Geoff is back, alright *MOW MOW MOW MOW MOW MOW MOW, MOW MOW MOW MOW*

Everyboooooody now,

Yea-eaaaaa,

Read my blogy now,

Yea-eaaaaa,

Everybooooody now,

Read my blogy right *mow mow mow mow mow mow*.

Etc...

Soooooooooo, it's been a while hasn't it. Sadly my life has been most full, most full of generally shitty things that have made me sad and frankly this blog is not the place to be sad. It's the place for FUNK.

And in the absence of funk, an attempt at witty satire about my medical studenty life will have to suffice.

So going back a muchos longos timos to Tommy, well what can I say? It's a terrible show, essentially, is what I have to say. However we did succeed in being conspicuously loud, with guitar amps the size of Sam's bank balance and a snare drum made entirely from a unique NASA-designed loudness creating polymer consisting of 3 parts CRACK and 6 parts SMACK. Unbeknownst to me, poor Samuel spent the first 6 nights being deafened by a speaker that, inexplicably, not only amplified exclusively the sounds from my keyboard but also amplified them to the high heavens. Unfortunately due to its position, WITHIN SAM'S VERY BRAIN, Sam could ONLY hear me and I could not hear me at all. This resulted in some dangerously loud piano playing and some dangerously loud drumming. Sadly for all, my piano playing is a load of gash and so I apologise now to all those that endured it.

On the plus side, I did get a huge STEINHOPFENSCHLOFFEN (which is my pseudo-German word for large glass recepticle for beer) as a present from the cast. On a further negative side, however, I also got THE PLAGUE as an additional present from the cast. The plague hit me on the Friday evening before the last performance as I sat around in the med school luncheon area and noticed that I was shaking dramatically and could no longer feel my hands. This swiftly progressed into a deeeep chesty cough with associated pericarditis, mucosal haemorrhage and, predictably, The AIDS. To make matters worse, the next day had a matinee performance, so I had to the prospect of sitting in a bleak orchestra pit all day, exuding mucous onto my keyboard, likely shorting it out and setting the whole theatre on fire.

Except that the theatre is helpfully made entirely of carcinagous asbestos.

Fortunately there exists such a thing, as Dr Carroll will tell you forever, as the placebo effect. I therefore went to boots at 1:59 (Matinee starting at 2:00) to purchase Placebo (a.k.a Beechams Cold & Flu, and Covonia cough mixture) and to pick up my life saving inhalers.

Knowing, of course, that I was in a rush, the pharmacist continued to chat to her previous customer about, I dunno, casual sex or some such, for around 20 minutes after I handed in my prescription and so the likelyhood was that I'd be late for the start of the show. I therefor ran through town, being hindered the whole way by a) my eosinophilic lungs and b) a matrix-esque promenade of people walking in the opposite direction, to the theatre in order to avoid anal rapage by Nathan.

When I arrived, however, I discovered that something important, such as the stage curtain, or maybe the doors of the theatre, had broken and so we sat around for another 40 minutes making idle chit chat about politically incorrect things such as the worthlessness of old grannies (which was, without our knowledge, being picked up by the microphones and broadcast to the old grannies in the audience) until the show started.

And that's all there is to say about Tommy really, boring hey? I won't mention 'the dark day' that happened during the week when every member of the band fell out with each other, largely due to the fact that I smacked a tennis ball in Hywel's face and that the guys left MacDuff! (Pam's name is always written as MacDuff!) standing around in the freezing cold for 40 minutes because they forgot to tell her about the court. Amusingly this did cause Hywel to smash his tennis raquet on the floor in a rage and leave it in a nearby bin. Guess you had to be there.

So paediatrics then? What's the deal there.

Well it's been really good actually. Yes i am now ill AGAIN thanks to the snot nosed brats, and I damn near lost the will to live after the 80th time that Dr Carroll told me I was wrong when I was definitely right but I still feel like this is the speciality for me.

