NHS and Pints

 Well it has been a busy couple of days so apologies about not getting a blog to you yesterday. Yesterday (Friday) saw Carrie head for her last day at the conference and Claire head off to test the NHS (yes she is ok) and head to Battersea.

Claire in need of some antibiotics did some research as to whether a doctor's appointment was going to be needed or just a trip to the chemist. Turns out it was just a trip to the chemist.  However after trying 5 different chemists on Thursday night (1st attached to hospital across the road and only does outpatient scripts, 2nd one the pharmacist had gone home, 3rd one said I needed a doctors appointment at a cost of 99 pounds, 4th one said needed to phone a doctor and pay for that and antibiotics at a cost of 180 pounds, 5th one was helpful but said I needed to create an account with them online). No worries I thought, I'll do that while we are at dinner.  Not so easy apparently as a phone number is required for final confirmation stage.  All well and good, I have one of those, but not the right one. So decided we would just have dinner and make it a tomorrow problem.

So alarm went off and Carrie headed to conference and I headed to try another chemist.  Yay, success, finally worked as it should, spoke to a pharmacist and antibiotics purchased for a whole 9 pounds.  Significantly cheaper than the 180 pounds that the lady quoted me the day before.  Sometimes being stubborn has its advantages. (Carrie did wonder if she had to make friends with a British Urologist to score a prescription at the conference - just in case!).

After a successful trip to the pharmacy, I headed back to the hotel to drop tablets back and get some breakfast.  Then from here, I decided to head to Battersea for a look around at the power station that has been converted to a shopping mall. Thankfully the tubes were starting to get up and running again so getting there was very easy. I spent about a couple of hours looking around and then headed back to the hotel for a rest before meeting up with Carrie later in the afternoon. 

Today was my final day at the European Robotic Urology Conference, there was no nursing sessions today so I headed to the Ballroom and watched some more live surgeries (checking the crows score every 5 mins), then listened to some talks on Robotics and Space and why the need for it.  All very interesting.  I then gained an early minute and met up with Claire. 

From here we met up with Claire's cousin Dan at his work. Of course as we walked out of the hotel, London shat it down with rain again. As we were walking across the Waterloo Bridge the rain was coming sideways and the rain jacket and umbrella were no match for the rain.  By the time we met up with Dan our clothes were literally dripping.  But it was all good, because Dan's work has beer taps (and barista, and dog treats for the dogs that get to visit, and a pool table etc). It was pint o'clock for us and the taps are open from 3-6. So it was perfect. So we sat and had a couple of ciders with Dan and then we went and found a pub for dinner.  Of course we had some more pints here, just to make sure that we couldn't feel how wet our clothes still were.  By the time we had finished dinner, had some pints and a very good chat, it was time for us to get on the foot Falcon again and head back to the hotel.  Dan was heading out for some karaoke, we were invited along but even after all those pints, we were still not ready for that.