In general I find doctors’ waiting rooms to be pretty dull places. They are bland, with horrible pictures and out-of-date magazines. But LUL always does things a little differently. 🙂
It’s not surprising that LUL have a slightly different approach to waiting rooms. After all, most of our offices are pretty funky and unique. Mine, for example, is all blue and rattles. Even the more conventional offices are pretty unusual as they are often tucked away in the most ridiculous of places. I think that floating above or buried beneath tracks or being 1m x 20m mostly makes up for these offices not having wheels or headlights.
Some of our offices are in regular buildings of course and our medical facility is in such a place. It’s where we go for hearing check-ups, regular assessments of whether we are still fit to drive and so on. The waiting room there is broadly similar to most of that type – the carpet is hard-wearing and industrial, the walls are bland and the framed prints are uniformly hideous. The sole difference is in the rather beautiful aquarium kept there. It’s on a large wooden pedestal and is an interesting semi-circle shape. It’s fairly large with plenty of room for the inmates.
Whenever I happen to visit this building I take a moment to check out the fish. There are two nondescript fish of an orangey-beige colour who know their place which is usually lurking in amongst the huge pile of rocks out of harms’ way. There are also two magic-coloured fish which come in hues not found anywhere else in this universe. Naturally the magic fish are the bosses of the aquarium and swan around like they own the place (if fish can be said to swan). They are the Posh & Becks of the fishworld and spend a fair bit of time making sure that the nondescript fish are suitably in awe of their power, strength and chromatic superiority.
Today, I wandered in and saw a frustrated person standing on a chair before the aquarium and surrounded by gubbins. Clearly he was there to maintain things so I took a seat across the room and watched him work. It’s always pleasant to watch others work. Especially when the other person does not appear to be a dab hand at his task. Most especially when the task at hand has him marked as a sucker.
At first he seemed to be trying to lift the rocks out. This wasn’t going so well as the aquarium is quite deep and the rocks large. He had one of those grabsticks that litter-pickers use but it didn’t seem to be particularly well suited to the task and he was floundering a bit. These are BIG rocks and mostly he’d get them lifted so far before dropping them. They then drifted down and slotted into a new position on the pile rather like a gigantic, watery-based game of tetras. The whole thing was made that much more difficult as he was having to move carefully so that he didn’t inadvertantly squish the fish.
I was just wondering why he didn’t remove the fish first so that he could progress more easily when the same idea seemed to occur to him. Perhaps I’m telepathic and he picked up the piercing ray of my piscean-oriented thoughts. At any rate he gave a grunt, stepped down from his perch, picked up a small net and tried a few quick scoops with no success. This marks him out as most definitely *not* an angler as all the fish legged it (?) into hidey holes. And trust me, there are a lot of holes and caves and passages in that pile of rocks. It’s a veritable fish hamlet.
There then commenced a short period of carping under his breath and checking of his mobile. I’m not sure why this would help but I acknowledge that my phone is somewhat dated and is limited to texting and phonecalls. I’m not up with you cool kids and your google and your iFish. No doubt ‘e’ll have had a good reason for it.
Whatever it was he did it didn’t appear to help any. He jumped off his chair again (why he didn’t have a stepladder I have no clue) and opened the cabinet underneath the aquarium. Inside was a large tub of fishfood with which he planned to lure the fish. Get the fish’s attention with the food, let them swim into clear water and scoop ’em up. Job’s a goodun. Or maybe not. For Mr Unfish climbed back on his chair and held the tub of fish up to the glass about halfway down.
As I sat there wondering if he was really just *showing* the fish the fishfood tub our hero realised his mistake. He took the tub away from the side of the aquarium, turned it round and then repositioned it with the logo directed at the fish. Of course. After a minute it became apparent that the fish weren’t among the cleverest so he tried to swoosh the net through the water. I’m not sure why. It wasn’t to attract their attention because that’s what he did as his next step. Still holding the fishfood tub against the glass Mr Unfish leaned over the water and waved to the occupants. Unfortunately I am unable to relate whether the fish either waved back or decided to snub him again as I was called for my appointment. When I passed through later Mr Unfish had gone and the wily piscean denizens were happily swimming around. I really, REALLY hope that if I’m in that waiting room again I’ll be treated to another round of Mr Unfish vs the Clown Fish.