down at the doctors

We had a music society committee meeting last night.  Consensus was that the brass quintet at the last concert had talked too much, and it was agreed that our guidance notes to performers would be amended, so that talking was only permitted to expand on the already ample programme notes (the chairman is very proud of the programme notes) or to explain technical features of the instruments.  This was great fun, the nearest I've got for ages in real life to playing the When I'm Dictator game.  (You must play that.  Charlie Brooker is going to execute people who talk in cinemas after the film has started.  When I'm Dictator there will be adequate rainfall, but only at night, and people wearing ugly shoes will be sent to re-education camps.)

The programme for the winter of 2012-2013 is taking shape.  The bookings secretary had narrowed down the dates when we could potentially have a well-regarded and moderately expensive string quartet, which at extra cost could be expanded into a quintet, with clarinet, viola or horn.  The chairman wanted to know what was with the horn, and the secretary explained that a modern composer had written a horn piece especially for the quartet, who had given its world premiere.  'What sort of music is it?' enquired the chairman 'Is it very modern?'  The bookings secretary, looking weary and chosing her words carefully, said that the quartet's agent said that it was very rhythmic, but without much in the way of melody.  'How long is it?' demanded the chairman 'Our lot can stand ten minutes of that sort of thing, but not half an hour'.  I must have looked especially agonised, because she then looked at me and asked if I wished to say something.  I said that I was just imagining spending half an hour listening to a horn piece with no discernable tune, and thinking how lovely clarinet quintets were.  Everyone agreed that the Mozart clarinet quintet was indeed lovely, as was the Brahms, and we agreed to forget about the horn.  Sometimes it is good for arts groups to have someone who doesn't mind being the voice of middlebrow conservatism.  I'm sure the others were all secretly relieved to be let off having to pretend to be that musically adventurous, even the bookings secretary, and we'll sell more tickets with the clarinet.

I took my hand to the doctor this afternoon.  I thought I'd better on Monday, when my knuckle turned purple and my entire hand throbbed, though with hindsight I think that was the cold.  I rang the doctor's surgery, who said they did not have any appointments for Wednesday.  I asked if I could have an appointment for Thursday, and was told that they had not yet released the diary for Thursday, and I would have to ring in the morning.  I really thought the NHS had been told to stop playing that sort of silly buggers.  I made sure I was up on Tuesday morning in time to hit the phone at 8.00am, and managed to get through and get an appointment, but not everybody is well placed to call their GP surgery at eight on the dot.  If you are travelling to work then, or getting the children to school, or have just walked into the office, sitting with the phone in your hand and hitting the repeat dial button until you manage to catch the moment when a line is free could be tricky.

There was good news and bad news about the hand.  The good news is that it's not infected, the joint and tendons seem fine, and the problem seems to be in the overlying tissue.  This means that using it, while painful, probably isn't making anything worse.  The other good news is that the doctor agreed that there was an issue, and said that she would refer me to the hand clinic if there was no improvement in two to three weeks.  She thought that something must still be lodged in there, that my hand was busily encysting, and would in due course expel.  The bad news is that, if it doesn't fix itself, she wasn't sure what the hand clinic could do.  They don't like digging around in hands, all full of nerves and tendons, looking for tiny objects.  Two to three weeks puts it so close to Christmas that in practice that means go back if things aren't better by the New Year.  Come back before then if it gets worse, she said kindly.

I spent the day doing gentle, surface, non-knuckle threatening weeding, and cutting down the stems of Helianthus salicifolius, an excellent perennial sunflower, that runs about a bit and makes tall, wavy stems clothed in willow-like (naturally) leaves.  In autumn it has little yellow flowers, but the leaves are the point.  It was beloved of Christopher Lloyd, and I first encountered it in his books.  It isn't the easiest thing to get hold of.  I've suggested we should list it at work, but the boss doesn't seem keen.  There were mutterings about it not doing well in a pot, but I'm not sure that's the real reason.  They had it at Langthorn's, the last time I was there.

The Systems Administrator has a sore throat and a rich and fruity cold.  This is a house of wrecks.

be prepared

I am going to a Committee Meeting this evening.  Somehow I have been invited to join the committee of the local music society, subject to election at the forthcoming AGM.  That sounds grander than it is, in that I think my main role is to pour out tea and make cheese straws and other savory nibbles for post concert refreshments.  I was asked because I'd been going to the concerts since discovering that they existed, and was spotted as a regular and apparently physically fit attendee under the age of fifty.  I warned them that I knew nothing about classical music, but that is not a barrier to making tea and cheese straws.  I rather like the idea of having a Committee Meeting to go to every now and then.  It makes me feel quite grown-up, and connected to local life.

Extending my reach beyond catering and distributing posters, I volunteered to put together some concise guidelines on what to do in the case of a medical emergency at a concert.  The Chairman is a lawyer (retired) and I think she thought that we ought to look as though we were prepared.  I thought it wouldn't hurt to actually be prepared, in case the worst should happen.  I hate anything medical, as it happens, but I gather not as much as the Chairman does.  Looking at the demographic of people who attend music society concerts, I decided that some sorts of medical emergency were relatively unlikely.  I would be very surprised if any of our audience went into labour without realising they were pregnant, for example, and fairly surprised if they were to overdose on illegal drugs during a concert.  I would be rather less surprised if one of them were to suffer a heart attack or stroke, and not at all surprised if they were to fall over.

There is a lot of medical information on the internet, some of it from reputable sources.  Trawling through websites of the NHS, Bupa, and various medical charities, plus a US one on emergency care that I'd never heard of (deduct marks for using a source of unknown reliability) but that looked sensible, I came up with lists of symptoms of and appropriate responses to the most likely ailments I could think of.  Heart attack and stroke topped the list as being the most serious, but as well as falling over I thought that nosebleeds ought to go on the list.  Nosebleeds in older people can be serious (I knew this, having known a couple of older people who suffered from them).  You should keep the patient upright (less blood flows to the head) and if after twenty minutes you can't get the blood to stop then they need medical help.  It is rather depressing thinking about so many different medical problems in one go, since one would be unlucky to get all of them at once.  The chairman of course has to think what she is going to do with a church full of people while we wait twenty minutes for somebody's nosebleed to stop.  Does the concert go on?

I finished up with the addresses including postcodes of the concert venues, in case we should need to call an ambulance, and the addresses of the local A&E departments, for the benefit of concerned friends and relatives who wanted to know where their loved one had been whisked off to.  It took ages hunting around the website of the Ipswich hospital (which is enormous) to establish that it did have an A&E department at the main hospital site.  Maybe they thought it was so obvious it didn't need spelling out.  Now that I've thought about all of this depressing stuff (and that we need to know where the first aid box is kept, and the whereabouts of the cleaning materials in case somebody is sick) I hope we never have to use any of it.