Think Once, Think Twice, Think 'Don't Cut off Your Own Finger'

I chopped the top off my finger the other night.

As blood spurted all over the kitchen, I am sad to say that my first reaction was not to put a stop to the blood that was spurting all over the kitchen; neither was it to contact Jane so that I might take both parts of my still twitching body to hospital. It was "I've got to put this on Twitter."

So I Tweeted it.

Then, my second reaction, as blood spurted all over the kitchen, was "I could get five hundred words of quality comedy out of this."

In what must rank as the world's most middle class accident ever, I rendered my finger in twain whilst not paying attention whilst slicing salad in a mandolin, a hideously sharp kitchen implement much loved by the posh.

There followed a three-hour wait in the A&E Department at Frimley Park Hospital (twinned with Poo), made extraordinarily less bearable by the extended family of somebody who didn't need to be there barging in on the triage nurse every five minutes demanding that she be seen to there and then. They then went on a rampage of assaulting the vending machines, and stomped around like naughty children when told that the Ambulance bays outside were for ambulances, and not their free personal parking. Some of us were dying there.

The information screens were in Comic Sans (The Font of Champions) along with horribly smiley and inappropriate clip art pointing out that they're YOUR emergency services. HELL ON EARTH, I think you will agree.

This is the second time I've been to A&E at Frimley Park, and I now have come to the conclusion that these places need separate waiting rooms for Middle Class kitchen accidents, where we can compare wounds and cooking tips, far, far away from the velour track-suited masses. Separate waiting rooms also for posh older women who were dusting over the sideboard wearing no knickers and fell onto a statuette of Admiral Lord Nelson and I shall sue any man or woman who casts doubt on my story, so help me I've friends in high places.

Call me a snob, but this is the kind of NHS reform I'd vote for. And the other guy who had sliced his hand open with a kitchen knife whilst filleting fish agreed.