Haemotology

I haven't done any work today. It's been distinctly unproductive. But I knew in advance that that would be the case.

You see, today was the Royal thing. Round here, "the Royal" is the shortened form of "Royal Liverpool University Hospital." I wasn't quite sure who was going and who wasn't, but I made some inqiuries in the morning and found out that it had come down to me, Fidan, Laura Preston, Emma, Becky O, and Izabella Wozniak. I tactfully "forgot" to inform Mrs Miller that four of her seven-person class would be missing this afternoon, but she's away tomorrow and so can't kill us. That's always good.

I did have to go to my first lesson, which turned out to be English. I generally love English, but not on Monday, which is set aside for Utopia. I hate Utopia. I hate Thomas More with a passion. I hate the seventeenth century. These are all blatantly irrational generalisations, but that's how I feel on a Monday morning. Thankfully, we only had Utopia for a single. The other single was employed in looking at linguistics and the development of the English language in the last thousand years. Call me the latest specimen of abject freakitude, but I love that kind of stuff. I attempted to read out loud a portion of the King James Bible in the original Old English. The result sounded like melodic, well-enunciated gibberish. It was fun.

I was in school until eleven twenty, so I should have gone to French General, but I couldn't be bothered. Emma later told me there was a test. Oops. Anyway, I skived in great comfort, and Becca and Bev did too for no reason. We were productive and made Christmas card lists. Fidan giggled. Bev did Biology. It was all very comfortable. Outside the windows, the rain battered down. I said something like, "Fine weather to traipse out into the wilds," and Becca and Bev thought that was a somehow abnormal remark. Can't see why myself, of course.

At eleven twenty, the other five Liverpool-bound people and me went out. It wasn't raining all that heavily, just drizzling faintly as we walked down to Blundellsands, but the moment we got there, the train came into the station. I wanted to run for it, but the others decided against it. I was forgetting I didn't have to buy a ticket, but everyone else did. They queued up and I perched up on the stone ledge by the ticket office. After a moment, we all trudged out onto the station platform. It was utterly dismal, still drizzling and grey, and the station was deserted. Emma managed to bring in a touch of humour by eating ham and cheese sandwiches with clear evidence of enjoyment. I found it amusing. Only she and Izabella had been forward-thinking enough to actually bring sandwiches. I didn't talk much to Izabella; I don't like her anyway, and besides it seems strange she wants to be a doctor. She never struck me as the sort of person.

Anyway. The train was five minutes early, and nearly empty. The journey went by very quickly, but Becky O was being annoying in the extreme. I mean, more annoying than usual. She is annoying. She's loud and fake and irritating and she has no concept of personal space and she says stuff like "Groovy, baby!" and expects to be taken seriously. She's annoying. But somehow, she was more annoying today. She hung round with Izabella, while me, Fidan, Laura and Emma stuck together and gritted our teeth. Once we got into Liverpool, I wanted to go into Subway for my sandwich. Becky wanted to go to McDonald's (ugh). She took so long I had time to sit down and eat my sandwich and cookie. I forgot to buy a drink, which I did regret later, as I was hopelessly thirsty as we left and walked up Mount Pleasant.

My mother had given me directions. Laura's mum had given her directions. Becky's dad had given her directions. Fidan's mum had given her the A to Z. Thusly armed, we set off up Mount Pleasant. I flatter myself that I know Liverpool. It would be very hard for me to get lost there; I know the city. But I did find my sense of direction getting a bit vague as we went up, which was strange, because I ought to know that part of the city better than anywhere else. We went up past Hope Street and the Roman Catholic (read, spiky) cathedral and on towards Blackwell's, finally coming out near the university campus, which is open to pedestrians only. I was born somewhere round there; it's hard to be sure where exactly because it's changed so much. Before Liverpool Women's was opened, there were about ten hospitals in the area, and we lived in the Oxford Street hospital accomodation for about three years after I was born. When the hospitals were closed, we moved on, and the buildings were taken over by the university. There's probably students living there now.

But I digress. We almost got lost at that point, because my directions gave out. Thanks to Fidan's A to Z, we made it through to the Royal main entrance only two minutes late. We were met at the reception and told to amuse ourselves for ten minutes, and I was still hopelessly thirsty, I went up to the restaurant upstairs and asked for a cup of water. They wouldn't give it to me. "Buy a bottle," Fidan suggested. But it causes me actual physical pain to pay for water - I mean, what's the point? - so I let it go and stayed thirsty.

Only two of the King David people showed up - there were supposed to be eight of them - and we were led up to the Haemtology department without more ado. The people who work there are not doctors - they're biomedical scientists, and naturally want to push their own speciality. A man named Craig Evans with horrendously sticky-out ears gave us a lecture, then threw labcoats at us and send us round for a tour of the lab. It was fairly interesting but not excessively so; Fidan, who was very vocal this afternoon, thought I shouldn't have told them I don't want to be a doctor, but I wanted to be honest about it, and of course that may have been the main reason I didn't find it as interesting as I could have done. But it wasn't bad - I liked seeing the labs where the bone marrow stem cells are stored, in huge deep freezes at -160 degrees Celsius. When the woman opened one of them, billowing nitrogen vapour made me feel like I was in a horror film. The rain dripping down the grimy windows didn't help.

We also looked at blood tranfusions, and that I liked. I sat through the lecture clutching a single-unit bag of B positive blood - my own blood type, coincidentally - and not finding it at all strange. The centrifuges were interesting, with the plasma coming off at the top, then the white blood cells, and the red blood cells at the bottom. The boring part was the DNA testing, which does sound interesting but really, really isn't. The place is a bit of a rabbit warren, and we ended up in the storage room for a bit, which is nothing other than a room-sized freezer. Hard to describe.

We finished off by looking at blood films, and we were asked to have a go at diagnosing one of the microscope slides. Between us, we correctly identified it as Wucheria bancrofti, a kind of worm that infests your blood vessels and sunbathes in your retina. Lovely. I wasn't concentrating by that point, though, because I was dying of thirst. I actually found a water fountain, too, only to find it didn't work!

But it did all come right in the end. We were given little goody bags with Kit Kats and cans of Coke, so I drank that before we went out in the rain again. It was dark by then, and raining properly. It was hard to see, my glasses were steaming up, there were four of us squished under one umbrella, we kept falling and splashing each other by accident in the puddles, the gutters were running with water and we couldn't see to cross the roads, and oh, it was awful but strangely funny. After a mile of this, we all got so wet we couldn't get wetter. So, so wet. There are no words.

At Central, we missed another train, and were reduced to lurking on the platform and dripping. On the train I didn't make any pretence of knowing Becky, and sat somewhere else. I daydreamed and read through the journey, and only really woke up at this end, where Pedar picked me up, which was all good. He had some news for me. I'm going on Medlink. I'd thought it was all full, but as Pedar said, he's the sub-dean of the medical faculty. It's all about the nepotism. My mother will be entirely too excited, but even I am, a little. It should be interesting if nothing else.

And now, I'm thirsty and very, very wet. I'm going to take a long, self-indulgent shower and purposely use up all the hot water.