The good old NHS

In general I don't go to the doctor often. Infact I really try to avoid it. I also hate the dentist. Anyone who wants to prod different parts of my body kind of freaks me out. But a few weeks ago I had to go to the nurse, the dentist and the doctor all in the space of three days.....
None were a good experience. The dentist didn't know what was causing my toothache, but suggested taking out a filling to have a look and then a have a crown to replace it. This would enable him to see under the filling, just to check it out. That would cost 1500 pounds....... (I ran away and haven't been back since).
Then the nurse, well suffice to say, she lost my cervix.
Finally I went to the doctor with my weird rash. She actually said "wow!" when she saw it. I wasn't sure whether I should be proud or worried that my doctor was impressed by the rash. She suggested it was eczema and sent me home with creams. The rash was still there a month later so I went back. This time she thought she would try another diagnosis. So she turned to her computer, and to my disbelief she wrote something in "google". Yes, you read right. My doctor googled my rash.....She then found a picture and said "I think your rash looks like this one". She happened to choose a rash that should just go away by itself after 2 months, so no treatment. I have now have had the rash for 10 weeks, I'm not sure if I should go back and try "third time lucky" on the diagnosis.........

Why is the train late?

It used to be that you stood at the train station and hoped your train would show up. Actually, that is still the case today...
However, something has changed. Before if your train was delayed or cancelled, the reasons were a mystery. Now they like to tell you why your train is late. I kind of like that. It makes it a bit easier to stand there on the platform a bit longer when you realise that there is a fallen tree on the tracks. I mean, you don't exactly want your train running into a tree, do you? But some of the other reasons are annoying, some are tragic and some are on the verge of being funny. "Signal failure" is a favourite excuse. That falls under the "annoying" classification. I mean there is signal failure all the time! Hasn't anybody thought of buying better signals? Sometimes you hear things you didn't really want to know. I can understand that a train has to be delayed if someone fell/jumped under a train, but suddenly you feel this weird sense of sorrow, for someone you never knew. In fact, maybe you know their dead before their family knows. It's all a bit weird.
Finally my favourite "on the verge of being funny" excuse is the following. "Ladies and Gentleman we apologise to the delay to your service, we are waiting for the driver to turn up". I guess it's logical, but before they started given reasons for trains being late, I never imagined that the train driver being late for work would be one of them. I think I have heard that excuse twice in the last two months. Imagine going in to your boss and saying "sorry I'm late for work but the train driver was late for work....". Maybe the train driver was late for work because his bus driver was late for work? You would have to explain that the bus driver driving your train driver was late for work........
I didn't realise being a train driver was such a big responsbility. If you are late for work, you make 800 people late for work.
Yesterday was back to the old classic. Snow. I mean we have been expecting snow for a week now, they knew when it would come and how much. But anyhow the railway company seemed very surprised. So how much fell? 2 feet overnight like we once had in Boston? One foot that we often had in Sweden? No, it was much worse. It was a catastrophic 2 inches.......