I Booked a bus ticket last night to Tallinn, Estonia. After being stuck indoors for far too long and not seeing humans, it’s certainly long over due.

I Woke up at 4.30 to get ready for my bus at 5.15 from the stop around the corner from the flat.

My adventure started in the way it will probably continue… lackadaisical with mild panic. I arrived on the stop with 5 minutes to spare, at 14 minutes past I thought it MIGHT be a good idea to check for my coach ticket to Tallinn. What a surprise.. I Had somehow picked it up and put it straight back down.. I text Anna that I had forgotten my ticket and headed back to the flat with 60 seconds before my bus, fortunately she called me and I asked her to find it and throw it out the window. Luckily she found it on the kitchen table?? And threw it out.

It was quite cinematic as i watched my bus ticket flap around in the calm breeze from the 4th story… It COULD have gone anywhere… 30 seconds later i managed to grab it as it got low ENOUGH and immediately “cripple-scamped” my way back to the bus stop, it was now 16 past so i should have missed it. I saw him at the red light, I ran across the traffic in front of him like a right spazz. He pulled away, i felt the fun of travel hit me and by very good fortune he chose to stop when he got to the other side of the lights. Thank you Mr polish bus driver… If you were English, in the capital, I doubt you would have stopped.

I arrive at the international bus station and enjoy being lost, i find my dirty Ecolines stop and enjoy the freezing cold weather for a while. The bus turns up and looks quite pleasant, when i get on i discover it is quite possibly the most cramped bus i have ever been on. Even more so than Russian sleeper trains… People very close to my left,right,back,front and above. They really cram you in… It was ONLY 28 quid though!

The bus has a nice mixture of clientel, a scary looking lockstock chap with no hair, swollen brow minus the eyebrows, a strange colour to his skin and staring at me with a look of pure hatred. A few old people and a few nice looking Europeans ladies with no discenable nationality but definitely eastern!

The bus lady comes and talks jibberish and then responds to my confused look with “English?” i nod and she continues in jibberglish. I dont know what she said but i think she was being friendly.

It’s nice to be back on the road and have no clue what is next.

After multiple failings by the National Health Service in England, I took matters into my own hands. Or rather the hands of Dr Wieslaw Czynowski. His office was typical of any business in Poland, rather than  a purpose built premises, his surgery was situated in a block of flats. I arrive and its very familiar, I used to live just around the corner from his surgery which is somehow comforting. I hobble to the front door and panic sets in as I see it is on the 8th floor, not ideal for toe surgery but thankfully there is a lift!

I get up to the top floor and the door is a jar, he greets me, points at my foot “this one!” I nod and he ushers me to the strange waiting room with a sign saying 300MB internet. Lies! The waiting room wall is dotted with signed pictures of Polish celebrities, so I guess that proves his credibility more than any medical certificate ever could.

After making me sweat for a while, he ushers me in and hears my stories. Shocked at the treatment I have received in the UK, he assures me that I don’t need to worry, hes does it 100s of times and unlike an English doctor, he will do it right, FIRST TIME. I had to appreciate his bed side manner, much better than I am used to and he isn’t even speaking his first language.

He later went on to reveal his 10 years spent working abroad, he didn’t have anything good to say about English Dr’s on the whole, but the Scottish seemed ok!

Laying on a little hospital bed with the typical but comforting clinical colours of green and blue, he starts talking numbers “450 this is going to cost you” “But the woman told me 350 on the phone” (Is it because I am English? See what else he thinks of English below!) “Well 350 for the surgery and 100 for the consultation” That old chestnut! Despite my intense fear of the impending foreign hands that were about to violate my flesh, I still had the energy for a bit of haggling, but not that much! I settled on 400.

3 Injections in the toe and I could feel it up to my knee after a few minutes, followed by I don’t know how many more injections as my toe was totally dead.. he got out his tool kit. A bit of chopping and pulling and 10 minutes later he had found the pieces of nail had been previously chopped and then left in. He went back in for another go and found some more pieces, all that digging around with metal tools left a rather nasty hole in my toe. You won’t need any pain killers he assures me, more lies.

I ask him if gets many English patients  ”A few, they all have a problem with addiction… Beer, Wine, Vodka its too cheap here.. the ones from Krakow they are the worst”

Interesting! But not all that surprising. That’s probably why he thinks I should pay an extra 100.

Well, he certainly found some things that shouldn’t be in my toe and was more than happy to show me!  I tried my very best to film the procedure but unfortunately his hands were blocking the view.

In summary, even in 2013 the simplest* of surgical operations or still a bit gory, I thought by now it would be all lasers and new toes grown from stem cells. I guess humanity is ineffective and inefficient, a bit like the NHS.

Conclusion - Don’t kick chairs.

 

Go on, take 30 minutes out of your facebook and write a nice letter to Wesley Snipes in prison! Spending a lot of time off my feet and tapping on my computer sends me to some weird places on the internet, probably because I don’t have a facebook account to hear about your exciting lives.

Well, if you get bored this weekend what could possibly be more random than writing to a chap in prison, maybe you could put it on your CV? You have until the 19th og July, unless he escapes.

Wesley Trent Snipes #43355-018
FCI McKean
P.O. BOX 8000
BRADFORD, PA 16701-0980

Don’t worry, I did a quick google to make sure its legitimate as you can see here

This is how a twitter account looks if you are in prison or dead.

I am pretty sure he is enjoying prison more than I am enjoying being stuck here with crippled feet, the good news is, tiny amounts of progress…

Why don’t more of you folk use google latitude? How much joy has the little stalking box on the right there brought you? I love this stupid application, sat at my computer for hours on end, its a nice feeling to track you down and see you are sat in your office.

I demand you install latitude and send me your Google ID, If you are a stranger I will come and track you down if we get within a reasonable proximity. I think 200 miles counts.

Plus, if you are using google maps anyway, its not going to have any impact what so ever on your battery life. so do it and make me happy.

www.google.com/latitude

P.S. I saved a bat recently, that’s my good deed. Now do yours!