Laughing at the misfortunes of others
Every year around this time the NHS produces Hospital Episode Statistics. This body of work details just what the NHS and its hospitals have been up to in the last year. Despite the inherent dryness of statistical information it can make surprisingly good reading and the source of many a perverse guffaw to liven the post Christmas afternoons, particularly when it comes to the accounting of Accident and Emergency departments. If you thought that some of the story lines on Holby City were a little contrived and far-fetched you are about to discover that the truth is indeed many times stranger than fiction would ever dare to be.

For instance, presumably while we were all busy doing something...

Acrylic-bob

When I was a boy, I spent some time as an altar boy in the service of the Sacred Heart Church in Accrington. My period of service ended before the Second Vatican Council swept a lot of the more interesting and colourful ritual away. It was a time when public displays of catholic piety filled the streets of Accrington and the Blessed Sacrament was carried in procession through the town to the accompaniment of brass bands, banners and schoolchildren dressed in white. The boys wore red sashes and the girls were chastely veiled.

It was a time when the church was more confident that it was right and everyone else was wrong and was not afraid to say so. The ethos of the time is now largely consigned to memory and my memories of...

Acrylic-bob

It was my very great pleasure to bump into one of Accrington’s celebrities the other day. It was while I was bent double rooting through a box of hearing aids and other assorted bric-a-brac in the premises of the Blind Institute on Bank Street that two scarlet nailed and heavily jewelled fingers, attached to a liver spotted hand, were inserted into my nostrils and I was unceremoniously hooked out of the way. The hand, it turned out, belonged to that well-known Accrington Artist and bon-viveur, Dame Enid Proust, MBE. FRA. How opportune I thought, once my eyes had stopped watering, and I determined to seize the opportunity, Carpe Proustem, as it were, to elicit her opinion on the whole Panopticon farrago. Surprisingly, after many years of indolence,...

Acrylic-bob

It is with a heavy heart that I come before you all this morning. Acylic-bob has failed and is back on the weed.

I woke on Thursday morning in the grip of the most ferocious itch. My whole body was on fire. No, it was worse than that. It went to the centre of my being, my very soul itched. It screamed out for the balm that only tobacco could bring. Had there been a brick wall between me and a cigarette at that moment I would willingly have clawed and bitten my way through it. I would have done anything, crawled across broken glass, wrestled crocodiles, said something nice about HBC! (Whoa, steady on there Bob!) As it happens all I actually had to do was put my coat on and walk down to the papershop. So I did.

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Acrylic-bob

I slept unusually heavily last night, so much so that I do not remember the alarm going off this morning. Which is odd since it is on the other side of the room and I have to get out of bed to turn it off. I have felt like death warmed over and left to go cold again all day. Fortunately I have only had one row today, very sensibly, people have been keeping well out of my way.

Not that I am an ogre really, it's just that those who know me have been here before and all know that the best way to handle my mood swings is to pretend that I have something horribly infectious and run for the hills whenever I draw near.

Yesterday evening was horrible. I spent most of it trying to talk myself out of walking down to the...

Acrylic-bob