Because I lacked an education, I'm forced to ask my doctor to explain many things I don't know, so one day I asked him if he could tell me what a 'cubic foot' is. He quickly fired up his computer and downloaded so many pages that I thought his usual consultation feet..err..fee would escalate tenfold! Having no joy on the internet, he then dragged out his huge medical dictionary and pored painstakingly over many pages whilst I sat waiting patiently. Snapping the big book shut, which jolted me wide awake, he then said that whilst he wasn't absolutely certain what a 'cubic foot' is, he reckoned that it would have to be worth at least two weeks 'compo' to anyone who had one, so I said: "Is that provided they can feign a convincing limp when they hobble into your surgery?"
That and a whole heap of other things bedsides..err..besides, like a good bedside manner. One wonders why the blighters bother going to uni, like those many American sawbones who went to uni but were hoist on their own petard when caught out by one of their very own, the famous surgeon, Atul Gawande, who one day decided that it would be a good idea for every surgeon to have a checklist (like the checklist he created) with them in the operating theatre so they don't overlook anything, like leaving foreign objects inside patients' bodies etc.
Gawande asked his fellow surgeons, many of whom were hard-bitten hypocrites beyond compare (Sheesh!), if they thought they should have a checklist, and about 90% of 'em said "No", probably because they'd never used one before and old habits die hard, like a hypocrite's habits etc., so Gawande then said to them, "What if you guys were to go under the knife yourself, would you then want your surgeon to have a checklist?" You guessed it, about 80% of 'em said they'd want their surgeon to have a checklist at hand. Funny that! Who'd have thought??!! Gawande admitted that he himself had originally thought that he'd never need a checklist when operating because he went to Harvard! Methinks that when these American sawbones went to uni, the best that could be said about them is that they gall definitely succeeded with distinction in their having cut a lot of classes.
One wonders if there's a good checklist going cheap somewhere that could give someone like me, who's right at the mend of their ether..err..tether, some strength to carry on! But for the fact that I'm still a dab hand at being able to doctor a drink with decided distinction, I'd likely be left lingering out on a limb and then have to go spare, speciously. Spare me!
Speaking of which, concrete, I wonder if you know, Tony, about it (concrete) having concreted a bit of a problem for my dad and his 2/11th Battalion mates when they were POWs and had to build some high-rise housing for German soldiers during WWll, so, because they wanted to use up as much of the Krauts' resources as they could (as one does when in a mix..err..fix!), but deliberately do a really lousy job of it in the process, they trotted out their 'Old Rowley' mix (Old Rowley won the Melbourne Cup @100/1 in 1940 by 3/4 of a length) to batch the concrete, so one batch had 100 parts of cement to 4 of metal and 2 of sand, and the next batch had but 1 part cement to 4 of metal and 2 of sand, ad infinitum, but don't get mixed up and add too much cement at the wrong time, because if you do, then you might run short of it and ruin things when it's time to shirk..err..work 100 parts of it in! Give a bloke strength, but never such fiendishly-fortified concrete, yeah? All's fair in love&war. These inventive lads likely never bothered doing a 'slump test' on the concrete before pooring..err..pouring it.
