Part One

Snap! Oh no. All I did was to stretch over from the bed on which I was lying to meditate and turn on the bedside light. That's all it took. I pretended not to know what it was, and got on with life.

I did know what it was. Within a few days, I could see the tell-tale signs of a soft, fleshy protuberance appearing in the bottom right side of my abdomen. I knew what it was, since it was pretty much a carbon copy of the one that had made its entrance three years ago on my left side.

Left to its own devices, the protrusion will advance from the size of a marble to that of an egg. To a pear; to a grapefruit; to a water melon. A hernia probably won't kill you, but it's not something you can live with easily for the rest of your life either.

Last time round, it took nine months before I got it operated on. December: first appearance. January: GP. April: consultant. In fairness, I received a phone call six weeks later, asking whether I'd like to go to Fort William for surgery. Fort William is a two-hour drive away, along a slow, bumpy, overused narrow road, often resembling an obstacle course of roadworks and camper vans. Meanwhile, I live a mere hour's relaxed walk from our local hospital, which is far bigger anyhow. I didn't think that the journey back from Fort William would be very helpful for recovery, so I decided to wait. It seemed a good idea at the time.

The weeks and months passed. The swelling continued to swell up. I bought some 'hernia pants', which helped somewhat. But the swelling swelled up some more.

In September I made an appointment at the doctor's, and got to see a guy who was underling to the GPs, but far more proactive. "Look at this hernia. It isn't getting any smaller." I soon received a letter of invitation for surgery in..... Wick. 

Wick is a small town situated somewhere between the Arctic Circle and the rest of the world. It is considerably further from where I live than is Fort William. However, it boasts a hospital which sometimes hosts hernia surgery. So, mid-October 2018, I went to Wick.

I had never been to Wick before. It is not exactly a tourist hotspot, but I decided that the visit might double as a bit of a holiday, for my wife at least. We rented an apartment beside the river for a few nights, and my sister kindly drove up to take us home. And that was that...

Part Two

As soon as the more recent abdominal event made its presence known, one thing became immediately clear. This was nothing for the NHS. If I needed to wait for nine months back in 2018, how long would it be now, with the entire world in severe convid dysfunction? 'Two years' I heard mention. No. I would manage it the best I could, before searching out other avenues of repair.

Such is the extreme nature of the convid-generated dysfunction that I ended up travelling from the Highlands of Scotland to Oxford - for what is considered a pretty routine kind of bit of surgery. More holidays coming up.....

There were other circumstances which led to me going that distance, I concede. Firstly, most surgery of this type is done under general anaesthetic. Last time round, this wasn't a great experience. The drugs made me very nauseous, and I needed to remain in hospital overnight. 'Drink drink' the nurses urged me, in an effort to get me to pee. My stomach was full of enough water to bring Loch Ness to overflow, but still they insisted. Eventually, it all disgorged unpleasantly.... So in Oxford I found one of the small number of places that would do the surgery under local anaesthetic. This also brings down the cost considerably, though I had the cash, having been unable to spend it on anything much all of last year.

Then there was the convid protocol. I wasn't doing quarantine for weeks, criminal tests, and the rest. The Oxford clinic came with protocol aplenty, but tolerable given the overall circumstances nowadays. 

And there is the state of the NHS. A dark veil hangs over the institution; it is not to be touched with a bargepole for anything other than life-saving emergencies. Such is my attitude today. While there are undoubtedly well-intentioned and kind people working there, still the organisation as a whole has been actively complicit in the roll-out of the entire convid criminal fraud. From fake testing, through wholesale experimental injecting of the populace, shutting down all manner of not-convid urgent appointments, to kicking large numbers of old and disabled people into care homes to die of neglect, non-treatment, lethal dosing with midazolam, and heartbreak: the NHS comes dripping with criminality of the darkest kind. 

Part Three

In truth, I needed to get out of the Highlands for a while. It had become claustrophobic in the extreme. The local slice of the collective unconscious had become pathologically jumpy and tension-infested as a result of the convid fear-and-panic deception. I had left behind the life of the big cities years ago, finding it overly psychopathological. But now I yearned to discover how it was faring in these strangest of days.

The Grand Tour took in Glasgow, Birmingham, Oxford, and Death City itself, Manchester. Readers from outside Scotland might be unaware of how Manchester is Death City. Shortly before we left on the trip, local representative of the global gestapo Sturgeon announced a 'ban', as the mainstream called it, on travel to Manchester. Too many cases, too dangerous. Don't go unless you've got a jolly good reason, as listed under the 'exceptions to restrictions' heading which, if you can be bothered to find it, is as long as Shakespeare's Macbeth.

It is true. It was quite tricky walking through Manchester, clambering over the dead bodies littering the streets (especially post-hernia surgery, when walking gingerly is the only way), wearing three masks because of the putrid stench of rotting corpses everywhere. As always, residents of Scotland had been royally looked after by their Great Leader.

