Archive for December, 2008

GPs should pull their heads out of their arses…

Wednesday, December 31st, 2008

According to the BBC, “GPs urged patients to stock up on cold and flu remedies”

That would be nice. But we can’t. So we’ll continue to waste your time until you fix this.

Currently Cheryl and I are both ill. She has a cold and I have Eblia with a slight touch of Bird Flu. Ok, so we’ve both got flu, but I’m a bigger baby about it. We’d very much like to stock up on remedies and stay home in the warm, but when I tried the other day I failed miserably.

The pharmacy can only sell me enough medication to keep 1 person functional for 3 days. Because Cheryl was at home resting, that meant that I could only buy enough medication to last us both 1.5 days. And we’d have to fight over the night-time capsules.

To actually get enough medication for both of us for three days, here is what we would have to do if we used pubic transport like the gubmit wants us to:

  • Dress up warm and take the 5 minute walk to the bus stop.
  • Wait up to 20 minutes in almost freezing temperatures for the bus
  • Board the bus and infect everyone else present for our 20 minute ride to the pharmacy
  • Go into the nice warm shop and buy 3 days worth of meds
  • Go back out into the cold and wait up to 20 minutes more for the bus
  • Ride home, once again sharing our germs with all and sundry
  • Walk home

So we’ve got cold, physical exertion and massive temperature swings from outdoors to indoors. And we both have to go – we can’t take it in shifts. Do we think this will make us better or worse?

Cheryl’s been ill for pushing 9 days now, so we would have repeated this journey 3 times.

So GPs – expect me back in your surgery looking for a prescription for 7 days meds early in the new year so that I can get better. And expect me to do this every. single. fucking. time. I get ill until you change these stupid laws so that I can get the rest I need and self-medicate.

Until then, stop whinging!

Rudolph the red nosed sucker

Wednesday, December 17th, 2008

I’ve been hearing the tale of poor old Rudolph quite a bit over the past few days – my colleagues feel that the best way to remind me that I’ve got a hugely painful and tender nose is to keep singing the song. I haven’t the heart to tell them that the pain is more than enough of a reminder – they seem so happy and some of them have even bothered to learn the second verse.

But it’s got me thinking and I can’t help but feel sorry for the poor bugger, and more importantly, I’m not sure that this is such a great story to teach our kids. I mean, let’s be brutal and summarise this guy’s life.

He comes into the world wired a little differently to everyone else. As a result, all of his peers shun him and laugh at him, and even his owner doesn’t give a shit. But suddenly when he could be useful this all changes – everyone wants to be his mate.

His owner doesn’t show up and say “Hey, sorry for being such a prick all these years – you want me to hold one of those other reindeer while you kick the shit out of him?” - no, he shows up and says “Yo! You – yes you, the useless gimp… Saddle up, I need you to run right across the whole world while strapped to those prats who abuse you all the time.” Makes you look at Santa in a whole new light, right?

And yeah, when they get back, all is shiny happy for a while. The other reindeer let him join in their reindeer games and they’re all cool with him – why wouldn’t they be? If he hadn’t showed up and saved their asses, they’d probably all be steak in some Lapland restuarant and Santa would be claiming jobseekers. But it won’t last, take my word for it!

Give it time, and they’ll forget that they were mates and just remember that he’s not the same as them. He’ll show up and won’t be picked for either team for reindeerball and gradually he’ll go back to being outcast. Eventually he’ll just be the guy who gets the occasional e-mail asking for help fixing a DNS problem or advice on which webcam is supported on their ReindeerOS. They won’t even be able to spend 5 minutes chatting, just ask the question and piss off back to their ‘cool’ reindeer pals.

Rudolph should have guided that sleigh straight into a bubbling volcano – at least he would have shown them that they can’t expect to push him around forever.

Money? No thanks, we have enough

Monday, December 8th, 2008

We’re in a recession. Pretty much everyone finally agrees on that. So as a shop, do you think that the brightest thing to do is to tell people who want to spend money to go away? Me neither. But Apple and O2 aren’t that bright.

If you walk into one of their stores an offer to give them £150 AND sign a new 18 month contract, they’ll turn you away if you’re only 12 months into your current contract.

Genius!