Gets cut up how? Bits cut out of one of my legs. Have done virtually nothing since my visit to hospital. I finished my virtual walk to Santiago de Compostela and was all ready to start Lands End to John O’Groats – but can’t start yet until I can walk distances again. Then, like just about everyone else in this Godforsaken hole of a country, Battleaxe is totally fed up with the Covid situation. She has put on 7lb since March, but, despite drastically reduced rations, just treated herself to a fancy new kitchen mixer from Aldi.
Like many of my age, I get the odd patch of non-invasive skin cancer (basal-cell carcinoma). Last Tuesday I had to go to the Conquest Hospital to have a bit excised from my leg, and while he was at it the surgeon cut out another patch that had appeared close to the first one – not the same thing but it looked dodgy. So I now have two incisions on the front of my leg, one on my shin bone, and another just beside it. ‘This stitching is a bit tight’ said Mr Subramanion cheerfully as he tied the last knot. ‘You’ll have to take it a easy for a few days until they knit together…’ Well, it is now Tuesday again and they still haven’t finished their knitting….
I tell you, it would have been easier to get an audience with the Pope than it was to get access to those doctors. The initial consultation was done entirely on-line, using an arcane invention n called the ‘Skin Doctor App’. That took days to work through (it takes enough time to get through to our surgery on the phone…) and then I was promised an appointment within three weeks. Needless to say, three weeks came and went with no notification, so, I exaggerate not, I spent an entire afternoon on the phone to get it sorted. I do think the NHS bottleneck is as GP level – once I got into the right bit of the hospital system (never mind the right hospital – they kept shunting me back and forth between Eastbourne and Hastings) I got the appointment quickly, and actually had the little operation done by one of the Conquest’s most senior surgeons, who clearly had surplus time on his hands…
There is a picture of me finishing the ‘walk’ up at the top there. Well, it was 481 miles. But even after all that walking, I had still put on far too much weight. Here is the new mixer – the first ‘grown-up’ mixer I have had in my adult life. I used it for the first time last night to beat some eggs. It sounded like a wide-bodied jet taking off. I plan to make a Christmas cake. The neighbours will be complaining of noise nuisance. 
I just don’t know what to say about the Covid situation. I get fed up with people saying they are ‘confused’ but now I have joined them. One doesn’t know who to believe, we can trust nobody, the advice is conflicting… the government seems incapable of giving us clear, consistent messages, the test and trace system is still struggling, and so on. While I do see the need to balance saving the economy against protecting us all from Covid, common sense dictates that opening up education and the economy can only work if an excellent testing system is in place.
Yesterday, I thought I glimpsed, fleetingly, on social media, that a mobile testing site is coming to Hastings for a brief moment this week. You can’t access the site without having symptoms and then having an appointment, and they won’t tell you the location of the site unless you have a genuine appointment…. What is that about? Sounds like a secret meeting of a pagan Wicca circle, or a notification of an illegal rave, not a public service that should be available to everyone…. Back in March, yes really, I made up a ‘Covid Alphabet’ about the hot issues of the time. How quickly time passes. I think for the next blog I’ll do another, to compare the two. As I said at the top of this post, Battleaxe is not out and about much right now… well, I dunno, pub quiz down at the Stag last night, out for lunch with WI mates today…
Anyway, here is the usual pretty picture to finish – view out of the window. Of course, the weather has changed – autumn has moved in all of a sudden. The central heating is on, winter clothes are getting sorted.
