Dewey. Decimal. Chickens.

But I got a call today saying she was out of the oxygen box and breathing normally, but not eating. Did I want to come and visit her? YES YES I DO THANK YOU.

I got to spend the best part of an hour on the floor with her in a spare consulting room, fussing her and brushing her and feeding her her favourite food. She was anxious about all the strange noises but very happy to see me.

"It was this weird game from the 1900s!"

"It was Lemmings or something"

Your cat is so fussy they will only eat pan-seared thigh of lost European royalty? You want "exigent".

Second time I got a cat bite requiring prophylactic antibiotics: I got an appointment with my GP. They cancelled it and tried to send me to A&E. Walk-in centres were no longer walk-in but 'urgent treatment centres' and I managed to get a referral.

Third time I got a cat bite requiring prophylactic antibiotics: no urgent treatment centre will take me. I have to go to A&E.

For fuck's sake. I am fully aware of the overcrowding in A&E and their preference that we take minor shit literally anywhere else. Our healthcare system absolutely cannot handle "I'm a first aider, the wound itself is fine, but it's also the kind of thing that always gets infected so can I have antibiotics before it starts oozing green please?"

I don't even want antibiotics. I wanted a beer tonight and they make my throat feel hairy and taking them around food correctly is a giant pain in the ass. I'm trying to be sensible here.

This plan did not survive contact with my mum's ex-feral cat. Thanks Panther. You do actually need preventative healthcare. And now so do I.

New plan: try and get antibiotics without my idiot GP referring me to sit in Accident & Emergency for 8 hours.

There is already an extensive list of ways to keep open-water swimming merely Medium Stupid:

Be sober

Don't jump straight in

Don't jump in headfirst

Wear appropriate amounts of neoprene/yulex for the temperature (this will also help with buoyancy)

Take a tow float

Wear bright colours

Recce the body of water first for unexpected currents, debris, foliage, pollution, cyanobacteria, etc

Don't even think about it until you can do the following in a lifeguarded pool: swim several hundred metres without difficulty, put your face underwater while breathing out, tread water, float on your back, and recover from getting water in your eyes/up your nose

Go in a group, all of whom are following the above rules

To this we can apparently add:

"I'm taking it slow, feeling my way" - that's the plan anyway

"I didn't look where I was going, and I fell" - um, no, thank you

This bad boy can fit so many pockets in it.

Look, if a hateful person who made the world worse is well on their way to dying in obscurity, you don't turn them into a martyr. She was done. She was a bad punchline. We were finally forgetting.

Is this a self-discipline issue? Did your martial arts teacher not give you enough push-ups when you didn't wait quietly?

To my trans friends: I will stand with you. If necessary I will stand in front of you.