My local clinic is pursuing me to collect a debt of less than $100 that has been outstanding for six months.  I sent my second or third query to Medicare on line.  I got an automated response saying that the issue could not be resolved by email, but that I should ring them.  I made the call a few minutes ago, and sent the following email to my shy correspondent at the other department of Medicare.

I waited fifteen minutes on my first attempt.  I spoke to someone on the second attempt – at 3.40 am – but you had not passed on my inquiry to that department, and I had deleted my copy.  The person I was dealing with could tell me that the file showed I had been sent a letter about my inquiry in April – which I do not recall – but she could not arrange to send another.  Since she was not told by you of your inquiry, she could go no further in answering it, even though someone had been able to write a letter about it six months.  Your left hand is forbidden to know what your right hand is doing, and I remain threatened by a law suit.

Basil Fawlty could not have bettered this.  I shall wearily take the matter further.  I don’t need callous nonsense from my own government when dealing with a flak-catcher before dawn.

This could drive citizens clean out of their minds.

Poet of the Month: Verlaine

Sadness, The Bodily Weariness…

Sadness, the bodily weariness of man,

Have moved me, swayed me, made me pity.

Ah, most when dark slumbers take me,

When sheets score the skin, oppress the hand.

And how weak in tomorrow’s fever

Still warm from the bath that withers

Like a bird on a rooftop that shivers!

And feet, in pain from the road forever,

And the chest, bruised by a double-blow,

And the mouth, still a bleeding wound,

And the trembling flesh, a fragile mound,

And the eyes, poor eyes, so lovely that so

Hint at the sorrow of seeing the end! …

Sad body! So frail, so tormented a friend!