I was working at the hospital this afternoon, so Lisa and Amelie met me at the end of my clinic about an hour ago, and we walked back up the hill together. We were just heading past the Sussex Cancer Centre, towards A & E, and I'd stopped momentarily to discourage Amelie from rooting around in a flower bed, when a bearded man with wild eyes came marching down the hill, took one look at me, and punched me hard in the arm. He then called me a f*****g c**t and raised his fists in that meaningful way that people do when they're about to murder you in front of your wife and child.

Obviously if he had killed me, it would have given Lisa even more reason to go and see Sally Morgan in January, but as luck would have it, he changed his unhinged mind at the last moment, looked at me with an expression of slight insanity, and stomped off down the hill. I think he realised from the way that I cowered in front of him like a frightened girl, that a fight to the death wouldn't be quite as sporting as he thought.

I was so shell-shocked that I didn't realise quite how much my arm was hurting until we got home and Lisa was making me a medicinal cup of tea. I'm having to drink it with my left hand. I can only assume the chap had just been refused some drugs by a doctor, and thought he'd take it out on the first person he saw with an NHS ID badge. Unless he was one of my patients, and it was a formal complaint.

Anyhoo, that was an end to my working week that I wasn't expecting. He didn't even say 'Trick or Treat'. So let's unwind into the weekend with a picture of Amelie and her cousin studying hard at the Jubilee Library yesterday afternoon...


I'm not sure if that baby's praying, or considering suicide. And what's the connection between a snail and a cordless drill?