bunn

I attended the Patients Participation Group at my local NHS practice a couple of months ago. The idea of these is to get a patients-eye perspective on the practice, and also provide an avenue for the practice to communicate with the patients while they aren't actively being ill.

This practice, it is fair to say, has a dire reputation. Just the mention of it gets people tutting gloomily. 

Being short of doctors, it resorted to the system of requiring people who wish for an appointment with a GP to phone at 8am each day. resulting in a mad frenzy that maxes out the phone system.  By 8:20, all the appointments for the day have gone.   There's no way to book ahead, and no other way to contact a doctor or to make a non-urgent appointment. 

It doesn't matter how many complicated ways you find to slice the cake, if the main problem is that there is nothing like enough cake.  The doctor present feels that paid-for GP's appointments lie ahead and are only a matter of time.  

Though, I am not sure if that will actually help much in this case, since the major problem here seems to be less lack of money than remoteness, and reluctance of medical staff with many jobs to choose from, to isolate themselves in obscure Western lands, and particularly, to go to work for practices with appalling reputations.   This is also a very white area, and the doctor who spoke to us was fairly up-front about racism being an issue for many potential recruits, which is a particularly awful thing to hear. 

The social media complaints have become something of a self-fulfilling  prophesy: the more people complain in public, the more potential recruits are deterred from choosing to work there. 

There's also the problem that unlike England, NHS Wales has not invested in electronic prescription system, and therefore, all doctors are stuck on a treadmill of endless manual prescription signing.  I must say that one surprised me, and I darkly suspect that the thorny problem of providing everything in English and Welsh is an issue there. Which I support, but possibly not to the point where people are actually dying as a result. 

Anyway. There was a Senedd member present who had come out from Cardiff for the meeting, so I'm hoping he's going to raise that with whoever it is can actually change things. 

I am not sure that there's much I can do as an untrained volunteer to contribute to anything, but armed with this info, I have managed to help calm a major Angry On FAceboOK incident, which I think is the kind of help they wanted from the group. 

Things are better here than at a neighbouring practice, where the last doctor retired a few months back and now the practice is probably going to close. I'm not sure what happens then. I really hope it doesn't involve all the patients being allocated to the practices around. 

The good news is that they have actually managed to recruit one extra doctor, who will have started work by now.  They've also given their receptionists more training, which I guess allows them to shuffle the deckchairs on the Titanic faster and with more assurance. 

I keep thinking I should post something here, and then I can't decide what, and so I don't, and this is a problem that really is only going to get worse, so perhaps I shall just do random bullet points.

House building work is still not complete, because the builders working on the bathroom have gone off to outdoor jobs while the weather is good. We kind of owe them one for having dropped everything to fix our house when the roof came off, so I haven't yet chivvied them about this.

However, the downstairs rooms that were almost converted from a garage and then flooded and had to be entirely re-done are now pretty much finished. We haven't moved any shop stuff (from our roleplaying game shop, Shop on the Borderlands, for anyone still reading this who had forgotten) into them yet, but Pp is AT THIS VERY MOMENT driving home from Birmingham with a van jammed full of 20+ large boxes full of vintage roleplaying games, so that is about to change at any moment.

One thing that isn't quite finished down there is the under-stairs cupboard which we wanted to have a light come on when the door opened. It still has wires just sticking out where that should happen. I hope not live. But the rest of the cupboard is done, so I have started sticking garden tools and stuff in there. If the builders leave it long enough, I may even experiment with wiring up a light in there.

I may also have to hang up the kayaks on their designated hooks, which apparently have wooden supports embedded in the wall, but never quite got put into place.

I haven't really been able to do anything about the garden since The Event, because all the tools and stuff were in a giant emergency dusty Heap in the porch, but we are finally getting to the point where tools are actually in known accessible places at last. I have plans to cut the lawns at last and clear up everything that died in the heatwave ready to start over. I may have a go at a bit of that this evening if Pp doesn't arrive shortly.

We frantically finished off everything that could be finished downstairs because Pp's god-daughter, who is seven, and her mum were coming for a flying visit and that's the only room that can reasonably have two beds in it. We did a lot of things, including improvised D&D, painting minis, a boat trip, visiting a playground and Pembroke Castle, and of course walking the dogs. Theo, being himself young and bouncy, was very excited by the visit. Rosie got a bit tired after a while.

We have bought a boat! It's a RIB. A bit bigger than we had originally thought of, but it was available locally (third-hand) and a bit cheaper than we expected. Slightly alarming, even having done the powerboat training course, that the manual was rather woolly about how and when to sloosh the engine out with clean water, but fortunately the people at the dry stack where we are storing it are really helpful and there's a chandlery. It's really good to be able to explore further afield than the kayaks can reasonably take us, because Pembrokeshire really is on the edge of the Deep. I love it.

