Once more I’m just back from hospital.

This one was in St James’s which is a pain in the arse.

St James’s is one of the main hospitals in Dublin and for those not familiar with the place, it’s a huge complex plonked into the middle of a maze of suburban streets in the west of Dublin. It is difficult to get to and is difficult for parking. It is also where the gubment in its infinite wisdom decided to plonk the €2 billion childrens Hospital. That monument to crap thinking towers over both the existing hospital and all the densely packed residential streets.

Daughter drove for which I am eternally grateful. She insisted on allowing an hour and a half for the trip which I thought was overly cautious, but of course she was right; I signed in with five minutes to spare.

Then we had the obligatory hour sitting in excruciatingly hard chairs. There are two things the HSE insists on in all hospitals – the hour wait and very long corridors. At the end of the hour [and ten minutes] my name was called and I was directed to another waiting area which contained only one very hard chair. The circulation in my legs was thoroughly fucked at this stage.

Finally I was called in to the CT scanner. I lay on the slab of steel [it felt like steel] and the machine pretended to be a photocopier in three dimensions. The laser lights spinning in the polo wheel were very pretty. I was told after about ten minutes or less that I was free to go home.

We finally arrived home around one of the clock, having left at a quarter past nine; three and three quarter hours for the sake of ten minutes?

If it wasn’t so important I’d tell ’em to stuff their appointments.