Thursday 25 September 2025: Book 11 begins

I had my latest dermatology appointment yesterday at 11am, which should have given us plenty of time to get there. But we both overslept. That’s what happens when we turn the Snooze off and choose Dismiss or Cancel instead! We had time for a dirty cuppa and I did a bit of housework stuff. And over my cuppa I caught up on social media.

Off we headed, again in very good time, to the hospital, but the poet had to drop me at the gate while he went to find a parking space. Car parking at this hospital is terrible, but it’s better for him to drive me and do the driving around rather than me risk missing the appointment. I checked in at the self-check-in thing at the front of the hospital and by the time I’d made the long walk to the back of the building, I was bang on time.

I sat down where the self-check-in thing told me to sit and 5 minutes passed. Then 10 minutes. At 15 minutes, the poet turned up, having only driven around the car park once before finding a spot. After 20 minutes had passed, I thought I’d better make sure that the self-check-in had in fact checked me in. It had, but it had sent me to the wrong waiting room. The Receptionist directed me to the correct waiting room, where I sat for another full 5 minutes before someone noticed me.

“Have you got an appointment?” she asked. Yes, I said. “What is the appointment for?” I told her. “And what is your name?” When I gave her that, she pulled a face and said, “But your appointment was at 11 o’clock.” I told her I’d been waiting for half an hour and when she asked where I’d been waiting and I told her, she went marching off to have a word with the Receptionist.

Now, I understand that perhaps the technology doesn’t work quite as well as it should, but if you remember, THEY kept me waiting for well over an hour and a half at my previous appointment and then threw their toys out the pram when I mentioned it. Yet I was ON TIME for this appointment. It’s not my fault their systems don’t work. It’s not my fault if no one notices someone they haven’t checked in clearly waiting in their waiting room. It’s not my fault that they’re one of the poorest performing NHS hospitals in the county.

Their incompetencies, and there are many, are not my fault. Yet she was quite happy to make me feel guilty about being late, when I wasn’t, and at one point I thought she was going to send me packing. At which point I would have told them to shove their appointments where the sun doesn’t shine and then asked my GP to send me to Barnsley or Worksop instead.

She was quite surly and not at all friendly, until I mentioned that I can’t go out in the sun very often because I’m a vampire. (This light therapy is ultra violet light therapy, a stand-up sun-bed, basically.) Then she laughed and she seemed to relax. I do know they’re very over-worked at the hospital, and I know that a central contact department makes far too many unrealistic appointments for the skeleton staff they have there. But while I don’t blame the staff, perhaps the staff should try not to blame the patients either.

We had a good appointment in the end, with me helping to fill out the appointment card for my 24 light therapy sessions starting in November, 3 times a week. And she confirmed that the 2 prescription items I was given last time, which are the only things that have worked, are on repeat prescription and I should be able to get them from my GP. One of the items is an aerosol spray that doesn’t last very long but it’s over £15 a pop (apx $20). The poet is already buying me honey soap that costs nearly £11 a bar (apx $15), plus p+p. I know some people spend that on cosmetics in the blink of an eye, but I never have.

When we got home, I had to rush and bring some washing in off the line as it was raining, and the poet had to rush and make himself something to eat to take with him back to work. After he’d gone, I had my own late breakfast, I put what washing I could through the tumble dryer, I emptied the clothes horse and folded all of that washing, and I hung the rest of the damp washing up on the clothes horse.

For the rest of the day I fiddled with the next book, Book 11, for the great novella challenge. I have to write between 15,000 and 30,000 words before end of play next Tuesday, and I decided to go for it with a Lady Mathilda cosy mystery, at last. This will be Lady M’s first book. If she turns into a Victorian lady, instead of a Regency lady, it might just turn out to be a bit of a Gothic.

All being well, I’ll be working on that all day today too. Although I also have 2 book reviews to write up and schedule at some point.

Late the night before I’d sent an email asking if the time travel study along in October was happening. A reply was waiting for me saying they’d had to cancel it due to lack of interest for the in-person workshop in Vegas, which was what I suspected. At least now I know I don’t have a workshop with 3 assignments in the middle of October. Saying that, there are 2 other time travel workshops I have in my account, neither of which is ‘live’, so I can’t submit the assignments for them. But I can still do the assignments if I want to.

I made a new ‘currently reading’ graphic for a book I’m reading for myself, rather than for NetGalley. I do still have a massive backlog there, but I find if I read a book for pleasure every 2 or 3 books, then I’m more in the mood when it’s a review book to read.

Today’s illustration has nothing to do with today’s blog post, but it’s another FREE image from DepositPhotos, courtesy of adam40607. We have a few chaffinches in our garden this year, certainly more than we usually have.