Sarah Burnett-Moore

There was no blog for the last couple of weeks as I was off sunning myself in the south of France. Eagle-eyed readers will be amused to know that I got royally bitten to pieces by mosquitoes. But enough of that.

I couldn’t get worked up about anything while bathed in the glorious sunshine and smell of lavender so I didn’t post a blog. I didn’t even buy a copy of the Daily Mail to annoy myself with. My holiday mood soon evaporated on my return. Not just because I had missed the announcement that Wills and Kate are finally officially engaged. Work.

Never mind the huge pile of post (credit card bills mostly) jamming the front door shut, I came home to a massive list of MRI’s to report. The problem of being self-employed, is that if you go on holiday for two weeks in one month, two months down the line you’re broke. The credit card bills looked at me even more accusingly. So on Sunday morning I got up at 7.45 - am, that is - possibly the earliest I have ever got up on a Sunday when I haven’t had to work or travel - and started on the personal admin stuff. Two hours, and six cups of silver tip white tea later, I had decimated the paperwork. Actually I hadn’t, it means reduce by 90% (I wonder how many tabloid journalists know that it was a Roman punishment, where soldiers were divided into groups of ten, and one lucky bugger got to kill nine of his comrades?) and I’d made a tiny dent in the pile.

I began to wonder whether my self-imposed ban on caffeine was wise. Everything I read about caffeine suggests that in moderation it does make you more productive, makes it easier to lose weight, and all manner of other fantastic health benefits. I peered grimly into my silver tip, very nearly four months caffeine-clean, was I going to crack? I left my bills (x5), French tax letters (x4), backlog of medico-legal cases (x3), things to return to Amazon (x1), list of people to ring (x7), photography mag (x1), knitting mag (x1), and I put the copy of Clinical Radiology straight in the bin - well, not straight, I got Troy to take the plastic jacket off it first so it could go in the recycling.

Then I started on the MRI scans. The more I reported and turned them blue in the list, the more a fresh yellow one would drop in to take their place. It was like playing Bejeweled, but far less compelling. I took a brief respite to buy sandwiches for the family Sunday lunch - bad, bad Mummy - and returned to the grindstone. Sixty MRI’s later, I emerged from the office/currently bedroom, blinking in the evening light, like a disorientated mole.

By 11.00 am today, Monday, I merely have one medico-legal case left to do, and have reported 13 MRI’s.

I have been home just over 36 hours, and already I need a holiday.

Apologies for the lack of blog activity over the last couple of weeks, but I’ve been on England duty. My role within the England set-up was a little clearer than David Beckham’s (a suit, on the bench? Bah!) My World Cup campaign started with a good luck exchange of texts with the training ground at Royal Bafokeng (true, I swear), and the purchase of a vuvuzela. I also downloaded the vuvuzela app, in case of urgent need.

As assistant coach, my duties were manifold. Troy, my husband, was the actual coach, along with thousands of portly beer swillers sporting England shirts.

I had to check the iCal for fixtures, ensuring that no social activity, and as little work as possible, was scheduled to clash. I had to cancel my plans to go for a romantic weekend in Bruges, and arrange our anniversary dinner at a restaurant where we could watch a match. Last year, Troy had the best anniversary present ever, when Terry Venables turned up at the restaurant, and presented him with an autograph. I had to arrange our squad of GoGo Crazy Bones to mirror the starting eleven, which is no mean feat as Fabio wasn’t giving me much notice. At least this year I didn’t have a bloody wall chart to update.

But most of all, I had to keep down the male angst levels. A recent study showed that watching England play generated the same amount of anxiety as going through a divorce, or moving house. On the night of our first match we were at a wedding. Troy was so stressed about not watching, that he absconded - with the band, mind you - to the pub. That evening, the London Ambulance service recorded 40% more calls than normal, generally to deal with drunk supporters.

Domestic violence soars during the World Cup. The logical conclusion therefore is that women and NHS staff should be delighted once England get sent home, but I suspect that’s not true.

So, the GoGo’s went to charity and the vuvuzela mysteriously disappeared. As I hadn’t got round to putting flags on my G-Wiz, I was spared the emotional trauma of removing them. A final sheepish commiserative text to Rustenborg for a safe journey home, and my World Cup was over.

I am currently considering my future role in the squad.

I believe I may have Britain’s first iPad injury. It’s not that I dropped it on my big toe, it’s due to isolation.

I shall explain. We are having a half-term break in the middle of nowhere. Not Timbuctoo, or Ulan Bator, although, to be honest, they could be bustling metropolises for all I know. We are in Cornwall, somewhere called Herodsfoot is the nearest town. It’s the kind of place where the closest convenience store is a five-mile drive to Pelynt, and the Cornish cornershop doesn’t stock cornichons. Ironically, it does have every sort of mobile phone SIM card you can imagine. I say this is ironic because there is no mobile signal anywhere. Yesterday lunchtime we went to a pub called the The Punch Bowl, famed for being haunted by a demonic black cock. It was the sort of pub where the landlady has post-axial hexadactyly, and girls bother to put on false eyelashes for dinner with their brother. I asked where the nearest place to get signal was. “Troy the village green,” came the reply. “It’s where ee locarls go to get them there signal.” Apparently it even had a bench. It did, but no 02 or Vodafone connection.