Highlights have included:

Having a community paediatrician attachment in what I can only assume was an old abandoned mental asylum, with bars on the windows and white tiled walls. The consultation room was made entirely of pointy metal objects and unnecessarily child-accessible scolding hot water taps, perhaps installed to test the vigilance of parents. I was, as ever, exceedingly ill on this day so spent much of it seeking the warmth of radiators, microwave ovens and workmen's armpits so I learned more or less nothing except: Do not become a community paediatrician.

Finding out that one of my classmates decided to stick an epipen in his leg (for those of you who have not seen an epipen, the needle is FU*KING HUUUUUUGE and, in this case was dripping with adrenaline after Dr Carroll savagely injected a chair with it to demonstrate it's viciousness) without flinching and without ever giving an explanation.

Correcting the ever-correct Dr Carroll on his knowledge of the mode of action of penicillin and then again on his knowledge of the action of macrolide antibiotics. Geoff 1 - Carroll 50.

I have mentioned before that there are 3 golden rules of paediatrics. 1. Always plot the height and weight on an appropriate centile chart, 2. Always check the urine, 3. Something complicated about the thing that involves the most work being the thing that needs doing. Now throughout paediatrics I have also come up with new rules, which I attempted to use humorously in a presentation I gave this morning but evidently failed.

The 4th Rule Of Paediatrics:

In one of our first lectures, Dr C asked 'Deerface' to multiply their weight (88kg) by some random number, like pi to 6 digits or something. Now, because up to this point Dr C had been extremely jokey, fun and relaxed, the boy in question replied 'ppffffftttt, can't be bothered'. At this point the room turned eerily cold, a haze of fog began to cover the floor and the lights began to flicker.

Dr C: Well then you can get out.
Deerface: Hehehe
Dr C: Get out of my lecture
Deerface: Hehe, to work it out?
Dr C: No, if you can't be BOTHERED to answer my questions then you can get out. I'm a nice guy, but I won't tolerate that.
Deerface: Oh I'm sorry it was a joke.
Dr C: I put alot of work into this teaching I don't expect such INSOLENCE
Deerface: but but but...
Bolts of lightning then erupted from Dr Cs hands, turning Deerface into a pile of smoking dust.
Dr C: OK, now can anybody else be bothered to work this out?

Thus the 4th rule of paediatrics is: No matter how complicated the calculation, you must always work it out in the lecture.

The 5th Rule Of Paediatrics:

As I've mentioned before, I have consistantly been shut down by lecturers for having the wrong answer when I know I've been correct and this is generally due to the fact that adult physicians (i.e. those that work with adults, not those rare few who are above the age of 12) LIE and the only people who know what they are talking about are Paediatricians.

This came to a head in the following situation

Dr Knowseverything: So, what causes cardiac murmers?
Me: Turbulent blood flow.
Dr K: NO! That doesn't make any sense. Who remembers their A-level physics?
Me: Me
Dr K: Well Sound is a type of ENERGY
Me: ...no it isn't...
Dr K: Can energy be created or destroyed
Me: ...well no but sound isn't a...
Dr k: Therefore how can turbulent blood flow create sound energy
Me: ...by setting up vibrations in the heart wall that are transmitted to air and perceived by us as sound...
Dr K: It Can't!
Me: ...but but but...
Dr K: Now, we all know that electricity flowing through resistance forms heat.
Me: ...yeees..
Dr K: So blood flow through a resistance creates sound.
Me: ...only because it's turbulent...
Dr K: So don't let any of those 35 or so distinguished lecturers you've had who know about this LIE to you any longer. They are wrong and I am right.

So the 5th rule of paeds is: You are always wrong, especially when you are right.

And the 6th rule is, as ever. NEVER talk about Fight Club.

Anyway paediatrics is awesome and my only regret is I have another 10,000 years of adult medicine left before I get to specialise in it.

