Being British

I went for a blood test this morning. To get there I had to take the Victoria line. The Victoria line in the rush hour is probably the closest you can get to Dante's Inferno. Every carriage is a traumatised, heaving heap of limbs. It is the objective of every Victoria line commuter to make sure they can squeeze into a carriage, no matter how packed it is. Consequently when I hop gingerly in to the minuscule space that exists between the door and the glass partition that divides the standing from the seating areas, nobody clocks that I am wearing a surgical boot and hobbling on crutches. They can't see their own toes. Some of them have lost the feeling in their hands. Why would they notice somebody else's mobility issues? Plus everybody is thinking only one thing. Well,maybe two. Firstly: please please don't let this train either break down or come to any kind of halt in any of the tunnels between here and Victoria. And secondly: Get Me The Hell Out Of Here. Just one minor altercation on the Victoria Line could turn rapidly into World War Three at the drop of a hat. So, desperate as I am to sit down, I do not ask for a seat. This is stupid of me but I cannot help it. I am just too British to yell out, for yelling is what it would take to get the attention of this lot of sardines, guys I need a seat! Someone play a Good Samaritan! So I hang in there, and lurch off at my stop, collapsing on to a bench on the platform to recover the use of my legs before I attempt the scary, Everest-like challenge that exiting the station will resemble. I make my way to the hospital, dodging surly commuters, whose view of life is generally restricted by their pre-coffee tempers at the best of time but who are doubly challenged by classic British spring weather - unremitting spitty rain and wind. To avoid bumping into a million commuters on their way to the station I have just pulled myself out of, gasping and triumphant, requires a dexterity akin to driving a Dodgem car. But I get there, and make my way to the Phlebotomy section for my test. I have deliberately got there early because I know from five years of blood tests at the phlebotomy section of the Oncology Outpatients clinic, that if you do not get there in the first half hour you are doomed to a wait of aeons, clutching a pink ticket hopelessly that has at least three figures on it while the little clock like screen shows "4". I have a genius plan, which is to get there before it opens, so I can achieve the impossible and BE THE FIRST ONE IN. And I am. In fact it looks as if I'm the first one into the entire building as it's deserted. Ok maybe I'm just a bit too early. I get to phlebotomy and it's totally empty. The waiting room is deserted. The pink ticket machine, confusingly, is offering a ticket that says "68" on it, but hey, the clock says "68". Yippee. I poke my head round the nurse's door and there is the bloods woman, at her station, awaiting her first victim. All I have to do is walk in, sit down and present my arm. But I do not do this. What I do is, go back to the waiting room, take the pink ticket that says 68 on it, go and sit down, and wait to be called. Why? Because I'm too bloody British to ignore the queue. There is a queue principle and that means that if the waiting room is empty, I need to initiate the queue. So I do. I sit there like a lemon. Eventually I cough to attract attention. Footsteps are heard and the nurse comes into the waiting room. She looks at the clock. She looks at me. Sixty eight, she says, in a voice dripping with sarcasm. I check my ticket. That's me, I say brightly, and follow her to the chair. Back home, I make mustard encrusted cod, fluffy roast potatoes with pounded basil, and butternut squash with cumin, coriander and Greek yogurt. As I cook I make a resolution, for about the ninetieth time in my life, to match the assertiveness that has characterised all other parts of my life, to my social behaviour among strangers. It just isn't cool to be that British.