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To hospital this morning to get my bloods done ahead of my 6 monthly meeting with my oncologist. I got in early after dropping the kids off at school, cos if you leave it too late you can be queuing for an hour. If you've very lucky you can sometimes get seen straight away and be back to your car within the 20 minutes of free parking time. It's unlikely. If you take 21 minutes it costs you £3.70.
Regardless of whether it's morally reprehensible to charge patients for hospital parking, it feels like a huge victory to avoid that fee. It really only favours though who are dropping someone off (but then who needs to park?), so if you can get your appointment in and get back to the car in time you really are smashing the leaching hospital parking fat cats in the face.
Sadly it took me about ten minutes to actually park once inside the car park as the cars in front were moving and parking very slowly.I don't know why they didn't all just head to the higher floors where parking would likely be easy, but this was eating into my parking time AND my chances of getting seen quickly. The stupid fuckers.
Finally into the hospital and the bloods room seemed pretty empty, so much so that I was nervous about going for a wee after checking in lest I miss my spot. I was seen within five minutes and quickly out of there, but when I got to the ticket machine it revealed it had been 26 minutes since I entered the car park. It's not my fault that it took ten minutes to park. They should take it from when your car is stationary, not when you enter. I want my money back.
Anyway hopefully my blood is OK.
Out for Halloween tonight, with my son dressed as Batman - though a Batman who thought it was funny to say "willy" over and over again, which I actually think would improve the movies. He has got to the stage where he never tires of saying rude things repeatedly, a phase that I remember going through from the ages of 4 until now. My son is truly my punishment for my own childhood. When I was his age I couldn't understand why adults got annoyed at me saying "wee wee, poo poo, bottom" over and over, but now I understand their frustration. Maybe I understood if then too, but that was the point. Things were mixed up a bit this morning at school as Ernie just kept repeating the word Halloween all the way in and finally got up on a little bench with two of his classmates who joined in the refrain. Absolutely exhausting. They won't listen to reason. You can't have a conversation with them. It's fantastic.
Phoebe was a purple minion and though she's only eight, she suddenly looks really tall and it felt like her Halloweening days might be approaching an end (though there were several groups of teenagers out for free sweets tonight, though there was the lack of the innocent edge to them). While Ernie was full of annoying mischief, Phoebe took it very seriously and determinedly, but also stuck to the rules: only taking one sweet from each house and being polite and grateful. At one house they'd gone to town and someone had dressed as a clown with neon lights on his face and he was prowling the front garden and screaming every now and again and the house owner was in a freaky mask and they put on quite a show. Phoebe found this one too scary and again there was a bit of an edge to it, so I don't blame her. Superb effort, provided no kids are found actually buried in that garden at some point.
Mostly it just struck me how quickly the last year has gone and how much the kids have changed in that time. It's our 7th Halloween in the village, which seems impossible, though we didn't go out for the first one or two. Soon we will all be actual skellingtons, rather than wearing skellington onesies.
