Placement

Hi guys! I have just a bout settled in Lincoln now and am used to the run of the mill activites it entails. Still bloody hot even with the rain and my rooms like an oven, never mind. Today's little rant is about my supervisor. She's lovely and been really nice but... she has an annoying habit of mispronouncing words, well not really mispronouncing words but getting them completely wrong. I'm not normally too picky at this as everyone (including myself) gets things wrong now and again, but she does it soooo many times in the same sentence and its grating on me. My particular favourite was that she wanted me to find a more pacific knee test to do on this child. Surely she meant specific but it was as if she had never even heard of the word, everything had to be more pacific or more pacifically. Another one was the old classic that she bought her equipment from home, who did she pay I thought? It turns out she brought them from home and forgot her 'r'. Anyway that probably sounds really petit but its purely the amount of times she has been doing it.

So far the placement has been good, seen quite a lot or Cerebral Palsy patients, lots with walking difficulties, seen more than enough Autistic and Asperger kids, got some Downs syndrome and meningitis patients tommorrow and some horrible progressive diseases as well which is a little depressing. The kids are all actually quite nice the parents however find the smallest things to complain about, 'does this student have to be here?', 'you aren't hurting him are you?' 'why don't you want a cup of coffee?' but seeing as i'm on a bit of a rant about people speech the single most annoying one so far has got to be when after almost every word I was saying when trying to explain to a patient why her child was in the state she was she said 'yays' some sort of way of saying yes but say it to yourself now out loud and see how stupid it sounds. Then try saying it to a friend or family member when they are telling you something but after every word they say and see how ridiculous it sounds!

Anyway good news is i'm back for the weekend so I am much looking forward to Gareth and the Botten's belated birthday piss up on Saturday and will hopefully see you then.

First Day

Very frustratingly I have just finished a mega post with loads of info on it and then my computer crashed losing it all, so I will try again but going to miss out bits.

Without boring you all too much I will try and briefly describe my first couple of days at Lincoln, at last I have the internet in my room as God knows what I would have done all day when I wasn't on placement! I arrived late on Sunday evening and after approximately 10 trips back and forth from the car unloading all my crap I was finally settled in my new home for the next month. There is evidence in the kitchen of someone else living here but no one is around at the moment. After cooking up a storm in the kitchen and finishing unpacking I was knackered so went to bed.

I will bore you with my placement stuff another time I can’t be arsed to write this bit again anyway!

After work on Monday I returned home and thought it would be a good idea to go for a wander to find the local supermarket, shops and other places to go out to. I had no idea where I was going as no one had told me where anything was so left the accommodation, turned left and hoped for the best. After a while of walking I spotted the Cathedral in the distance so decided to head for that as presumably there would be something near by. This took a little longer than I thought but I eventually got there and had a look around, it was very interesting and I will probably go back soon to go round the tour. I carried on to what was a very old style high street, cobbled streets, lots of quaint little shops. The only word I could really use to describe it was nice. It had a nice butchers, nice bakers, nice post office, nice tea room and nice souvenir shop. Nothing very exciting though so I carried on. Eventually I gave up and decided to do something I hadn’t done before…Go to the pub…on my own! Now at home I will find any excuse to go off drinking somewhere but I will not go unless I have a wing man, a drinking buddy, someone I can bore with my stories, but here I had no one. I had a string of pubs to choose from, all very old with names like, The Bell and the Python, The Bull Returns, and The Prince of Wales (No exotic dancers though, damn). I eventually settled on the Peacock and entered. To my delight a sprightly looking teen girl popped up from the bar and asked what I wanted, seizing the opportunity I pulled up a bar stool ordered my pint, swiftly followed by another and started asking her about Lincoln. Poor girl probably wanted to escape, but it was me or some old bloke who looked like father Christmas so I would like to think I was the lesser of two evils. She then informed me that Tescos was just over the hill and about 2 mins from my accommodation. So off I trotted, beer in my belly and looking to buy a few essentials.