My little lemon and blood orange trees in the sun room somehow survived The Event and are back in there. The lemon is almost pathetically happy to be upright in the warm sun and regularly fed and watered again. She is absolutely covered in lemon-blossom, and I think she may be going to fruit. The blood orange has put out some new leaves, but appears to be sulking a bit by comparison.

I didn't want to claim on the house contents insurance. Claiming on the buildings insurance was bad enough, and anyway, nothing much that was destroyed really had any great monetary value, it was all a bit old and slightly knackered. So I bought vinyl for the floor on ebay and we laid it ourselves, and I have been around the charity shops and bought a really excellent cheap charity shop sofa ( it's in two bits, which are supposed to form a corner but I've split them up) and a wooden dresser to keep art supplies in, which is a great improvement over the old shelves. Drat. I was going to post a photo but my Flickr login is on my laptop downstairs. Never mind.

I have been doing a bit of arting, and I shoved (I think) most of the recent bits onto my https://victoriaclare.com/ site today. Most of the more recent ones are Tolkien, but I did some Stranger Things portraits in watercolour, some of which have come out quite well.

I keep meaning to post here, then something comes up, like a giant pile of orders for games that need to be packed, or sorting out the vast pile of boxed miniatures into at least roughly alphabetical boxes, or taking photos of new stock ,or putting down the new floor in the finally-fixed sun room or fighting the insurance company and by the time I've done that and walked the dogs and had tea and maybe done some drawing (on a very small pad because I haven't moved the art stuff or dusted all of it yet) or even a tiny bit of writing (my poor neglected Fandom Trumps Hate fics are looking at me sad-eyed!) there doesn't seem to be time.

However! Today is a good day because the long struggle with the insurance company is finally over, and they have PAID. They have paid a lot, because it took them a long time to do anything and all the time they didn't do anything the damage got worse. And we have worked out exactly what we owe all the contractors and they are all paid too. Phew.

I do have a couple of posts open in tabs half-written, but this one is DONE and I shall now hit POST.

This morning, I was drinking coffee quietly when Fankil sprang upon me and bit and scratched my arm quite hard. He broke the skin, though I was wearing a thick fleece-lined hoodie that covered my arms. A few days ago, he got out of the upstairs room and when Pp caught him, he gave him a long deep scratch that needed bandaging. I don't quite know what we are going to do with him. I'm still hoping that his behaviour will improve and he can be re-integrated with the other cats. He is a lot more confident now, and very playful, but also WAY too fierce. He is a small cat, but even a small cat can hurt!

Fortunately, he seems to have the sense not to really tackle the dogs, who could certainly eat him if it occurred to them to do so.  And that suggests that he can control himself, if he wants to.

We have been letting him wander over the new roof outside the living room, and when he was doing that he was a lot calmer, but now he has discovered that he can get down via the scaffolding into the garden.   When he discovered this, we had a panicked half hour when we thought that he was gone for good, but thankfully he then came back on his own (and assaulted Nenya, or possibly, she assaulted him).

These cats are definitely the most spicy cats we have ever owned. Well, apart from Gothmog, who is a little round sweetheart and deserves to be protected. 

In other news, the blown-off roof is now well and truly replaced, the floor (complete with new joists because the previous owner had skimped on joists) is in, and the builders are now working on the rooms underneath that had got all wet.  Not sure if they will need to replace the floor.  So far they have pulled all the insulation out of the walls, removed the lights, and taken off the plasterboard ready to replace it. 

Although the weather has been kind the last few weeks, and it was really warm today, the garden is definitely feeling the impact of the storms still.

The apple trees aren't yet visibly budding at all. One of the three rowans is tentatively bursting into leaf, but the other two have just slightly swelling buds, in the manner of trees who have felt the icy blast and didn't enjoy it.

The thymes are doing well though. Thymes seems to enjoy icy blasts and lots of sun. I got some more thymes for my birthday!

Sadly, the sedum lawn, which was looking really quite good a month ago, has had scaffolders dump their poles all over it and trample on it twice now, and I'm not sure most of it is going to make it, which is a bit sad. I do hope it will be able to recover.

But on the plus side, we should soon have a house that is rainproof again, and the insurance will pay for almost all the cost of the roof. They jibbed a bit at the cost of repairing the water damage to the rooms underneath, and are sending another surveyor to look at it and see if it all really needs the work that our builder says it does. We hope he enjoys mould.

The ancient shed has now been removed, and that means I need to do yet more fencing to keep the Theo from bouncing out and about. It is a Work in Progress.

