Tomorrow is the Big Day....

I spoke to a friend on the phone this morning. She had just been subjected to a gastroscopy and and endoscopy. Simultaneously. That's the NHS for you. Buy one-get one free and just sniff on this hanky; it's sprinkled with laudanum. You won't feel a thing. Oops, did you? Bite on this. How are you chaps doing, at the top end?
For those unfamiliar with the particulars of scopes and are limited to knowledge of periscopes (hello, submariner!) and telescopes (well, hello, sailor! ) you are on the right track. The gastroscopy is, you're right, a tube with camera that goes down into the stomach, and the endoscopy is the one that goes up your end, so to speak. I could write mnemonics for student doctors, I could.
I exaggerate, of course, these procedures were not actually carried out simultaneously, but consecutively. All hail to the NHS. Everything was fine, and we were able to discuss what to do with the photographs which showed every bend and crevasse in her duodenum and assorted plumbing: upstairs, downstairs, but thankfully, not in her lady's chamber. I thought that the photographs would make a nice change from the usual snow on her Christmas Rose that she trots out each Christmas. However, I could hear she lacked my conviction.
But this brings me back again to the Body Politic. Not that old body again, you cry. Look, frankly, you can't get away from it. The Vote tomorrow is discussed in every newspaper, on every news programme. We have debates, slanging matches, statistics, and inflamed passions. And there's certainly not much humour about because this is serious stuff. When we wake up on Friday morning, I suspect we will all be feeling a little battered and bruised, like my friend, and not entirely comfortable sitting down. Whatever the outcome.

From The Times

Nevertheless, something I read today made me smile. In a small village in Ceredigion in Mid Wales, someone had defaced the Vote Leave poster and turned it into "Vote Beaver". It was subsequently sold on eBay for £53 for Air Ambulance Wales... As I said, humour is thin on the ground, but humanity isn't.