I arrived at Tescos after what seemed like half hour later, bought a few bits including bottle of wine and 2 crates of beer (they were on special offer) and knowing I only had a 2 minute walk back thought it would be no problem. I thought wrong. The bitch sent me the wrong way. I was walking for miles, with two bloody heavy crates, a bottle of wine sticking out my pocket, a split bag of food sweating like a pig on the hottest day of the year, with no idea where I was. My arms soon felt like lead, I was having to stop every few hundred metres as it was all too heavy, I was getting tooted at by cars and shouted at by vicious yobs that must have split up for the summer! I saw a bench in the distance and thought it was a perfect resting point, when I arrived a mother was sat there with her child and as soon as I sat down puffing and spluttering she picked up her son, mumbled something under her breathe and walked to a different bench!!! I was unamused and there wasn’t even a taxi to be seen, not one anywhere! The next person I spoke to I then asked for directions to the hospital, what she must have thought with me feeling like I was about to have a heart attack, with 2 crates of beer and a bottle of wine sticking out my pocket I don’t know but she pointed the way and I carried on. All of a sudden the path disappeared and I was walking on a bloody main road, there was no where I could stop now so had to keep on going and going and going until I reached home. I walked in the door and two housemates greeted me, I had blood coming from my feet from my stupid flip flops, a broken crate of beer, split shopping bag, covered in sweat, couldn’t catch my breathe and the time was after 8o’clock I ‘d been walking for over 2 hours! They asked if I wanted to join them in the pub so feeling it would be rude to refuse I tagged along no sooner had we left the house we found a man being held down on the street outside, he had bandages all over his arms was obviously drunk or stoned or both and was ranting and raving. The other guy said he had just stopped him from running into the road. One of the guys I was with recognised him as someone who had been admitted to A&E for trying to kill himself by downing a pot of pills, he had then cut his wrists with a blade whilst in hospital and had obviously now escaped trying to finish the job. It took two of us to keep him held down while another phoned for an ambulance. When they came we continued on, and where did we end up…at the Peacock being served by the bitch who sent me the wrong way. What a first day!

Joke of the Day:

A blonde hurries into the emergency room late one night with the tip of her index finger shot off. "How did this happen?" the emergency room doctor asked her. "Well I was trying to commit suicide" the blonde replied. "What?" sputtered the doctor. "You tried to commit suicide by shooting your finger off???" "No silly!" the blonde said. "First I put the gun to my chest, and I thought: I just paid £6,000.00 for these breast implants, I'm not shooting myself in the chest. "So then?" asked the doctor. "Then I put the gun in my mouth, and I thought: I just paid £3000.00 to get my teeth straightened, I'm not shooting myself in the mouth." "So then?" "Then I put the gun to my ear, and I thought: This is going to make a loud noise. So I put my finger in the other ear before I pulled the trigger."

Watty, Walled Gardens and Wine

Well I am already getting a bit sloppy with my updates of this blog, my excuse should be that I am doing loads of reading for my next placement which starts on Monday but in truth I seem to be flitting my days away eating, sleeping and drinking with the odd bit of tennis and darts mixed in. Can't really complain I suppose. Today is the first day I have started to get a little worried about my next placement, it's going to be completely different from my last one and I would imagine that it will be a little tougher. Having had a fair bit of experience now in musculo-skeletal style injuries placements like the last one (involving lot's of fractures and rehabbing etc) felt fairly normal, this placement will involve a completely new type of anatomy...the brain. This is not going to be easy so I really did ought to start working.

Last night turned out to be one of those random nights and it was great. Requested by Lauren a night of mentalistic events (her words not mine) turned out to be just that. Starting at the club and I suddenly realised I should be in a comittee meeting, straight away I took two pints in with me which I soon finished and then asked Gareth to get me another one and bring it in (Thanks for doing that G) the looks on the other comittee members faces was quite amusing seeing a guy who obviously was not as interested in the state of the balls at club sessions and getting pissed instead. I don't think it helped I had to walk out half way through to go to the toilet as well! It then started getting late and I was thirsty again so I made a point at looking at the clock very obviously, then someone asked if I wanted to leave so I made my apologies and said I was off out. Only to be spotted sat in the bar when they finished their meeting...Whoops.

