Friday, June 23, 2006

What a splendid moment that was.

An article in yesterday's (Wednesday) London Evening Standard sent me by Gillie:
"Angry French fans have put their national team up for sale on eBay after a lacklustre World Cup performance. Les Bleus have only managed two draws so far, against Switzerland and South Korea, and are in danger of an early exit. They must beat Togo in Cologne on Friday to have any chance of qualifying for the knockout stage.”

It was Ladies Day at Royal Ascot today, the day on which the wearing of fancy hats is compulsory – for the women, that is, not the horses - which also means that, since Windsor is directly between Ascot and London, the town has been jammed with traffic – mostly of the Rolls, Bentley and stretch-limo variety. Nothing so common as a Jaguar.
It has also been Ladies Week for the DG and me, spent (when not visiting DG's son's hospital) visiting my daughter in a hospital which does surgery of the kind we men don’t understand in wards where the patients walk about like sailors on a turbulent sea.
Visiting our kids in their respective hospitals has enabled us to savour our famous National Health Service – a beacon of social welfare in 1945 which has rather fallen behind the rest of the world in recent years. The main problem seems to be beaurocracy: the excessive number of Chiefs relative to Indians. (Couldn't use the politically correct term because the expression would not have made sense. Try it.)
One of the patients in my daughter’s ward was calling for help because she was in pain and needed to turn over but was all tangled up in tubes. So daughter gets out of bed and interrupts the nurses’ conversation to tell them that one of their patients is in need of assistance. They tell her to mind her own business.
The hospital was even more busy than usual because two of the operating theatres were out of action because of air conditioning failures, and the only other A & E hospital in the area was closed because the roads around it were blocked by traffic - because it was Ladies Day.
The other A & E hospital stands in Ascot High Street.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

YEow. During my last hospital stay, the doctor refused to show me my xrays because he said he didn't have time.
Got him back though- he improperly filed his claim on my insurance and it wa denied- $3600 for 5 minute's face time with me and a denial of service. He got what he deserved- a big fat nuthin'.

Tuscan Traveller said...

Nice story, Ed. I know there are also many others of the caring kind - 'I wouldn't be alive today' etc. But there's still too much 'my time is much more valuable than yours' stuff.
Thks for the lesson on sporting balls - was reminded of your comments while waiting in A & E - a guy in cricket whites came in clutching a hankie to his bleeding head. (He got priority.) Said to moll: 'Ed didn't say anything about cricket balls'.

Anonymous said...

THey do some real damage for being so small, don't they?

Anonymous said...

Dare I mention that I am one of those little Indians (although not one of the hospital ones) ..... and feeling very unloved - I'm the kindest, sweetest battleaxe you could wish to meet. Mind you, faced with one of the Chiefs, I certainly know where I'd like to put my axe ....

Anonymous said...

Gillie, what are you doing running around inside a hosptial with an axe?
Though, I suppose, if I'm going to get hit by an axe, there's no better place for it to happen thana hospital, right?