... and I wasn’t even the patient.
Poor old Mum wasn’t well Friday afternoon so my sister, who was fortunately staying for the weekend, called 111. While this service has its detractors, we’ve been very impressed over the years, be it for an out-of-hours call-out, or an emergency prescription on a Sunday afternoon. Friday was no exception, and Mum ended the day with a solid diagnosis and a shed load of pills.
So far so good as far as the NHS is concerned.
I was flicking through the local paper recently. Yes, flicking. I’m not interested in the MP’s latest photo opportunity at a non-event, or letters from Mrs Angry of Aylesbury who can’t string a coherent argument together, but the newspaper’s so desperate for copy they print it anyway, or a story about yet another damaged car thanks to yet another gigantic pothole, with Bucks Council trotting out it’s moronic response to everything: “We take these matters very seriously”.
So, flick, flick, flick …. Flick back again.
What The Flick? Surely not. Hair discrimination? This I gotta read, if only because my blood pressure was a tad low that morning and reading something daft to perk it up was much easier than going for a brisk walk.
No. Not exactly.
But I have compared him favourably to Macron. Reason being, Macron is supposed to be an ally. A democratic soulmate. A peace-in-Europe advocate. A cultural cousin, sharing philosophical outlooks from Catholicism (not necessarily of the Roman variety) to the Enlightenment.
Putin on the other hand is, if not a true communist, certainly not a democrat. He’s not mad. He’s bad. Just look at how he treats the opposition. Novichok with your tea, anyone? Russians are mainly Orthodox Christians, and they never really ‘got’ the Enlightenment. Too busy fighting Napoleon, who was French by the way (well, Corsican, but close enough).
No. Not exactly.
Even if BoJo didn’t technically break his own law, he broke the spirit of it, approved punishment for ordinary people who attended smaller social gatherings during lockdown, and then lied, lied and lied again, apologising only when there was nowhere else to go. Comparisons with Prince Andrew as being part of ‘the arrogant, entitled elite’ are surely not unkind. A failure of leadership and moral standing if ever there was one.
So that’s the end of this blog then.
Well, not exactly.
Yesterday I blogged about the yukky smell in my kitchen that I eventually worked out wasn’t rancid baby-vomit but a pint of double cream that had spilled into the reservoir behind and under the integrated fridge, inaccessible by definition.
The idea of a fridge reservoir is to catch the condensation that forms at the back of the fridge, which is then evaporated by a heating element so there is never any need to empty or clean it. And the idea of one whole pint of double cream heading into the reservoir, along with God-knows-how-much condensation, was quite a queasy thought.
Today didn’t start at all well.
Coming down the stairs, I could smell what I can only describe as three-day-old baby vomit, bucketfuls of it. Bins need emptying, thought I. No they didn’t. Dishes need washing then. There were indeed a few in the sink, but only vegetably stuff from the previous evening. Something off in the fridge? Getting close.
The FT appears to have joined forces with the Guardian to bring down the privatised water industry because of untreated sewage polluting our rivers and coasts [i],[ii]. Basic journalistic principles of factual and balanced reporting are being sacrificed in favour of sensationalism, political bias and pandering to ill-informed public hysteria. Because shit sells; balance doesn’t.