I passed the "Life in the UK" test today.

Yes, ladies and gents, that is a real, official UK gov't required test you must pass to get a resident visa/citizenship here.

They made me swear to secrecy about the questions. really. ( To protect the guilty, I suppose - I could have played Vegas with these questions and had them rolling in the aisles)

Conductor: This is 81st street. Get off here for the big museum of dead stuff.

--Uptown C Train

Just got an email that an old friend of Alan's has died. Funeral next week. We'll go to the memorial afterwards at the pub to toast her memory. I remember her as a rather nice, funny old woman. She was a local Councillor and stood for the environment in a very practical and sensible manner. She was a smoker, a fellow exile. (No she didn't die from smoking!)

Update on the burn. I've never had a burn like this before. Usually the skin gets a bit red or at worst, I get blisters, which usually break) and then it gets scabby and starts to heal. This time, no visible blisters. The skin is a dark reddish brown and swollen where it was burned and I suspect the blisters are deep below. It hurts. It hurts a hell of a lot.

So, deciding to take advantage of the much lauded NHS "free" medical care which I pay vast amounts of my tax money into, I stopped at the A&E walk in clinic. The so-called medical person who looked at my hand advised me, "that's burned innit?". No shit, Sherlock. So what did he propose to do about it? A nice perscription burn cream to take away the sting and pain? Oh no, he suggested "don't do anything rough with it" and "let nature take its course". And that I should take some paracetomol is the pain kept me from sleeping. Nothing else, not even some sensible advice like wash gently to keep it clean.

Waste of my time. This is a serious burn. The NHS can be good at times but sadly, most of the time they are little better than the witchdoctor.

It took over 5 hours of iced wraps and painkiller tablets to bring the burn pain down to function level. It's 9:30 pm now and the hand still hurts and is stiff. There aren't blisters yet but the skin is swollen in the pattern of the boiling water inpact.

damn, damn, damn! I burned my right hand this morning making coffee. Splashed boiling water all over the top of my hand.

I stayed calm and grabbed for the "cooling burn spray" we keep handy on the kitchen counter. What garbage! Useless and didn't work. I turned on the cold water and stuck my hand under the running water as fast as I could. Now that is relief. I don't know why the spray didn't work but it didn't. So here I am an hour later, after soaking the hand in bowls of ice and water to cool down the skin and prevent further damage. And it still hurts like hell.