We’re waiting at the Mansfield hospital to see a doctor. Both full of a chest infection and coughing our heads off it is indeed nice to lie down for a few minutes and just doze. In the opposite corner of the ward a woman’s voice complains to the nurse “Me back’s buggered.”

It’s funny how things are triggered in your mind and my mind suddenly lurches back to Christmas Day in the late 90’s when we took our sick friend to Cobram hospital up on the Murray River and we returned to camp laughing our heads off at someone else’s expense. There was an old gent in the corner of the ER shouting “I copped a bad oyster, now I’m shittin’ like a firehose!”

Yes, that became our theme for the rest of the holiday “shittin’ like a firehose!”