Bilions and billions of dollars spent on a rocket flying up and around the moon.
Millions of dollars spent on weapons and guns and tanks,
While the rest of us stand, heads tilted upwards, to see the rocket flying off for ten days round space.
Down here, whilst the astronauts are floating around in their pod our doctors are striking and a dozen eggs cost more than four litres of petrol.
I think humanity has gone mad. Looking after the earth and its inhabitants, I believe, should take precedence over planet hopping.
Plundering minerals off the moon, planting a flag on Mars, all very adventurous and progressive, all very ‘Roy of the Rovers’ but where’s the sense when our little globe is crying out for care.
Call me old fashioned but I cannot support money – oh that old chestnut = being spent on joy rides for the elite.
An expensive distraction from Epstein and the selfish dabbling of our corrupt leaders.
I am, though, out of touch with the space race having spent the last twelve days lying in a hospital bed waiting to have my groin shaved and a pacemaker shoved up a vein into my heart.
It all started on Friday March 20th.
I’d been to the dry cleaners and the after affects went wonky. So wonky CJ, a most attentive neighbour, had come to pick me up but was told by the nurses to get me to A & E to check my heart which had started beating erratically.
CJ drove me into the emergency hub and stayed with me until I had been admitted. I couldn’t breathe very well. I thought I was dying, which indeed I was. My heart stopping for a couple of seconds too many times.
I felt weedy and lifeless.
I was admitted and moved to a cubicle. Tests, X-rays, ECG’s and drugs were administered.
Had I been in good od America the procedure would have cost me as much as Artimis, but here, in good old Blighty, I was being treated for free by a team of dedicated medicals.
The renal unit mostly run by Philipinos. The ICU mostly populated by delicious nurses from Kerala. The coronary care unit in Westminster dominated by angels from Nigeria and Clapham.
Names ranging from Esther to Bong to my favourite night nurse SHINY.
She held me round he waist as I tried to breathe and walk at the same time.
I faced a quiet weekend when I got to know Carl, a delicious young man in the opposite cubicle, who was waiting for a bypass. He’d been waiting a fortnight for the procedure.
We shared tails, telly and hospital food. We laughed to cover our frustration and intolerance.
Monday came round.
Bed sheets changed a breakfast of Weetabix and cardboard toast downed and the doctors arrived on their ward rounds.
Gathered outside the blue paper curtains I eavesdropped on their mumbling.
Then a lithe South African doctor entered my cubicle like a comedian from the wings.
‘The good news or the bad?’ he quipped. A bouncy fellow with a spectacularly positive attitude.
‘Give me the bad news first.’
‘You have a fistula in your left arm, and a port in your right, I’m stuck in he middle with you. Thr pace maker has wires and I can’t find a way for the wires to fit in.’
‘The good news? I sighed.
‘I’ve been thinking, fortunately I’m very good at that. We’ll get you into Guys and they’ll fit a wireless machine that will do the trick.’
From Tuesday to Saturday I tried patience. From Tuesday to Saturday I nagged and cried and fought to catch my breath.
They were waiting for a bed. The Tunbridge Wells team nagged on my behalf but no bed came.
If Carl and I had left the hospital we would have been out of the system and the whole rigmarole would have had to begin again.
On Tuesday Marc 24th the old git, the dawter, her godmother and beau came to my bedside carrying a ginger and rhubarb cake, one candle and funky birthday cards.
They sung happy birthday and lit the candle illegally. I blew it out. 77 years old in a hospital bed with no kidneys and a falling heart.
Thats me not the bed.
Finally on Sunday night, after three ward changes and a few intimate washes in a shared shower two paramedics came and slid me onto a stretcher and up into an ambulance.
After an hour and 45 on the road we arrived in London to St. Thomases. I was put in a clean bed, with a view of the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben and so begun the confusions.
Nepo, the first nurse smiled as she told me I wasn’t on the list.
‘You aren’t on the list.’confirmed Magda the second nurse.
The doctors came round and confirmed I was third on the list.’
Nepo checked again
‘You are not on the list.
At five in the morning I argued with the nurses.
‘I’ve called the bookers and you are on the list. Not your name just your birthday.’
Mystery solved.
‘You can have food.’ Said Nepo.
‘You can’t have food’ said Magda.
‘You can go to the lavatory.’ said Nepo
‘You’ll have to use a commode’ said Magda.
‘I’ll wait’ I said through gritted teeth.
Then after a sleepless night I was given dialysis by Armande a Chinese nurse from Clacton.
I had my weetabix and two slices of cardboard toast
12.30 was my slot.
Nil by mouth till 3.30.
A doctor came to my bedside and read me all the reasons I could die on the table.
I agreed, with an electron signature.
I was rolled down endless corridors to the operating theatre.
On my back when a Phlippino lady boy took out a plastic razor and shaved my right groin.
‘I’ll do the left one to even you up’ he chirruped.
I asked for a Brazilian. He/she didnt oblige.
Then the surgeon aneasthatisd the stubbly area.
A screen, three inches from face, and a team of doctors set about inserting my wireless pacemaker, like a bullet, into my traumatised body.
I meditated and thought of the old git holding my hand and the dawter looking at me pleading with me to calm down.
I got through it.
In went the little pacemaker. The surgeon pressed it down. I screamed
‘Good job.’ he shouted.
He pressed down again and pushed it up the vein towards my heat.
I screamed.
‘Good job.’ his PVC tartan apron under a blue surgical gown, creaked.
The excruciating final push and I screamed like I was giving birth.
‘Good job. Thats the worst over.’
The rest of the team congratulated my silence and my ability to remain catatonic.
One stitch and 40 minutes later I was wheeled back to a different ward.
Four old women, a view of the Thames a bowl of mushroom soup a vegan sausage casserole and apple crumble and custard were administered to me whilst lying flat.
I was given an anti sickness drug
I had to remain supine for two hours.
I was discharged at 10.00 a.m. the following morning.
After waiting for 6 hours and an argument with the transport unit, I was finally released from twelve days of windowless, airless wards, and a supporting cast of angelic medics.
I had a Gergian Uber driver with jet black hair. He’d been a professional footballer,back in Georgia and had a grandmother who was a writer and had taught him how to play chess when he was six.
She cheated on him and won all the games
Two hours on the road and we talked about Georgian wine, the oldest in the world. Georgian cheese the best in the world and David Beckham.
I arrived home after twelve days of trauma with an indepth knowledge of Georgian cuisine.
.
Today I had to have dialysis gain. My poor old body is covered in bruises. I now have a bullet in my heart and a hole in my groin.
I think my ordeal beats Artemis, at least they have money spent on them.
I had nurses and doctors, cleaners and auxiliary nurses sending me into orbit on a shoe string. Fuck Trump and his brutality. He should be punctured in his fat hariy groin and left on the operating table to consider life without privilege.
He should be denied food and have his fractured heart pumped through with compassion.
The over inflated Buffoon should be left to ponder why Artemis is more important than the lives of earthlings.
I’m off to bed now with a foreign object in my body which if they’ve get it right, will be able to transmit Radio 3 from my wireless fanny.