As for the rest of my life, well, Sam is leaving so I have nowhere to live as I need to find somewhere that I can fit my piano. and no, I will not sell my piano it is too beautiful. However I'm sure he may find it hard to move WHEN HE HAS NO LEGS... MUAHAHAHAHAHAHA. *cough*

Also my car blew up, bless it. I was driving along and heard some banging noises, so I looked in the rear-view to see who i'd crushed this time and saw nothing. On looking back ahead I couldn't help but notice the plumes of smoke from the bonnet and the newly formed dents from exploding engine in the metal work.

Unhelpfully, the garage then LIED (as if they were an adult physician) and tried to make out that i couldn't get my £2,000 scrappage bonus unless the car was in working order. As such I agreed to let them fix the immediate problem (shattered radiator) so i could drive it to a dealer and buy a new car. They then rang and said that sadly the car is totally screwed and so I can't do anything with it. They then 'kindly' offered me £200 for the car if i handed it over to them.

Being a niave upper middle class village boy, I graciously accepted this offer and went about looking for cars made of tin-foil that I might be able to afford without the precious £2,000 discount. However Sam, ever the country-leaving betrayer/awesome friend, was suspicious and so rang up some dealers to check it out. Apparently even if the car has been crushed into a cube you can still take it for the scrappage discount provided you have an MOT (which I do) and you've owned it for >12 months (which I have).

LYING PIKIE MOTHERCR*SHING MECHANIC C*NT BAS*ARDS.

Anyway Big Sam shouted at them for me and it's all ironed out. Except I can't work out which car to buy as the Fiat 500 is made entirely of the type of plastic you expect to find inside a Christmas selection box and the dealer knew absolutely sod all about the car during the test drive. Sadly, all other cars are about £2,000 more than I wanted to spend :(

Oh and finally, Joe & Nikki's wedding.

Firstly it was absolutely lovely and I had a great time.

Secondly they did that standard religious person trick of pulling out the 'cool' religious music that has drums and guitar and then using a public speaker guy who made 100 valid points about love and marriage and then swifty at the end half mumbled 'because of Jesus' in an attempt to convince us. 'Hmm' I though, 'that does make sense, maybe Jesus IS within us all'. 'Oh wait, there is absolutely no evidence at all that he exists and every argument for his existence is a total load of gash'

Except I never really thought this, because the futility of pro-religious argument is so deeply ingrained within me that I wouldn't even consider it for a second.

Anyway, clearly it made them both very happy yada yada. Furthermore the wedding was totally saturated with BEAUTIFUL, TALENTED FRIENDS who i've not seen in A THOUSAND YEARS and MISS TERRIBLY ALREADY. This reminded me that maybe I should give up with medicine and Nottingham in a Sam-esque fashion and move to London, live in a box and see these guys more often because it would make me happy.

Maybe.

So there we are, perhaps my next blog will be a) sooner b) interesting.

Donations to the Geoff has no Car and no House fund can be sent to:

Poor Geoff :(
PO Box 12345
Boston
Lincolnshire
PL3 45E god never send me there

Tommy can you hear me? No, oh well then we should investigate you using evoked otoacoustic emission...

Geoff is back ALRIGHT, *synth*

Good morning, my pretties, I hope you have all been well, I sit here on hour 1 of this Friday's Pointlessly Long Gap Between Lectures Extravaganza (TM) and, though I should be learning about neonatal jaundice & gastrointestinal problems I am faaaar too lazy and feel a blog is the best way forward.

So what thrilling events have occurred since our last chat?

Well at the beginning of this week I had my first real interaction with kiddies, in what is called a 'Developmental Assessment Session'. What this involves, in reality, is sitting down with kids for 3 hours and playing with toys. At first this was reasonably scary

Me: But whyyyy have you handed me this Mr Potato Head husk, that lacks in all limbs and appendages?
18 month old child: *SCREAMS OF JOY*
Me: But but this serves me no useful purpose. I cannot calculate my mortgage repayments with this!
Child looks at me imploringly, waiting for me to do something with toy
Me: Do you not understand me, man? Can you not cogitate than use of such frivolous things is below my extreme intellect?

