A Seal Around The Top

My appearance at the lung-judging festival was a year overdue. I knew this from the notes on the bottom of my repeat prescriptions, which had said bold and ineffective things, involving the words "must" and "essential", the last few times I'd collected my medicine from the chemist. I'd correctly assumed that the doctor wouldn't refuse to give me any, but hadn't thought the nurse would leave a voicemail full of antiseptic concern. We need to measure the capacity of your pipes. Your graph is full of gaps. Help us. Help us. But the last two times I'd done this I'd had index fingers wagged at my eyes, because I'd told them about how I inhale the fumes of burning money. And I find being judged to be a waste of my time. So I went with reluctance. But there were no fingers, I was surprised, just a flat statement of the capacity, four or five hundred lung-units, and I was weighed and measured, and found to be seventy or eighty of one thing, and a hundred and something of something else.