This morning we must attend Kathleen's hospital appointment at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital. We have to be there for 09:20, and being aware of the traffic we leave in plenty of time. Big mistake, there is no traffic. Not sure why, is everyone using the metro (given the 25% increase in the cost of petrol), or have they all been made redundant?
Net result is we arrive at 09:00. First you have to report to a reception desk, where your paper file is located and despatched via their high speed delivery system (ie an elderly lady who hand delivers the file to the clinic). I thought the NHS had recently spent several millions (or was it billions) on a "state of the art" computer system, clearly they have not heard of the paperless office and electronic transfer.
We arrive at the clinic to find about six people already waiting. By 09:20, no one has been called. It has got conversational, and we find that three people have 09:00 appointments, and three have 09:20 appointments. New people arrive as we sit there, soon there are no seats for the arriving patients. Shortly after 09:20, the first of the 09:00 appointments is called, so we start the day 20 minutes behind. Anyone there in America reading this, just note you do not want a system like this!.
Eventually Kathleen is seen and we get out at about 10:00, not too bad I suppose, at least it allowed them to charge us for an hours parking.
The good news is that they do not appear to have found anything dire wrong, but as always they do of course find something. They now say she has evidence of osteoporosis in her spine, so she must attend another appointment with a different specialist. She is not happy about this, since it probably means even more tablets, and she hates taking tablets.
After lunch I go cycling with the cycling group. Despite the dreadful weather they have been suffering in Cumbria, the afternoon here is dry and sunny and we have a very pleasant 2.5 hour ride taking in Beacon Lough and the East Gateshead Cycleway. Mark says we did approximately 15 miles, it almost all seems to have been up hill!
After my return from the cycling I decide to set up the new Digital TV Recorder I recently bought, thus bringing us more technologically upto date and making our Tape VCR redundant. It turns out to be very simple, and within half an hour (most of which was spent in waiting for it to tune itself into the available channels), we are pausing live TV, rewinding live TV, and recording whole series at least as well as the average ten year old.
The UK news today is dominated by the flooding in Cumbria, and the tragic death of a policeman when a road bridge collapsed under the weight of flood water. Plus the trend to being governed by unelected representative continues with the appointment of one of our unelected members of the House of Lords as EU Foreign Secretary. Perhaps when we have finished training the Afghan Army, they will come to Europe and restore democracy here?
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