The night soon moved on and after a trip to a deserted RE bar we moved along to Watford where Kieron (the American stud) and Gareth (the Welsh casanova) went to work trying to pull the bar maid. A challenge was soon set for next week to have a 'cockfest' where they try to neck as many women as possible however their views of necking where very different...i'll let them explain that one. Unfortunately I won't be here but hopefully pictures will appear on facebook after the event.

Gareth and I then moved on to his house where he strummed on his guitar took a bottle of wine and walked to the spooky walled gardens in Eastcote before we knew it the hour had reached 3 and bed was calling, I did stop to think it might be worth finding J who was about to wake up and go off to work with him but I thought better of it. Amazingly no real hangover, a lot of tiredness but no hangover. Get in!

I will leave it at that for the day, I need to have a bit of a look at Asperger, cystic fibrosis and cerebral palsy before I go off to the bridge for a night with the ladies. I will ask them if they are alright on behalf of J and Chops. For now cheerio.

Padraig eat your heart out!

Sorry for the week's delay in updating the blog, it's been a manic few days, culminating in a weekend away in Bournemouth. Was a great couple of days even if I did absolutely bottle it in the golf. We had an 18hole crazy golf competition with about 7 of us that went. I started slowly and one guy started absolutely spanking it, everyone had already given up the chase when he had an absolute nightmare hole, for some reason he couldnt get the ball up the hill and everytime it rolled back down it flew off the back of the course resulting in an extra dropped shot. He eventually sunk the putt in 9 every one else did it in 2! It was all pretty close and on the 15th hole we thought we ought to check the scores. Incredibly only 2 shots seperated first from last and at that point I was joint leader with a few others. I had a couple of great holes and went into the last (which involved a ramp a tricky double walled zig zag) in first place a shot ahead of the pack which meant I teed off first! An awesome first stroke left me with a 3ft piss easy putt to claim the victory and the pot of money but for some reason I absolutely choked, missing it by a mile. As you can expect this resulted in a hell of a lot of barracking from the rest of the lads and for everyone that knows Nev you can imagine how loud it was, other golfers were stopping their games to see what was going on. I eventually sunk it in 3 and still hoped that it would be enough to seal victory, unfortunately one other guy sunk in 2 meaning a play off was required. I won't go into too much detail as I realise that this is actually quite boring now but... we had to play left handed and I was crap and eventually lost on the third hole. Gutted! I am sure the other lads who were there will update their blogs soon with lots more Bournemouth banter so I will leave it at that for now!

This is the start of my last week of freedom for a month, and in that spell I am pretty much guaranteed no banter and a shit lot of work which I am not really looking forward to. Going to have to cram as much into this week as possible and I should also be doing a bit of reading for the next placement as well. Oh well. I will update soon with football story and joke of the day as I know you all must be missing those features.

Where Is Everybody?

As you know I have now returned home and it's a bit of an odd feeling, no ones around. My bro is away in Dubai for 3 weeks, Daz has jetted off to Aus and Gareth and Chris are road tripping it round the U.S. There are a few Dors left but they all have jobs, long gone are the days when everyone was free all day everyday over the Summer Holidays. This might not be the worse thing in the world though, I have less than zero money at the moment so bent sessions will have to be well measured as Bournemouth and Tenerife await. Hopefully tomorrow night and Thursday will be two big ones!

On a separate note finally the summer transfer market has just starte to get interesting. More and more rumours everyday and even some potential buys for Arsenal as opposed to the constant selling rumours! I am going to start up the Football Story of the Day feature again and see if I can find anything of any interest there!

Football Story of the Day:

Now I personally don't find this very interesting and have probably gone on about this before but it's the dreaded England Captaincy that has been dragged out by the newspapers today. Ferdinand (a leading contender) thought it would be a good idea to kick a female steward and swear at Chelsea fans in full view of all the world's cameras! He is meant to be 'sentenced' today to see what type of ban/fine he will receive. This has obviously shaken up the old 'who will be next England captain' story again and to be honest, does anyone give a monkeys??

