BenPaddon.co.uk

The Medical went very well. I had my jabs, had an x-ray, and also had some blood taken. Both were done in my right arm which is now really starting to smart. I was poked and prodded, but not to the extent that I thought I would be. It was actually pretty simple stuff, and while I was very nervous at the time in retrospect there wasn’t anything to be nervous about. Even the needle jabs weren’t anything to wince over. Well, not the vaccinations at least. The Blood Test hurt, and still hurts, and will probably continue to hurt for some time.

I gave the receptionist my Debit Card to pay for the Medical (£230! Two Hundred And Thirty Pounds!) and the card machine beeped.

“Oh,” she said. “For some reason it’s been declined.”

“Oh no,” I said. I had a horrid feeling in my gut that the Universe had conspired against me, and even though I hadn’t spent any money except for the train ticket to London (and, yes, I bought a book. A cheap book, mind!) so how my balance had gone from £300+ to less than £230 in a matter of hours boggled even me.

“We have been having trouble with this card machine,” she said. “The cable might be loose, or something.” Hoorah, a possible explanation! I asked if they take cash (they do) and rushed to the nearby Debenhams to use their cash machine. I took out the required funds, rushed back, and paid the bill. Then I had my x-ray taken again because there was a lovely thick black line through the first one. This gave me the opportunity to ask how my x-ray had turned out, and apparently it’s very good. So nothing to worry about there, then.

Before I’d gone into my Medical I had called Pooka to see if he was about, as I know he works in one of the Waterstones on Oxford Street, near where I’d had my medical. I had time to kill beforehand, and I thought hre might want to meet up for a drink or lunch or something. When I called him he’d just arrived home, and this was about twenty minutes before my Medical started anyway, so we arranged to meet up at Oxford Circus Tube Station afterwards. We wondered along Oxford Street, popping into HMV to look at Things I Can’t Affordâ„¢ (Pooka bought two CDs, because he’s a flash git like that). We then went to Subway and grabbed some lunch. I’d taken out £10 for this purpose. The meal cost £6.90 - 40p more than the same meal in Luton’s Subway, I might add - and the change from that purchase has been given to my Mum, before you accuse me of buying sweets or another book or something silly like that. I’m trying to be sensible with money right now.

Pooka and I had a good ol’ chat about a variety of things. I mentioned I’d written some haikus about Milton Keynes (two haikus, in fact, with the theme of disappointment) and that I was considering writing songs again. I gave him the plot outline for the episode of Jump Leads I’m currently writing, and he mentioned his plans to travel up to Scotland, see James perform live, twice, because he’s doing other things when they’re down in London. And, being honest, his plans are a bit tight time-wise. He’s going to be spending a lot of time on coaches and trains, which would be the ideal time to catch up on the sleep he is invariably going to miss out on.

Oh, and I introduced Pooka to Diesel, one of the finest drinks known to man. It’s a rather… fuck, I just lost the game. Anyway, it’s a rather simple mixture of half Coca Cola and Sprite (pour the Coke first, though). It’s a rather nice-tasting drink, which reminds me of how TaB used to taste way back in the day (it’s not identical, mind). Amy once questioned my sanity when I ordered Diesel on our flight to Los Angeles back in October 2005.

Time went by, and Pooka had other places to be. We bid our farewells at Kings Cross and I headed back into Luton where I waited for a bus that didn’t show up (honestly, Arriva - sort your shit out). I did buy myself a bag of Mars Planets, but only to get cash-back for a taxi-ride home (it was getting dark, and there was no way I was walking home in that).

Now I’m home, and my arm hurts.

Edit: Forgot to mention, I wanted something new to listen to on my journey in and out of London, so I decided to use the opportunity to give MC Frontalot a try. I’d avoided sampling his music because I’ve sort-of gone off of rap music lately (I have a selection of Gangsta Rap tunes on my iPod, but lately I’ve had no interest in listening to them) but I figured if I didn’t like them I hadn’t really lost anything. For thems what doesn’t know, Frontalot is a Nerdcore rapper, which means he’s not rappign about big-screen TVs, blunts, AKs and bitches. He is instead rapping about 419 email scams, file transfer protocol, the RIAA, BitTorrent and Penny Arcade. The guy is legendary and as soon as I have the cash I shall be purchasing his albums.