Dont' play with electricity kids.

I was seeing my last patient in OPD – he had a small perianal abscess and my finger was rummaging around his bottom. This is a very normal thing for doctors – the old saying goes: “if you don’t put your finger in it, you’ll put your foot in it,” or something like that. I am not the best with quotes or lyrics, as my friends will testify. I digress, so as I was finger deep and a massive BANG erupted from outside. It was really rather loud. Two seconds later, the power went down for a moment before the generator kicked in. I was taken aback by two things: no one seemed to notice what had happened, apart from me (or this is how it felt – it turns out everyone noticed it, but chose to ignore it); we have a backup generator, that works! Fortunately, there were no startled leaps or screams from myself or my patient and the man’s anus remained intact and my lab coat free from poo. I’m pleased to say that I found no nastiness up there either.

Outside OPD there was a small crowd looking in the direction of the boom – there were mutterings of “gun shot,” “bomb,” and “massive explosion.” Despite these allegations, there was not the pandemonium one would expect if the same concerns were being voiced in London town, or New York for that matter. It turns out a little birdie had been playing with our main power supply and quickly turned itself into KFC. I expect it’ll be dished up in Flagstaff sometime this evening.

Little birdie hanging upside down after it's last dance on the pylons. You can't really see the smoke, but trust me - there was loads of the stuff. Notice the broken "trip switch" on the left - they say you just need a stick to put it back. You're not going to catch me doing that though.



Just as I was attempting to upload the previous two paragraphs, the battery on my laptop died. With no power supply thanks to a poor little ornithological thing, I went for a run. I stopped to admire the hanging creature and bumped into my boss – Dr Kakooza. He hadn’t realised what had happened. On inspection of the small electricity pylon he laughed and said: “Oh, that’s lucky. We can fix that one.” What he intended to do was get a large “special” stick, knock the bird off and flick the giant trip switch, that had exploded, back. I humoured him and jogged off, trying not to believe that he would actually do it.

Here I am now - I was enjoying my glowing fire and romantic candlelit dinner for one, when CRACK (yes, another little bang) and back on the power comes. I’m assuming there is no one lying dead down by the pylon.