In Italy the captaincy is given to the player with the most caps playing in that game, what an great idea, there would be no constant speculation in the papers, no pressure on the manager as I am sure he has more pressing things to be worried about, like trying to qualify and mastermind a Euro 2010 win perhaps? Does it really matter who is England Captain anyway? They are all players playing for their country, mostly leaders at their own clubs, do they have to have someone with a bit of fabric round their arm to lead them to victory or can't they all do their bit and get a win that way. Also is there anyone at the moment who deserves to be captain? Leading contenders are Terry who had an abysml season last year, is constantly spotted out on the piss and cheating on his wife and is out of form, Ferdinand who kicks female stewards, misses drugs tests, swears at Chelsea fans (who I am guessing are English) Gerrard who only plays well for his one true love Liverpool, Beckham who gave up his armband for fear of losing it in the first place and may not even make the squad and finally Owen who doesn't even play football anymore does he? In summary stop boring everyone with stories about England captaincy and give it to the most capped player each game and concentrate on more important things like winning!!!!!

Joke of the day:

One night a police officer was staking out a particularly rowdy bar for possible drink driving violations. At closing time, he saw a fellow tumble out of the bar, trip on the curb, and try his keys in five different cars before he found his. Then he sat in the front seat fumbling around with his keys for several minutes. Everyone else left the bar and drove off. Finally he started his engine and began to pull away. The police officer was waiting for him. He stopped the driver, read him his rights and administered the Breathalyser test. The results showed a reading of 0.0. The puzzled officer demanded to know how that could be. The driver replied, "Tonight I'm the designated decoy.”

Placement 1 - Done!

1 down and 6 to go. Thank goodness that is over. I'm exhausted but not to worry I get a whole 2 week break before the next one so I will be returning home shortly. I'm not quite sure who will be there when I return or if there will be any bent awaiting my arrival, I'm pretty sure everyone is skipping the country or busy working, hopefully there will be some Dors around though! Not much to talk about as I am busy packing at the moment, not quite sure how I will fit it all in the Corsa mind. No gambling and football is boring, endless sagas regarding Ronaldo and Barry, Blatter doing his best to be the centre of attention and the press doing its best to destabilise the Arse! (This happens every year and no doubt at any time soon there will be a headline... Arsenal in Crisis which will have Tottenham fans saying how they will break into the top 4, which will then result in much mocking when they fail to make the top half again next year).

Home on Sunday night so I will try to get a bit more regular with my posting from then. Bye bye til then!

Rafa & Roger

WHAT A FINAL! There is no point me even discussing the tennis that was played yesterday, it was truly incredible. Great tennis from both players from start to finish. I can honestly say I was not overly bothered either way which was an odd feeling to have. After having got a reasonable amount on Rafa to win I guess I was slightly favouring him, however, you can never want a player of Roger's status to lose, he is too good and I have enjoyed watching too many of his games. As I have just read on J's Blog, it will certainly be interesting to see how he reacts, I may even look at trying to get tickets to next years final if they are still likely to be competing for it. I am lucky (or unlucky) enough to have been to a Wimbledon final previously. Just my luck it was the worse final I have ever, ever seen. Take a look at these past line ups and this one jumps out at you a mile as an absoulte shitter!

2008 - Federer v Nadal - Nadal wins possibly one of the greatest Wimbledon matches ever.

2007 - Federer v Nadal - Nadal gets close, and Federer throws a tantrum at Hawkeye

2006 - Federer v Nadal - Federer wins again but its a 4 set match with 2 tie-breaks. Great game.

2005 - Federer v Roddick - Roddick played his heart out, some great tennis but Federer too good.

2004 - Federer v Roddick - 4 sets again, 2 tiebreaks, pressure on Federer to retain his crown. Brilliant.

2003 - Federer v Philippousis - The dawn of a new era. Everyone new how good Federer was and it would have been quite something to see him pick up his first Wimbledon title.

2002 - Hewitt v Nalbandian - Pure shit from the start, cocky little Aussie vs a lanky Argentinian.

2001 - Ivanisevic v Rafter - Rafter was one of my fave players and this was an incredible game, finished on the Monday while I was in maths. Also one of the best matches I have ever seen!

2000 - Sampras v Rafter - My two favourite players to watch in a truly thrilling game, finished in darkness and Sampo picks up his last Wimbledon a true Legend!

Whats the betting if I tried to get tickets for next year that Federer will have retired, Nadal will be injured Murray will fluke his way to the final against some shit player from a country no ones ever heard of. Oh well.

