Bite Back

Is there anything funnier than accidentally using human toothpaste when cleaning your cat’s teeth? Well yes, it turns out there is: watching your partner using the malt flavoured cat paste 😈

Covent Garden

My maternal grandfather was a horticulturist and, as such, had a commercial attachment with Covent Garden’s flower market, particularly for his roses.

Decades later, my mum and I enjoyed many days out in the square. There was a particular bistro in one of the former storage cellars we particularly liked. We’d eat listening to the conversations of others and often to music wafting in from a street artist.

The covered market was a treasure house of clothing, jewellery and ornamentation. Then the tiny shops including finding Lush by following our noses, long before Reading had a branch.

Covent Garden tube station is an experience in its own right. Arriving on the platform gives no sense of the ascent to come. We never did brave the stairs with their warning upon the number of steps, using instead the lifts with their trellised safety doors.

The mural painted on the Royal Opera House never went unremarked. 

Later still, a memorable night out with friends involving home made cake in an unusual book and art shop.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0d4s5dm

Truss-t Me

Truss-t me, I have a plan

No financier e’er scanned

Albion’s bankers weep

In envy, such its bang.

Truss-t me, market falls

Like failed rafters,

Expected pro tem,

Will yet ring stock bells

Truss-t me, I have a plan

To save my own skin,

A sacrificial chicken

Make my loyal liege man

Fiona Wilson 

14/10/2022

Pocket Story

It was a dreich day, yet it drew me outside. I pierced the sodden air, listening to the soft susurration of my hosiery and inhaling the petrichor. It was a good day to be alive.  

Mental Health Testimony

I’ve had bouts of anxiety and depression since my teens. I’m what’s called a functioning depressive which means that most of the time you’d never know.

Since breaking my spine, you can add in panic attacks relating to any and every thing medically related including just sitting in the waiting room of the vet. This is not necessarily the classic hyperventilating. Mostly it is waves of increasing anxiety and fear. It can make me impatient (okay smart arses, more so 😂), unable to focus properly on what you’re saying to me, and irrational. A bit like PMT on steroids. 

If you see me self neglecting or self harming with food then I’m already in depressive crisis. If I appear hyperactive and a little manic, my anxiety is spiralling. After a bout of that, I crash and go to ground. A bad attack, say from dental treatment, leaves me depleted for days.

That friend who’s the life and soul of the party might be breaking inside. The one who’s thoughtful and quiet might be scared. It’s not about doing things for them or fixing them, it’s simply looking them in the eye and asking “are you okay?” and making sure “fine” really is fine.

NHS Penalty Fees

There have been calls recently for people failing to show for NHS appointments to be fined. As the only sector with a history of charging something toward the cost of treatment and for fining no shows is NHS Dentistry, this would mean creating processes and supporting IT throughout the rest of the NHS. The NHS generally is operating on ancient kit and software. 

People are resistant to change. Most find it scary. It’s a core tenant of change management therefore, that you sell change by making the benefit personal to the people you want to change behaviour. 

I suggested to an NHS research group some time ago that just saying how many missed appointments in each GP practise was pretty meaningless to most people. If they reframed it to say “There were x missed appointments in the last month. This means you’ve had to wait an extra x days for your appointment”, peer pressure would do the rest without them spending a penny on a cure. 

Similarly, they ought to print the cost of consultant and clinic appointments on letters and drug costs on prescriptions. 

You don’t have to pay to create an actual penalty fee system in order to get folk to value what they get with the NHS and to think about how their habits affect services. 

Note here that government IT projects are notorious for spiralling costs and time over runs.

I’ve recently noticed that some of the correspondence for my own appointments are now doing this so some within the NHS agree with me.

Activating peer pressure may well be quicker and cheaper than fining folk ultimately.

ER II Platinum Jubilee

The Beeb just speculated why the Queen wanted all her family at church this morning (03/06/2022) when they don’t normally do that even for a state occasion.

Well, I know why.

Matriarch gets the entire family to rock up including those who hate each other.

Matriarch ducks out ‘ill’.

Matriarch is dropping anvil sized hint to sort yourselves out. God’s watching you and St Peter is taking note of your behaviour.

Nicely played Madge! 😂