A week last Saturday I had a nasty case of food poisoning. It wasn't what I thought was happening when I was drenched in sweat, panicking, barely able to think and thought I'd passed out for a short moment. I called the emergency services and then my sister. I was hyperventilating, sweating, trying bawl my eyes out and doubling over in agony. The quick response paramedic was round in what felt like a shot - they very often park within a mile of where I live. He started to calm down my breathing and took a pulse. The ambulance arrived fairly shortly afterwards. They hooked me up to a machine that didn't quite go 'ping', took pulse, blood sugar and blood pressure and then I went upstairs and threw up, which I do very noisily. After which I started to calm down. Quite properly they decided it was food poisoning. I'm not so sure. I know what happens when I get food poisoning: it's not pleasant, it lasts for twelve hours or more and takes me a couple of days to recover from. This wasn't like that. One of the paramedics suggested a "panic attack" - which felt a little more like it to me. I'm fifty-six years old - when I dialled 999, I thought it was a heart attack. My sister arrived, was tremendously calm and after the paramedics had packed up, we went to the Heart of Hounslow walk-in centre, where the paramedics had made an appointment for me (you can't but they can). The doctor looked at the charts from the paramedics machines, prodded my stomach and pronounced me healthy if shaken. That's the catch: I have the resting blood pressure and pulse of someone about half my age. I always give good pulse and pressure.
I had a ticket for Alvin Ailey and I decided that sitting around at home "resting" would probably make me feel worse, so I went up to Sadlers Wells straight from the walk-in centre. I knew I was recovering when I had an inner message saying "fries with lots of salt and a Coke at the Mediterranean Canteen": you actually need salt and sugar to help stabilise after a food poisoning episode. And if I'd felt any better, I would have asked the very attractive woman who sat two seats to my left, and with whom I had a conversation on the 391 back to Waterloo (that's right, she chose to sit next to me), for her a date. She had trained with the Ballet Rambert, wanted to dance classical but was told she "should try contemporary", took pictures of the gargoyles on the walls of the Royal Courts of Justice, lives near Hampton Court, had an MBA, no wedding band and was thinking about working in something environmental. Did I mention the bit where she had great legs and a really attractive, sexy face? Okay, I just did. But I wasn't feeling at my best, and she had a headache from the aircon in the theatre. Damn. The one mistake I made was not to offer my name mid-way through the conversation. I'm not good at that.
The attack wasn't about food. Maybe one of the eggs was dodgy, but I'm not sure. I'm pretty sure it was about the whole work situation. I know what I need to concentrate on, which is finding another job in the West End that lets me see movies in Russell Square at six in the evening. As I'm about to do now. I need to concentrate on getting one of my plays produced. And if I can get a date with someone as attractive as the lady from Sadlers Wells Saturday, that would be good as well. I can't let myself get involved with the "stuff" at work - especially with other people's emotions and dramas. It's not good for me.
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