I’ve spent a lot of time over the past few weeks thinking about my next album, how I want it to sound, what songs I want to record, the mix of new and slightly older songs and so on.

I finally settled on what I want to do and on Saturday morning recorded the first raw track.

Everything was going fine.

And then the pain started in my back and side. Just like that. No warning, I didn’t slip, fall, twist or otherwise do anything that might be regarded as movement and certainly nothing that would bring on serious pain every time I drew a breath.

Around about 6pm I’d had enough and set out to A&E to get myself checked out. I was there for over six hours before the final diagnosis came back that I have pleurisy. In between I’d seen 3 nurses and a doctor, had blood taken twice, an x-ray, an ECG, blood pressure and quite a lot of prodding and poking.

Before I set off I was reasonably convinced I wasn’t going to die and was pretty sure it wasn’t anything serious but spend enough time in A&E and you’ll convince yourself that might not be the case. At the very least the Saturday night A&E crowd might easily convince you that you might not want to go on sharing this planet with the same people you’re sharing the waiting room with.

For example, as I left just after midnight it was really starting to kick off. The Police brought in a woman who was keen to tell everyone, and quite loudly, that she’d been sexually abused at the Police station and the two unfortunate officers who brought her in were, in her considered opinion, not of married parentage.

She joined the couple, her in a wheelchair, him on crutches, who sat and ate more food than I would normally eat in a week. I did think that her chances of making out of the wheelchair weren’t helped by the incredible quantity of food and drink she consumed waiting to be seen.

No-one, myself included, could work the drinks machine and yet none of us felt it was worth making this issue known to the staff. I can only assume that everyone, like me, reasoned that it was going to be a futile waste of time and wouldn’t actually solve anything and so resigned themselves to going without refreshment.

The nurse who told me that in her opinion the NHS was beyond saving and should be shut down had fortunately for her already left and gone home as I really did think she was close to running amok in the waiting room killing everyone there. Her opinion of the waifs and strays requiring her skills, present company excepted of course, was not high. We could stick our worthless weekly Covid clapping and no amount of pay was going to change the fact that the system was bound for hell in a very rickety handcart.

The doctor, who it should be said was great, sighed loudly and looked heavenward for guidance when told that the patient who had flounced off several hours ago expressing the opinion that the boat the doctor stepped off the day before didn’t have a medical school onboard was now back outside demanding to be treated or she was certainly going to take the matter further.

In between I did manage to catch up on several episodes of Fargo on Netflix on my iPad, so it wasn’t all a waste of time.

The pleurisy? Medical opinion is that it will go away in it’s own good time. Meanwhile take Ibuprofen and should the symptoms continue feel free to return. Thankfully today I feel quite a lot better so maybe I won’t need to go to A&E today.

As for the album, maybe I’ll re-start that tomorrow.