My Computer Makes My Head Hurt

Last weekend we went to Center Parcs, which we do most years. Among other activities we played badminton, where we have reached a fairly respectable standard and tennis, at which we are getting better! Sadly we plumbed new depths with our table tennis, though in my defence the last time I played that particular game was over 15 years ago and then it was on a moving ship (which is an interesting experience). 

This year our accommodation had no wi-fi and as the phone signal at Center Parcs is virtually non-existent I switched my phone off and left it off, which was actually quite liberating. 

Our accommodation, like the lodge above had no wi-fi.

Later, when we were in wi-fi range in Rajinda Pradesh, all three other members of the family whipped out their phones or iPods and started scrolling through Facebook and I suppose I might have too had I not left mine in the villa. On the whole not being permanently connected is not, contrary to what some people may think, the end of the world.

Connectivity was restored with the curry.

On returning home I found that our PC had gone into sulk mode and was refusing to co-operate. I switched it on and it threw some sort of fatal looking error.

I launched repair mode and it booted up, only to totally lock up with nothing responding. A couple of repairs and reboots later and it looked OK, but the next morning it played up again. I was trying to transfer some photos to a memory card when it froze. It refused all attempts to use Task Manager, it refused to respond to the mouse or the keyboard. It refused to respond to bribes or threats, to pleading or to begging. I ran the repair tool to no avail; it even actually rebooted in the middle of repairing itself and said the error was terminal, fatal even. Then it wouldn't switch on.  

When it did switch on it suggested that I do something that required it to be working properly in the first place if I were to comply with its suggestion. Then it wouldn't reboot at all; the mouse and keyboard wouldn't work and the power button was neither use nor ornament so I had to crawl around on the floor and unplug it from the mains. Having plugged it back in I straightened up and cracked my head on the metal corner of the shelf that the keyboard sits on, drawing blood. Desperate to avoid another trip to Accident & Emergency with a head wound, I plastered a piece of wet kitchen roll to the wound and ploughed on. Eventually, the best part of two hours and about twenty reboots later, the PC was working although for how long is anyone's guess. 

At this point I peeled away the dried up kitchen roll and examined my forehead, where there was an inch long abrasion (it would be too dramatic to call it a cut really), that was very tender to the touch. Moving to the kitchen I emptied the dishwasher and promptly bashed my head in exactly the same place on an open cupboard door. This is by no means the first time I have done this. Fortunately this time I did not draw blood but my head did hurt quite a bit. Since these things tend to happen in threes I spent the next few hours waiting for the other shoe to fall, and yes I am aware that the maths don't quite add up in that sentence.

You may be wondering what I mean when I say I wanted to avoid another trip to A&E with a head wound; well, a few years ago I was supposed to be going to work late on a Friday night to do some out of hours contingency testing. At eleven o'clock, coming in from the garden though the conservatory, I forgot that I had closed the patio doors. I remembered this when I whacked the door with my knee, before a fraction of a second later clouting it with my forehead. Nothing seemed to happen at first, then there was a sound like distant rain as intricate networks of cracks appeared in the glass and the window shattered, cascading almost delicately from top to bottom. My head did not actually hurt that much; in fact I barely felt anything, but I was aware that there was something dripping. Very quickly I realised that it was coming from my forehead, that it was blood and it was less dripping than pouring. It was quickly evident that this was a cut that it would take more than a Band Aid to remedy and that a trip to A&E was required, so it was off to Oldchurch Hospital in Romford via taxi (driving was clearly out of the question what with having to hold a towel to my head).

Now I don't know how often you have had cause to visit the casualty department of a hospital in the London suburbs at the time the pubs are closing on a Friday evening, but if you have not previously had that dubious pleasure I suggest that you keep it that way. On that particular Friday the only person in the department who was sober was me, apart from the staff of course, and they all looked like they needed a drink. The patients were in various stages of drunkenness; the young women were by and large clutching sprained or otherwise damaged ankles from falling off their high heeled shoes or tripping in the gutter, while the young men were generally nursing head wounds from being glassed in one of the town's various watering holes; visually at least I fitted right in. I think that I was given some sort of priority on the basis that I wasn't drunk, well it seemed that way as I was on my way home relatively quickly, sporting a large bandage on my forehead. Suffice to say I did not make it to work.

Patients groups and nurses have regularly proposed that drunks either be barred from A&E or charged for using casualty departments and I can see why these proposals surface from time to time. An A&E department full of drunks can be intimidating for other patients and for the staff and if the inebriates are there directly or indirectly as a result of their alcohol consumption then it is difficult not to argue that they are an avoidable drain on resources. On the other hand, the taxes on alcohol (and on tobacco for that matter) make up a large portion of government excise revenue, part of which is in turn spent of the NHS, so in a perverse way the smokers and drinkers are already paying for their treatment.

A&E: Clearly this picture was not taken on a Friday night.

Some of you may recall that last year when my family and I went to Center Parcs it was shortly after I had all but broken my toe after kicking a concrete step very hard, so this year's head wound is a mere trifle, barely to be considered except for the fact that almost every Woods family holiday appears to be accompanied by some injury or mishap or another. In previous years we have had to spend time in a Tobago hospital while Val had stitches applied to a nasty leg wound and in the Maldives emergency dentistry was required when Val's wisdom tooth erupted. Most memorably of all, we had to cancel a cruise holiday in 1996 when I caught chicken pox. Still, it makes taking out travel insurance worthwhile.