Guardian All Ears 14th November

For me medical waiting rooms always beg a kid with a chamber pot stuck on it's head but I had to resist the temptation this week...might just go & draw a random one now!

(article by Micheal Holden)
I was stuck on a plane for an hour recently while the airport authorities searched for a bus to take us to the terminal. As codas to already unpleasant journeys go, it sucked. I did however get to find out all about my fellow traveller’s toenail.

Man 1 “I literally hobbled in there. You could see it was the foot place-there were a lot of people in sandals. Lot’s of toes in big white cocoons of bandages-the sort of thing you might see a silk moth fly out of.”

Man 2 “Like a sort of Carry On bandage?”

Man 1 “Exactly. So they ask me what’s up and I tell them it’s an ingrown toenail. I can’t walk, and in the end it’s got so bad I can hardly sleep. So they sit me down in this massive queue.

Man 2 (eager for details of institutional inefficiency) “And how long did that take?”

Man 1 “Maybe half an hour.”

Man 2 (disappointed) “Oh.”

Man 1 “In the end this bloke turns up-quite serious looking, like a sort of gangster almost, He takes a look and says, ‘that is bad, mate.’ He says, ‘we’ll operate on Tuesday. We’ll take that bit off, we’ll destroy the root with chemicals and it’ll never grow again.”

Man 2 “Pretty brutal.”

Man 1 “ Apparently it’s that or a vicious circle of antibiotics. Anyway I’ve asked him if there’s anything they can do now and he sort of looked about to see if anyone was looking. Asked me if I was squeamish-I said no. Made me promise not to kick him-I said fine. And he just dug half the nail out with a scalpel there and then. I felt like screaming but I tell you what I walked out of there better than I walked in!”

Man 2 “And you still had the operation?”

Man 1 “Yeah, but they seemed a bit put out that the other guy had sorted me out first. One doctor said, ‘we don’t do that field hospital stuff here anymore-did he put a bit of wood in your mouth?’ I said, ‘No, but it was a bit Medieval.’ And then the other doctor says, ‘Well, he is West Ham.’ I said I don’t care who he is, it worked.”