On a seperate note I went to surgery today. Was brilliant. Full post on that at another time. I'm off to play tennis... it's raining....no doubt i'll be back soon!

I'm Back

Sorry for any of you that might have thought I'd topped myself after my last post. Reading it back I was in a pretty foul mood so sorry for that whinging post and let's hope this one is a little better! I haven't had time to post during the week due to being exceptionally busy. My supervisor on my placement has left which has left everyone in the lurch, this has meant that I have basically been bumped up to a more senior physio position in my first placement which has inevitably been extremely stressful. I have had to get up early and arriving back home late only to have to do an exceptionally large amount of reading before going to bed again and starting it all again the next morning. Now having never worked full-time properly I am finding this a bit of a struggle. On the ward I have been given chief resposibility of the ladies half (about 12 patients) and it's been going OK so far. Next week my new supervisor is in meetings all day meaning I am going to be in sole charge of the physiotherapy aspect of the ward a whole 26 people, which I can imagine will be a little stressful. Some amusing stories from the ward this week involved a gentleman in a sideroom remove the curtains from his window, remove his clothes and then continue to rub himself, this is bad enough but he decided to do this at visiting hours so things got a little awkward as you can imagine. Also bear in mind that this is an elderly medical ward that I am on so not a pretty sight! Another was an elderly lady that came up to me and whispered that unless I let her go she would be forced to call the police and get the 'heavies' on me. Although dementia is a horrible illness it does make for some very interesting conversations particularly when there are more than one on a ward, as not only do they end up arguing with eachother and people that aren't there they even manage to argue with the other person's invisible aquaintance, its a very odd sight!

On a separate note I have managed to play in a tennis match for a small local club, unfortunately I had a bit of a nightmare and after a promising start I completely fell to pieces. Not helped by the fact my partnet had a mare and the opposition were cheating obese tossers, but thats beside the point, I was terrible and hope to improve very soon. One thing I did find rather funny was how different the Middlesex League runs to the Cleveland league. Firstly there are almost double amount of teams in Cleveland league, and you play each team twice. All sets are played to 10 and if it gets to 10all its a tie. I can't stand it, it is such a stupid idea give me Middlesex tennis any day. Firstly if its a very one sided game, do you really want to get stuffed 10-0? 6-0 is bad enough in a normal set but 10-0 is enough to make you want to give up tennis for good, secondly if you go a considerable amount of games down although it gives you extra time to get back into it, you are quite often so down hearted you still end up losing. In the event of a close game, you could end up fighting all the way to the wire only to draw 10-10, what use is that to anyone? You have ended up playing for ages and ages only to draw with the opposition? Where's the tie break, it's there for a reason so get a winner at the end of the set! Finally try playing three sets to 10. It takes forever! Even if you win (or lose) quickly you still have to wait for the other pairs to finish before you can start the next one. You don't end up finishing the evening til after 10 o'clock! P.S. I also played a guy in the Cleveland league last week that was wearing an ankle tag! He called my serve out, it was clearly on the line.... I didn't argue!

Gambling

Things are looking good on this front at the moment. I made a decent amount on Spain and David Villa, even after laying them just before the game. Nadal has made it through to the final so I have the dilema again whether to let the bet ride or to get some money back either way. Also Chopper has recently informed me that QPR are now favourites to get promoted, I made a couple of bets a while ago that they would get promoted to the Premiership this year/win the Championship and the odds have plumeted since. I shall certainly be laying them though, with Ian Dowie in charge I still think the odds are against them.

Holidays

Its that time of year where I am sat in my conservatory creating this latest blog entry with rain beating down on the roof... British Summer. Everyone's facebook status seems to be changing to So and so is going on holiday or So and so had a wicked time in Malia and it is making me rather jealous, particularly as a couple of friends are jetting off to America and another friend to Australia soon if not already. Won't be long though til our holiday arrives so I can't wait.

Sorry this is a bit of a disjointed post, I still have loads of work to do so better get to it! Home next week though so I hope guys at home have lots of benter planned, my darts is coming on though, inspired by Justin Lee Collins' attempt at becoming a pro player oh and the Las Vegas Darts of course!