You know that bit from Jurassic Park where the previously cute dinosaur tilts it's head to one side, hisses and spits BURNING ACID into that fat guy's face? Well children do this manoeuvre too, only it's not acid it's tears, tears and screaming.

Child: WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
All parents/doctors turn to look to see what, the f*ck, I have just done to this child and whether I should be sent to prison forever.
Me: Shitshitshitshitshitshitshit

At this point, as though 'Jesus' himself, and by Jesus I mean millions of years of evolution, had injected the thought into my brain i instinctively picked up the dead remnants of Mr Potato head and peered through one of the holes left behind by his severed limbs.

The child immediately perked up and started laughing. To the max.

The next 24-48 hours were spent with us taking it in turns to look through the holes in Mr Potato Head and mirth was had by all. Especially the parents, who all escaped to some kind of amusement park and got WASTED on vodka.

Probably.

This session made me realise how awesome fun children are when you just give up trying to think logically and do random things with random stuff. A particular Northerner in my group spent a good deal of time cooking a yellow plastic cup in an oven, for some reason, and had a whale of a time; this being said, cooking fake food in a non functioning oven is likely the staple of northern entertainment when there is no coal around (and, these days, there never is so) the fun may have had little to do with the child.

The next day I was timetabled to go to 'Special School'. Now for those of you who were EVER a schoolchild you will know that the word 'special' must always be pronounced with ones tongue firmly embedded under their bottom lip and then followed up with some extremely un-PC grunting noises. This is the way it has always and shall forever be, at least until they think up another word for 'Special' people.

Political correctness in the naming of children who are, let us say, less mentally on the ball than they might otherwise be, is a particular bug-bear of mine. This stems from when we had a GEM 'Multidisciplinary Learning Day' where we were forced at gun point to attend and the nursing students (who were neither smoking hot, dressed in bikinis, or 18 years old as had been advertised to us) were given a casual suggestion that they might want to turn up. As a result: Sausagefest. Anyway at this day we had to sit through an hour long lecture on what the right words to use are. We were told that as each term came along, it gradually got used in a derogatory sense - making out that having 'learning difficulties' (as it should be called, apparently) was a bad thing.

NEWS FLASH: Having an IQ below 50 IS A BAD THING! Under no circumstances is it a good thing!

So Mental Retard is out (even though that scientifically describes the condition; as their mental development is slowed, or retarded), as is Mental Disability, as is Learning Disability. The new term, as I mentioned above, is Learning Difficulties. The plural is important here because if you have a Learning DifficultY then you just have something like dyslexia, or AIDS or whatever. If you have Learning DifficulTIES then you are much more severely handicapped. Though, you can't use the word handicapped either because that implies that people should be pitied.

NOTE: If I am ever in a car accident and lose my ability to function at a highish level. PLEASE DO PITY ME. IT WILL SUCK, I WILL BE VERY ANNOYED ABOUT IT.

Now my real anger towards this (that you may have noticed) stems from the fact that one of the lecturers, who i was inclined to believe had a few learning difficulties of her own, kept using the following phrase: 'Now this girl/boy had severe and MULTIPLE learning difficulties'. With huge emphasis on the multiple. The issue here is that DIFFICULTIES IS PLURAL, BY DEFINITION YOU HAVE TO HAVE MULTIPLE LEARNING DIFFICULTIES.

I may not have got across quite how annoying that was there so you doubtless think i'm insane, but I care not.

I'd also like to point out that I have huge admiration for everyone who works with these children and for the children themselves, who have been dealt rather a shady set of cards in life and deserve the best treatment possible. What annoys me is the airy fairy types who spend all their days thinking of the nicest way to describe the people and spend no time at all helping them in a useful way.

I digress.

So the school. Firstly I was thwarted by Miss Satnav who decided to take me via Milan and the Hanging Gardens Of Babylon before delivering me at the school (just round the corner from the hospital I go to every day and know exactly how to get to much more quickly). What's that, you say? Use a frikking map you moron? Well shhh!

