Lost

A little anecdote for you:

On Tuesday night, when I was visiting my old mum in hospital, I managed to get a little lost. Well... not lost exactly. Look - it all happened like this:

Southmead Hospital is one of those big sprawling campuses of about 50 separate buildings, some of which are interconnected by covered walkways. It's all very confusing and it's not helped by the current wave of building work and 'improvements' that are currently under way, which means that following signs for the Urology department can leave you standing in front of a fenced off road wondering where the hell to go next!

Anyway - having made the requisite visit and been kicked out by the nurses at the end of visiting hours (and starving, by the way - I'd gone straight from work), I retraced my steps back to my car. Or that's what I thought until I found myself standing by a 3 storey white building that I didn't remember from my walk in or, indeed any of my previous visits.

Convinced that I'd taken a wrong turn, I looked around, unsuccessfully, for one of those handy maps with the big 'you are here' arrows on them. Finally, in desperation I stopped a passing workman and asked him where I was. He told me.

"That's where I thought I was," I said, "but I didn't pass this building on the way in."

"That," he told me, "is because we only put it up this evening."

Holy crap! They erected an entire building in an hour and a half. Okay, it was only a prefab building, but it was 3 storeys! That's a lot of effort to go to for the express purpose of confusing me. I'm hardly the sharpest knife in the block; they could have just put up a hand written cardboard sign saying 'You are not here' to achieve the same affect - but no! They built an entire temporary, 3 storey radiology building. That demonstrates a very special sort of vindictiveness!

And that is the story of how I nearly got lost in the hospital. I hope you enjoyed it.

(On a side note, mum is now out of hospital and is convalescing in bed at home!)