I was, mind you, curious as to how you might enforce such a ban. Would scary Scottish police jump out from behind seats as the train crossed the border? Would a big fishing net be cast over the platforms where the disease-ridden trains from Manchester came to a halt in Glasgow or Edinburgh? 

The answer is that you can't 'enforce' such a ludicrous edict, and you don't try. You simply leave the compliant populace to police itself. "Nicola says we can't go to Manchester." "Nicola says we've got to throw turnips at people wearing yellow socks." "Nicola says we've got to dig a hole in the garden and hide our head in it for the next five years." That's how it works. Simple.

We arrived in Glasgow on an admittedly atypical warm, rather sultry, summer's evening. Large numbers of people were out enjoying the weather, and 'social distancing' seemed to have been chucked in the waste bin. While the majority of people were still following the 'mask-on, mask-off' lunacy, still the levels of compliance were noticeably lower than those in the Highlands. I never thought that I would find a visit to Glasgow therapeutic....

And so it was in Birmingham, Oxford, Death City. While there were still ridiculous numbers of people following the convid crap, the atmosphere appeared relaxed relative to what I would pick up in northern Scotland.

The push towards total fascism is at a more advanced stage in Manchester, where signs about masks and distancing are in your face round every corner. 'Stay apart'; 'keep your distance': the fascists seem especially keen on keeping Mancunians apart from one another. Maybe it's because northern Englanders are generally more sociable and communicative, more extrovert, than their southern counterparts. It's funny, though. I'm not sure that the saturation programming is really effective. It's so in-your-face that after a while you hardly notice it's there. 'Just the psychopaths doing what they do. Now, where's the bus station?'

Part Four

I guess any readers of this blog will be anxious to know about the health results of the great trip to the south. The surgery went fine, as far as I can tell one week on. Doctors and helpers all knew what they were doing. The assistants (I suppose they are officially nurses, but weren't dressed like that) were a little group of young men and women from the Philippines. Despite all the convid crap, the masks, the don't-do-this-don't-do-that bullshit, they seemed determined to have a decent time of life, and were friendly, a bit jokey, even laughing around. They formed a stark contrast to some of the stern-looking, dour, stricter-than-thou white Anglo-Saxons who were stalking about the place on their oh-so serious business.

Mind you, it took a bit of an effort to get that far. Everything's an obstacle course nowadays. First up, getting inside the building. 'You are on the blue pathway. Do not - I repeat, DO NOT - enter through the main entrance. Come in via the door in the underground car park.'

Why the main entrance should be so perilously seething with deadly convid jumping around all over the place I couldn't work out. In addition, for anybody like me, who was not arriving in their own car, getting to the underground car park without going through the main entrance or risking getting flattened by an oncoming vehicle was a considerable challenge.

Having negotiated these perils, I eventually got to reception. The guy at the desk tried to check me in. I often find it difficult understanding people 'speaking' behind a mask, and they have been known to end up shouting at me. Sorry, mate, it's not my fault if you've decided to spend all day under a self-imposed gagging order. This guy, however, didn't have the energy or the will to live to even bother with that. He gestured vaguely in the direction of a waiting area, and I imagined it was where I had to go.

After about ten minutes without being called, I began to look around. I was on the blue pathway, apparently, but here there were signs all in green. Maybe this was the waiting area for the green pathway, which I knew existed. I strolled off and found another area with a blue sign, and sat down.

After a few minutes, a nurse came scurrying through, on her way from here to there. "Excuse me, is this the right place for the hernia clinic?" She stopped dead in her tracks, dazed and confused. She knew nothing about the hernia clinic. I suppose it's the inevitable result of compartmentalisation. If you do toes, then you know about toes and only toes. If you do eyebrows, you can find your way safely to the eyebrow department. But that's it.

"Follow me" she eventually mustered. "Let's go to reception." Once at the desk, she spoke to the energy-deficit guy. By now, he really despised me, and summoned up from somewhere deep within the strength to issue the words. "Over there. I told you before."

A short time afterwards, I was summoned by a rotund female to her office. It rapidly became clear that this was a dark force masquerading as an Irish admissions nurse. No warm, friendly receptions nowadays. It's the world of convid, and don't forget.

She took some notes. "And have you had the convid vaccination?" "No" She looked up from her papers, raised her eyebrows above her outsize mask. "Have you any plans for the vaccination?" "No." Eyebrows move slightly closer to some fake heaven. Why do people ask this question? What difference does it make? It's none of their business. "And when's the last time you had good anal sex?" That's the question you're supposed to ask in response. Not for quite a while, I imagine, you dark entity. However, I recollected that I was there to get my intestines put back in their proper place, so that I was in better shape for the rest of the war. I shut up, and things moved on......

Surgery and resting over, one of the Philippine guys told me I could now leave. "I'll show you to the way out" he said in a friendly tone. I accompanied him as he led me the short distance to...... the Main Entrance....... 

Images: Lord Byron at the Colosseum in Rome

               Manchester, in the world according to N. Sturgeon (Malefic, Apocalypse, Luis Royo)