Odds and Ends

Half a day on duty at the hospital, half a day running around in preparation for the overseas trip, half a day lunching with old mates from my paid working days. Wow, that makes one and a half days in one day; how did I fit it in?
Nothing much to report from the hospital where it was business...and busy...as usual. One very good looking young Irishman amongst the admissions otherwise nothing out of the ordinary. The Religious Sisters were all agog about this weekend's preliminary final football games. It is interesting how closely they follow the football. They have their favourite teams, almost without exception the old inner city foundation clubs. Must have something to do with the convents they were cloistered in decades past or else it is a question of tradition.

Spent a lot of time purchasing a new birth certificate from the Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages to use in my passport renewal. My existing birth certificate was purchased in 1986 and comprised a certified photograph of the actual handwritten registration entry from 1949. It is a bit difficult to read some of the hand writing so I decided to obtain a new certificate thinking it would be of the modern typed style as in the photograph above. What a waste of money...and time...with the new certificate yet another photograph of my registration, only more smudged! How strange that the birth certificate in the photograph above for a birth in 1857 is the contemporary typed style but mine for a birth nine decades later is a smudged photograph.

After my tilt with the RBDM it was off to lunch at Hyde Park Barracks Cafe. I had never eaten there before. The cafe is a mix of faux posh and casual and pleasant enough. We were served by a young woman who I'd guess is a working holiday maker from Europe or South America and a rather stiff young man who...frankly my dear...was as gay as a cucumber. (A friend of mine once used that expression back in the 1980s to describe Cliff Richard and I've been waiting all these years to use it myself.) Three of us ordered the Altantic Salmon daily special and the fourth ordered the Ravioli pasta daily special only to be told that the last one had just been sold so he went for the Duck Omelette instead. When I told Ja earlier where I would be lunching she asked innocently whether my friends were in the army. Ja loves a man in uniform!

Returned home late in the afternoon to find a slip from the Post Office informing me they were holding a registered article for my collection. I raced down to them before closing time and was given a large envelope full of (more) photographs this time not of my birth but of my body. These were the full body close up photographs taken last July which the Skin and Cancer Foundation will use to monitor my health. I can't describe how gross it is looking at these photos; not a pretty sight.