The Stoic's Bank Holiday
Happy Friday! Sunday!
This week’s mailing list is slightly delayed by an eventful few days, involving an excess of hospitals and a harrowing deficit of eating.
I've been pursuing an aggressive diet in an attempt to moderate the effects of a condition that results in a dodgy stomach. I'll leave it there in the interests of too much information, but suffice it to say: this means that I eat a lot of salad.
When you eat a lot of salad you really need a good knife. This week I've been in Bournemouth where there is a shortage of good knives (not city-wide, just in our flat). So I decided to go down to Wilko and treat myself to a £2.50 special.
Back home, thoroughly delighted with my purchase, I happily chopped my way through a dozen carrots, half a swede, a bag of spinach and my finger.
After calling 111, I took a bus - my finger still gently oozing blood - to Bournemouth Hospital. On registration at A&E, I was seen by the assessing nurse well within the promised half an hour and was told that yes indeed the information boards were correct and I would be seen approximately two hours later by the clinician.
As I'd been sitting for about an hour in total since leaving the house, I decided to stretch my legs for 10 minutes and get a breath of fresh air in the car park.
Suitably refreshed, I returned to the waiting room and settled down to read my book. I read and I read and I read on and I read some more and a little bit more and then again some more. Then I carried on reading.
Three hours later I happened to notice a young chap with the identical injury to me, his finger wrapped with bloodied bandage, swanning through the double doors to see the clinician.
Now this fellow had only arrived about 20 minutes previously, so you can imagine my coefficient of peeve. It was high. Especially as my finger had decided to recommence a steady glooping.
Of course, many patients had already seen the clinician before me, but these people were generally a lot younger than me or a lot older than me, or perhaps they all had serious heart conditions or infected wounds. Most likely, all these people were going in for amputations. I just had a cut finger. I could wait. (And wait...)
But this man was young and also had a cut finger - how come he was being seen before me? Peeve turned to mild disgruntlement and I went up to the reception desk to make a polite enquiry.
Well, it turns out the answer was that he wasn’t seen before me. I’d missed my spot 3 hours earlier whilst I was out in the car park.
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Two Conclusions:
Never let it be said that the NHS is inefficient.
Life often falls (or rises) to the level of one's expectations.
So this is why I'm sitting here in Bournemouth, overlooking the beach, my finger in a bloodied bandage, dictating this into my phone. All orthographical and grammatical mistakes are the fault of technology (not so the content).
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It was fortuitously appropriate that my reading matter for my sojourn in A&E was on Stoicism and the art of happiness. I was particularly struck by the Stoic attitude that one should care about matters - indeed one should care deeply about the world and one's fellow man - but that one should not worry. I care that my finger is tipless, but I should not worry about such a trifle.
Just to ram the moral home, around the same time as I was slicing off my finger, I also managed to undercook a roast chicken and give myself food poisoning. As the Stoics say: health is indifferent to happiness. If I had 100% of my finger, I wouldn't necessarily be happy. Likewise if I had eaten more than a thin bowl of rice in the last 24 hours. These things might be preferable, but they are not necessary to my happiness.
I think it's fair to say that you couldn't quite categorise me as a Stoic sage just yet.
STATS OF THE DAY: Based on a sample of 100 revellers on Bournemouth beach, 80% are on the sand and 20% are in the sea. But of those 20%, only 1% venture beyond the shallows. So if you want to escape the crowds this Bank Holiday weekend, just go for a swim.
May your Bank Holiday weekends be full of sunshine and indifferent happiness!
And be careful with knives.
- dc
p.s. Life To The Lees: Cycling Around Britain is still merrily asale.
p.p.s. Oooh... You can forward this email to a friend!
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