Forgive me please, it has been a long time since my last confession.

Something tells me it is time to write again so here we go.

In keeping with my usual style of rambling on about pointless shit, I will share something. A while ago, I cut the tip of the index finger of my left hand almost off. Using a circular saw and not being rigorously attentive, I ripped diagonally through the flesh and the nail, missing the bone by a very tiny margin. When I went to the hospital they dressed the wound and gave me a referral to the Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead, which I duly attended the following day. There, the excellent staff inspected the damaged finger, said that the partially severed tip would probably not reattach as there was no effective blood supply, then roughly inserted several stitches just for good measure.

This all happened during the height of the Covid hoax last year, and as I swore never to wear a mask, I attended the hospital without a face covering. The supposedly intelligent and educated people that worked at the hospital were still trying to enforce the ‘regulations’ imposed by the junta in Whitehall, despite there being no evidence of any kind that a) any virus exists, b) Covid is any different from any other non-existent virus. However, the junior doctor that stitched my finger was wearing her mask at half-mast, a kind of chin mask, and I appreciated that. Apart from a near-hysterical nurse in the waiting room, no one mentioned the absence of face covering that was failing to cover my face. All well and good, I thought. Following my appointment, I was told to attend again one week hence, when a plastic surgery consultant would assess the possibilities with regards to my injury.

During the intervening week, I duly bathed my injured finger daily, changing the dressing and feeling only slightly sick as I watched the barely attached flap of flesh turn black and start to smell pretty bad. They had told me that this might happen, and even if the flap did not reattach, it was a good policy to keep it in place as it would act as a natural dressing, and protect the bare flesh beneath while it grew new skin. The smell was a little bit sweet and a little bit musty, reminiscent of compost. A smell it is possible to enjoy on the garden, not so easy to like when it is coming from under the dressing on ones hand. As the bills relentlessly arrive, I continued to go to work, some days there was blood oozing through the gauze bandage that formed the top layer of my assiduously applied dressings, this I ignored and just got on with things.

Presenting myself at the hospital on time and on the correct day, one week precisely following the first visit, expecting a fairly chilled time of it, I was rudely brought back to the horrible present-day by the same crazy nurse as the week before. This woman tried to segregate me and force me to sit down the end of the corridor, away from the waiting room where my name would be called summoning me into the presence of the revered plastic surgery demi-god. Fearing that, as had occurred the previous week, I would fail to hear my name being called, I refused to move from the waiting room. A debate ensued, only slightly sotto voce, and I, as well as the other waiting rabble, could hear the staff morons trying to work out how best to humiliate me. When I asked, in my usual brusque, booming voice, if they were considering refusing me medical care because of my refusal to stifle myself behind a pointless face covering, they said that no, no one was refusing me attention, it was just that the staff had the right to only see people who adhere to the ‘regulations’. In other words, they were refusing to treat me because I wasn’t wearing a mask.

Anyway, in the end I was sent to a different consulting room to all the other patients, and made to wait there and listen to a whispered conversation outside the half-open door, debating whether my right to medical attention was debatable. Eventually, a nurse came in wearing a mask and a face visor over the top, she was one of the immigrant masses who are the only ones these days who will put up with the shit dished out by the NHS. This lady removed the dressing from my finger and washed it, I imagined this was a precursor to the visit from a consultant dressed in a full hazmat suit with breathing apparatus, who would tell me what would happen next. But this was no what happened. Instead, the nurse re-dressed my finger tip and started to give me instructions about caring for it. When I asked when the consultant was coming, she said there was no one coming to see me, when I asked if they were not coming because I wasn’t wearing a mask she glanced at the door and nodded, obviously preferring not to speak this out loud.

The point of this is, that my finger tip fell off two weeks later revealing healed scar tissue beneath. It was a relief to put it in the bin and escape the smell that had lingered around me. It is not possible to say whether a consultation with some spineless cunt of a plastic surgery wanker would have changed the outcome, probably not, but there is no sensation at all in 75% of my finger tip, and it makes typing much more difficult than it previously was. Not being able to feel the F key, by which means I used to orientate myself around the keyboard makes me mistype even more than I did before, but the first bit of writing I’ve done in months is now finished.

It is my hope that there will be more soon.