Now, in principle, having a holiday away from all that technology and stress, staying in a log cabin (with ensuites, it’s a step up from a caravan), sounds ideal. No phone messages, no emails. Just beautiful forest, millpond and ducks, and sunbathing on the verandah. Except, as you drive to the bright lights of - ensuite jokes on a picture postcard please - Looe, intermittent signal pushes emails and answerphone messages through. By the time you stop the car, you’ve got a pile of urgent mail messages about delicate financial matters, and answerphone calls about arranging to scan a VIP - OK a Norwich player, but they are back in the Championship next season - at the weekend. Needless to say, wherever you’ve stopped, there’s no bleeding signal again.

This makes for a frustrating game of telephone and/or email tag, where trying to achieve anything is about as easy as reporting an MRI by pigeon post. So much for work. Yes, I do understand it’s a holiday, but I get bored if I don’t work on holiday. With the option of working removed, I have to find something else to do. Cue the knitting and the books. I had taken the precaution of downloading a few detective novels onto the iPad. Classic serial killer stuff. Yesterday I ploughed through a whole tome, flicking the pages across the screen with my thumb. This morning I woke up with terrible synovitis in the CMC joint of my thumb. IPad injury number one. A few doses of ibuprofen and paracetamol later, I have decided to cut out the relaxing crap for the day, and write my blog anyway.

I’ve perched the iPad dock on top of an upturned waste bin, as it’s the only way I can get close enough to a socket to write at a comfortable-ish level. No doubt this will produce some new injury for tomorrow.

Tonight, your intrepid South West correspondent is going to drive all the way to Polperro to file her copy. I can’t wait to get back to London.

Sent from my iPad!

(Complete a Hospital Dr survey to win a new iPad - Ed.)

The sun was shining in Battersea this morning when I returned from dropping my daughter off at school, so I decided to take advantage of the weather and sit, reading the paper, in my front yard. For the record, this is about one by five metres of weed-ridden concrete, with a couple of ceramic stools and a table. 

They have survived purely because they are far too heavy for anything but the most determined old lag to nick. But I digress. Just as I got comfortable, with a mug of silver tip jasmine, I opened the paper to discover that I was becoming part of an alarming British statistic. 

A survey of 3,000 people, conducted by Weight Watchers as part of their get active campaign, shows that we spend more than 14 hours a day sitting down. If you add on seven hours sleeping, that’s a frankly pathetic three hours a day actually standing up, let alone moving about. 

I thought about my average day…you might remember that we are currently kipping in the office, so the temptation to fall out of bed, and boot the computer on with my big toe, is fairly overwhelming. I start dictating in my dressing gown, while my adorable husband fags me endless cups of poncy tea. I then walk to the bathroom, get ready for work, and drive to work. 

I do stand up for the odd ultrasound, but my day is pretty much spent on my bum. I do get a walk at lunchtime, usually to Waitrose to buy supper. I drive home, I work more, I cook, I watch TV. The most exercise I get in a normal day is walking to the pub and back.

I do go to the gym, but not all that often. I venture nervously out on my bike, but not all that often either. So I need to build more activity into each day. I looked at the lazy excuses in the paper, having to work harder because of the recession, too busy with the kids, too tired after work, etc. They all sounded pretty familiar. 

I made one of my resolutions, never mind time spent on proper exercise, I need to get out more. But the sun was all too tempting, so I sat reading, and enhancing my wrinkles, until the ceramic stool got too hot for my lycra-clad derriere. Then it was back to the computer to report all day. The only reason I’ll have moved about at all today is because I have a ballroom dance class tonight.

Crap. I don’t want to be yet another statistic. Apparently I should be using the stairs not the lift, parking further away from work, and walking for 30 minutes at lunchtime. Further suggestions for Sedentary Sarah on virtual postcards please… 

Blog day is normally Wednesday, but I woke up, the sun was shining and I’d lost three pounds.

So far so good, nothing to get annoyed about. There’s an election on, a debate looming, and still I can’t think of anything to say, apart from the fact that Andy Burnham seems to have disappeared, and that can only be a good thing.

I spent the previous weekend on an advanced hypnosis course. Obviously this means practicing on each other, so we spent three days going in and out of trances, with presuppositions of extreme calm and happiness. Can it have worked?

The last time I was rendered speechless was when Gordon Ramsay fingered the tattoo at the top of my spine. But that’s another story. To be fair, I’m not speechless, I just don’t have anything nasty to say about anyone which, for a writer, is not a good thing.

I can’t get myself worked up about anything. Even the problem with the deep crimson Mirror making The Sun look turquoise was easily solved by not buying it. Incidentally this saves me 45p a day, which will pay for my Olympic contribution, and gives me 210 minutes of my life a week back by not reading it.

The children ransack their bedrooms - I calmly explain what needs tidying. Arsenal don’t beat Manchester City at home - well we weren’t going to win the league anyway. While we’re on the topic of those two clubs, have you spotted the similarity, and possibly the reason why Mark Hughes was sacked? Arsenal manager - Arsène; newish Man City manager - Man Cinni. Husband doesn’t want me to buy the latest underwater video camera. Never mind.

I wonder how long this state of wellbeing will last? For your sake, I hope it’s not long.