An update from the mines

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Work’s been suprisingly pleasant of late; perhaps everyone’e scared of Swine Flu and haven’t been coming in? Can we please keep it that way? I’ve had some odd ones though, in triage. People who’ve broken things days/weeks ago, not really in pain, slight, possible, deforimities and off to Xray they go, then we find out they’ve completely broken their humerus or fractured radius/ulnas… Also sick people who’ve actually been sick. It’s been quite like actually working in an emergency department.

Then, to make things even more strange I was working in the Resus area; normally when I’m there it’s like there’s a neon sign that goes up outside and we get overdoses, cardiac arrests, infections-gone-septic and the odd bit of major trauma (at least potentially). I am like a magnet for the very sick and accident prone to go and be ill and fall off something. But on this occasion I had one person who was very sick who was there when I arrived – and some potentially sick kiddies who improved (one of whom kindly vomitted on my top).

I was quite confused. Why wasn’t the red phone ringing constantly? Why was I stood there doing regular obs on people instead of running past going ‘oh crap! His BP is 60 systolic! It was 120 before!’ en-route to administer some drug to prop some other patient up for a bit.

Not that I’m complaining mind; I’ve quite enjoyed it. I’ve been riding my little red bike to work and bike, slow as it is, and now it’s got a brake light working again I’ll be much happier* (so it is, of course, raining today). Ironically, the MOT and Tax run out next month, so I’m contemplating using it as a spares bike to build up Charlie. I looked on e-bay and MZs aren’t worth anything anymore. It’s rather sad. They’re on there really rarely, and now the company has gone, completely, as opposed to just being bought by new people every 3 weeks, they seem to have disappeared.

I’ve also wired the exhaust back on to the DAF – there’s only about a foot between the missing exhaust hanger and the next one, but really… I’ve ordered bits of Morris Minor to use to hang it all back together properly(ish) – and will hopefully get a chance to do that this weekend. I need to get Vixy up on ramps and check the belt tension on her… but… the weather forecast looks attrocious. Which does not bode well :(

Vixy’s booked into my local garage for the rear brakes to be done, too. I just need to actually source the parts. My local place can get them but they’re more expensive than getting them shipped from Holland, although he’s having a look through his personal stock and will give me a ring back with a price for that… apparently. Although he’s yet to ever actually ring me back about anything.

I’m hoping, also, that the bits of car for Jejy will arrive before too long and Jejy will get a new clutch drum and new shoes, and an inlet manifold without a huge crack in it.

The garden continues to progress; lots of things are flowering and producing a great deal of pretty, we’ve got more Swiss Chard than we can eat, the beans are growing into great tall bean-stalks; we picked up some more plants when my mum was here (some more dogwood, and some other things which I’ll journal about later) – which have gone in. I’ve clearly found an effective way of making it rain though, which is to remember to water the new plants. Then it pours with rain for the rest of the week :(

Anyhow, Lunch and then Work.

* My initial assumption was that the contacts were dirty &/or sticking, and would clean with a few uses. That has occured before, but having ridden to work it wasn’t working. Riding it home, I presumed the bulb had blown; but no. I checked that and it was fine. Finally, in a fit of enthusiasm (and desire to not be squished, and having got fed up of doing hand signals) I dug around the foot brake switch on which both wires had broken. This made me happy because 10 minutes later they were resoldered and the bike has a brake light again :)

KateWE

Kate's a human mostly built out of spite and overcoming transphobia-racism-and-other-bullshit. Although increasingly right-wing bigots would say otherwise. So she's either a human or a lizard in disguise sent to destroy all of humanity. Either way, it's all good.