One flu over the cuckoo’s nest

Yesterday I went to the doctor for the first time in 6 years. It was an unexciting adventure that I’ll attempt to spice up by adding pirates to the retelling:

Since just about the time I gave up McDonalds and all other forms of “fast food” (June 30 as an end of financial year resolution) I’ve been ironically feeling less than healthy. A conspiracy theorist may try to link the two events together. But they, like all conspiracy theorists, would be full of snot. Being the man of action that I inherently am I decided that 3 months was enough time procrastinating and waiting for nature to take its course (and realising that if nature did actually take its course I may in fact be submitting myself to an early death – death by dry cough doesn’t sound that appealing) and I made myself an appointment at Townsville’s “The Doctors” medical centre. I chose that particular centre because I drive by on the way to work and they conveniently have five consecutive ones in their phone number. They also had a lunch time appointment available so I booked it. It was at this point that the pirates (neither metaphorical nor literal, in fact they’re completely fictional in nature) mindlessly interrupted proceedings by firing their canons into the insides of my head, at least that’s how it felt in there yesterday. I bravely fought off the pirates by convincing the captain to stage a mutiny against himself. This proved to be a particularly effective strategy but relies strongly on a tertiary education in persuasive techniques. I employed the three Greeks – Pathos, Logos… and Aramis (a little three musketeers joke there) as my gentle persuaders. When they failed I simply black mailed the pirates with promises of copious amounts of pirate treasure. It just occurred to me that if one of the pirates was black and was wearing black chain-mail you could black mail the black mailed black male. So once the pirates were merrily plundering greener seas, I made my way to the doctor. This Doctor was from an ethnic minority of some sort and since the Doctor Death scandal I’m always a little sceptical about their qualifications. I checked his certificate on the wall – and it turns out he studied in Perth so I’m not sure if that should make me more or less worried. He was efficient and believed me when I diagnosed my symptoms as “flu” and he prescribed a course of steroids, antibiotics, and painkillers now I’m ready to cycle the Tour de France next year.

In other news, I went to a tropical island (Hinchinbrook) last weekend. It’s nice.
I was on a national fishing show last Saturday (I Fish). I didn’t see it. The QNI 2006 North Queensland Tourism Awards are on this Saturday night – everyone who’s anyone is going to be there (including me). They’re on at the port. When I’m feeling particularly self indulgent I’ll update the press release section on our corporate website and you can read all about it.

At some point in the future I think I’ll write about IR reforms and their impact on the length of my allotted daily toilet breaks… It makes me flush just thinking about it.*

*It’s always nice to end on a pun – nb that the * means that last sentence counts as the end and this is a footnote.