Sick Day

Following on from yesterday’s post, last night was vile. I won’t go into details – safe just to say it was bad.

Anyway, as a result of that, I took the decision that I’d take today as a sick day, as I wanted to visit the GP (among other things) and generally Not Do Much.   Which was a mistake.

The GP – as usual – was fucking useless.  Having waited 90 minutes to see the incompetent git, I was in the room for less than five minutes. I explained that I’d spent most of the night with an insanely sore throat – to the degree that I thought it might end up being tonsilitis – , and coughing up big green lumps. He checked my throat and decided that it wasn’t tonsilitis. Fair enough – I know fuck-all, so I bow to their supposed knowledge.  But at the same time, despite being told I’d coughed up a ton of crap, he still didn’t bother to check my chest at all – something you’d think would be pretty elementary.

And the final verdict? “Nothing I can do, take some paracetamol, and maybe Neurofen if you feel the need”. That was it. Useless shyster bastards.  (And yes, there’s another complaint in with the practice manager)

After that, I went back home, still feeling like shit – only also feeling annoyed. Never a good stage in the day.

Within half an hour, there was a crunch of noise outside, the sound of plastic and so on getting splattered down the road. It didn’t sound promising – and I had a nagging feeling…

Yep, a driver had managed to smash off the door mirror of my car – which was all parked up, in the same place it usually is.  Oh fuck.

In fairness, she’d stopped, and was seeing what had happened. I know any number of people wouldn’t have even slowed down, let alone made an effort. So you know, fair play on that score.  She was a very new driver, had misjudged the width of her car while another one was coming the other way, and smack.  It could’ve been so much worse – so, so much worse – and she was properly upset.

I spoke to my Saab garage, and got a price for the replacement mirror, and we exchanged details.  I showed them where I lived, and all was well.   A bit later, her dad came round – in a good way! – and we discussed it, that she was a new driver, and if we did this through insurance, it’d hit her very hard, for something that really wasn’t worth that much money.  I’m fine with that – I’m not going to penalise the poor girl for something, when she didn’t even have to stop – and I think it’ll all work out by people dealing with it as adults.

And so I’ve ended up, on my day at home and feeling crap, going over to the Saab garage, getting things sorted – and as it turned out, actually getting a replacement mirror far, far cheaper than I expected. Basically, they’d got a silver car that they were stripping for parts, and I got the mirror. The colour isn’t a precise match, but I don’t give a shit about that.

The full replacement should’ve cost £300, with labour etc. on top of that. The swapped part has cost me £100 including labour, and took less than an hour from start to finish.  I can’t deny, I’m pleased with that, and well chuffed with the garage – they’ve always been good with me, as has been shown by what they’ve done today.

It’s all worked out OK – but for a day doing nothing, it really hasn’t been all that successful…