The school had just been rebuilt with a government grant and was hyper wyper sniper fancy, it had been thoughtfully designed so that noone could get lost; e.g. it was in a big circle, had wide corridors for wheelcairs, had colour coded areas so that people who couldn't read could find where they needed to be and was generally top notch.

Nice work there, Labour, sorry to hear the Chavs who read the Sun won't be supporting you anymore for some arbitrary reason, but they'll be laughing on the other side of their burberry wearing faces when the Connies shut down all public funding for anything, including their precious benefits. That said, they don't turn up to vote anyway, so it probably won't make any difference.

I was soon ushered off to THE OTHER SIDE OF THE UNIVERSE by a bus from the 1830s that ran on steam, to go swimming. It has been a long time since I went to the public swimming baths and all I could generally remember was the fact you went in healthy, at some point found a random used plaster attached to your face and came out with varuccas a gogo. This may well still turn out to be the case from this encounter but what I'd missed in my memories was the joy of swimming and, furthermore, the joy of swimming with kids who aren't all that great at swimming (at this school, 'kids' go up to the age of 21).

Why joys? Because when you get success their faces light up like Lewis Barlow in a rehearsal break and there is much clapping and smiling. Sadly the clapping usually causes the kids to begin to drown and floats have to be swiftly administered to avoid death by pneumonia. On the way back from swimming an extremely cute boy cuddled up next to me on the bus and fell asleep fiddling with my watch.

My watch is now broken.

The afternoon was spent helping the kids eat dinner and then attending a French lesson. Sadly, my French was worse than theirs, despite them being unable to recall the meaning of 'au revoir', mere, pere, frere, soere or really anything else ending with 're' (which, in French, is EVERYTHING). I then helped the make bookmarks and then f*cked the hell off home 40 minutes early because Matt, the other medical student with me, had swanned in at 9:30 (I was there from 8:30) and spent the morning, so far as I can tell, chatting up the teachers with great success.

Pffft, just because he's attractive, hmph.

On Wednesday I was with The Health Visitor that, if she'd been a cybernetic robot from the future, would be an excellent premise for a film. Sadly she was not so the day was mainly spent with my face up Mr Potato Head's backside amusing children while she weighed their newborn sibling. I did notice, in my travels, that Postman Pat has made quite the come back. He was reasonably popular back in Nineteen Aught Six when I was a lad, but nowerdays he's bloody everywhere. One kid even had a Postman Pat massive doll thing, that wore a helmet with headset microphone and actually talked. He looked like Neo from the Matrix he was that cool.

Sorry kids but, in reality, the Post Office are a TOTAL LOAD OF GASH and can only be relied upon to go on strike when you'd really rather they didn't.

And that's all I have to say really, except that as of tomorrow we shall be in full swing for Tommy at the Nottingham Arts Theatre, Tickets are on-sale now (probably). It's a show about a boy who becomes deaf dumb and blind, (though he's not REALLY deaf dumb and blind, he is just unresponsive to auditory or visual stimuli and doesn't speak) whose f*ckup parents take him to a drug dealer, a car mechanic, the oracle, David Hasslehoff and a variety of other people before seeing a real doctor. In the meantime he gets raped by just about everyone in his family and then becomes amazing at pin ball. He then gains the ability to see hear and talk (he is freed from his 'strange vibration land', yes that's right, The Who, keep on smoking those drugs, they're clearly good for you) and gains god-like status due to his pin ball skills.

HE PLAYS PINBALL PEOPLE, GET A FRIKKING LIFE!

*cough*

Anyway, the script is terrible and the music is reasonably terrible but a lot of people put a lot of work into it and, most importantly, Hywel is going to be playing and it will ROCK YOUR FRIKKING SOCKS OFF. Furthermore, Graeme Crawford, an extremely talented singer and actor, is playing one of the lead roles so he is worth seeing too.