I'll be the very model of a modern English patient

I left my last post on the glorious teetering cliffhanger of "hunchback with limp approaches job interview through the hail"...which, incidentally, is the first line of my screenplay, Unemployed and Undead...but let's ease your suspense. Addressing the major problems of the day in no particular order:

1. The stye healed up nicely and I can see again.
2. The hail stopped pretty sharpish after I delivered a strongly worded missive up to the heavens.
3. The interview went better than anybody expected and I'll be returning shortly to convince them they can't manage without me.
4. My leg, however, swelled up like a bastard and I ended up in hospital getting IV antibiotics. Which is no great shakes in itself, but it did enable me to hear the following coversation between two pensioners on the same ward...

Wife: Don't leave me here! Why can't I come home with you?

Husband: You know you have to stay here, don't make this difficult...

(I say husband/wife...I'm basing that on the fact that they seemed affectionate towards each other, though of course that is not definitive proof. They could have been lovers having an octogenarian extramarital affair. We'll never know.)

Wife: You don't know what it's like here! It's the worst place in...England. Probably.

Husband: That is not helpful Ingrid. I do know what it's like; who's been here for every hospital visit? Who's sat by you? You're just confused now - and don't say you're not cause you didn't know your own address earlier. You didn't even know who the Queen was!

Wife: I know who the queen is it's Elizabeth.

Husband: Maybe on the second go you knew but not at first you didn't!

Wife: I hate this place.

(Pause)

Wife: Why can't I come home with you? Why do they have to keep me here?

Husband: They need to do some tests...

Wife: Fucking tests.

Husband: Yes they need to keep you here for fucking tests, you're staying overnight for fucking tests now stop complaining

(long pause)

Wife: What would I do without you?



If someone had told me a week ago I would find eavesdropping on sick pensioners swearing at each other in a hospital an hilarious and heartwarming experience, I wouldn't have believed them. It may not fit a Richard Curtis definition of a heartwarming moment, but hearing that old man swearily berate the woman he had stood by in sickness and in health about her tests....well it was fucking romantic.