in petty faesbook terrorism and campaign of snarkyism. I have delisted a few people in dland after their initial and promising entries descended into the sub-mundane, i couldn't tell you how they reacted though. I guess some people have interesting lives, others write well, quite a few sound in words like i do in my head, that makes me like them instantly because we'd probably bitch about the same stuff while drinking the same kind of beer and not watching sport on the tele, sport is gay.