write.as/jonbeckett

The clock is ticking towards lunchtime, and I'm yet to really get started with any meaningful work. Most of the morning has been spent sitting in the doctor's waiting room with my youngest daughter, who has had a mysteriously swollen finger all week (Dad jokes about pointing at things too much have not gone down well).

Of course her body staged a remarkable fight-back this morning, so by the time we sat in front of a clinician her finger looked absolutely normal. I had to re-assure them that yesterday she had a proper case of 'sausage finger'.

The first doctor we saw took quite some time to manipulate the finger around – bending it, squeezing it, pulling it, and so on. He then frowned for quite some time before looking up at us.

'It might be a splinter'.

I then asked my daughter – 'Did you do wood-work at school this week?'

'Yes, on Monday'.

I looked at the ceiling. I think the doctor might have grinned.

Of course the machinations of the national health system meant we couldn't have the first doctor try to remove the splinter – his time was no doubt far too valuable for that. We returned an hour later for a wonderful nurse with purple hair to go on a search for the splinter. After a few moments frowning she summoned a colleague, and they both prodded, pulled, and pushed said finger around.

'Splinters are sneaky sometimes', she murmured.

Eventually something infinitesimally small was pulled from my daughter's finger, and the nurse sounded hopeful that the cog in the machinery had been removed. It's funny how the human body does that – how even the tiniest of foreign objects can cause tremendous pain. After working on the garden I've pulled numerous splinters from my fingers over the years. Don't even get me started about stepping on LEGO bricks.

Anyway.

It's lunchtime now. Time for something to eat (or rather, time to search the cupboard optimistically for whatever might be left, and then make a rather sad looking cheese and pickle sandwich).

Oh – while I think of it – if you're just discovering my blog after I re-glued Twitter, Medium, Tumblr, Wordpress and Substack together with Zapier, welcome. If you were after a 'slice of life' blog about nothing in particular, you found it – hopefully.

Right. This sandwich isn't going to make itself, is it.