First, the most important news!  Our little grey cat Fankil went missing back in April.  Now we have him back! 
( Read more... )
Two weeks ago, I saw on a lost pet group on Facebook a post about a grey cat that had been haunting the workshop of a holiday complex about ten miles away. He had been caught and brought to the local animal rescue, which had pronounced him un-microchipped and feral. Fankil was microchipped, and not at all feral but microchips do fail, and he had been missing for many months, so we arranged to go and see the found cat anyway. 
When we got there, the cat was in a pen with an enclosed kennel bit, jammed behind the bed. He peed himself in terror when the door opened and growled savagely at us. We thought surely this isn't our cat.  His ears looked wrong, his eyes were a bit too yellow and we couldn't see the white hairs on his chest, and his feet were not plain purple but dotted with pink.  He was the right size, colour and sex, but ten miles is a long walk for a cat. 
But we went and sat with him for a bit, and he really warmed up to Pp — way more than he had to the rescue volunteer who had trapped him, or the guy who found him in the workshop and had been feeding him for weeks.  It was hard to tell, but it really seemed like this cat knew Pp.  And the rescue was very clear that with his behaviour, nobody else was likely to take this terrified stinky skinny cat home. 
So we agreed to take him home for a few days.  Worst case scenario: free cat! 
 
But I really wasn't sure he was our cat, until Theo wandered up, sniffed and totally ignored him.  Theo is pretty excitable around strange cats, and it was clear that he didn't consider this cat to fall into that group. 
Since then, the cat has eaten a number of huge meals, has purred hugely, has come over for strokes and cuddles, and in fact has absolutely not behaved in any way like a scared feral cat, or even a cat in a new home.  He behaves like a cat that IS home, and even his ears have changed shape now he's not trying to pretend he's invisible.  And he DOES have a few white hairs on his chest.  We just couldn't see them properly in the poor light.  I haven't yet tried properly checking his feet, but I suspect the pink speckles might be scar tissue from the long walk.  
We have him back! 

What else happened?  Oh yes, Christmas.  We went down to stay with my mother for a few days.  She had a cold (had tested negative for Covid a couple times before we went down and the cold was improving)  so decided to mask up to contain the sniffles. 
I got Pp a roman-style gladius as a present (I suspect the beautiful damascus steel leaf-shaped blade is not very authentic but it is very pretty).  He was pleased, and importantly, nobody has yet been slain. 
Those socks are on the radiator because we took the hounds out over Dartmoor on Christmas morning and it absolutely POURED on us and we became very very wet . It then continued to pour all day. Possibly wettest Christmas in years?
This is a postcard that my Mum received recently, via an ex-neighbour in Swansea.  We moved away from Swansea when I was 13 — and the postcard wasn't even sent to Swansea.  It was sent from London to my father at an address in Birkenhead, where they lived, I think, before they moved to Leicester, which is where they lived before Swansea. 
It's post-marked 1966!  I am torn between being amazed that it finally reached my Mum at all, and being amazed that it took so long to get there.  Who 'Jackie' was has been lost in the mists of time. 
Back to Pembrokeshire, and the hounds and the Christmas tree.  I am thinking I may not make a Christmas decoration this year.  I can't remember what I did with last year's tree, or whether I kept a bit to carve.  I might have to start over with a chunk of this tree next year. 
Random photo of a lurcher posing on the beach after we got back. 
Oh!I forgot to say that on the way driving home from Devon on Boxing day, the exhaust fell off the Volvo.  Or, at least, it sort of fell off and was bouncing on the road as we drove, and we looked at a large Volvo stuffed with Stuff and Dogs, and concluded that our chances of getting all that rescued on Boxing Day were slim, so we turned off the motorway and found a very pot-holey lane and drove on that, feeling rather like we were in an episode of Top Gear in till the exhaust actually fell off and could be wrapped in dog towels and shoved inside the car.)
After that the drive home was Very Loud, but at least it wasn't likely to slay a following driver on the motorway, which would have been an unfestive thing to do on a Boxing Day.
On that Volvo the sunroof doesn't work, the driver's side window doesn't work, the drivers door is a different colour to the car, the passenger side has a big bash in it, the back bumper is semi-detached from the exhaust pothole operation, and the aircon needs regassing. And we bought it as an emergency replacement for 1500 quid about five years ago, hoping it would last a year. So I feel the moment has probably come to replace it. I just can't decide yet with what. 

Excuse me, I am trying to add a cut but struggling.

I keep vaguely thinking 'I should do a post about that' and not doing it. So to get back in the swing I shall just do a bulleted list of Things in no order.

Today we went to Lawrenny Quay, which is a lovely place some distance up the Cleddau river, looking out onto the resoundingly named Black Mixen Pool. There's a nice cafe, but rather a lot of signs of all kinds — some of them helpful signs about crab sandwiches and toilets, but also so very many 'don't do this!' signs. We watched a man very determinedly attempting to make a verge flatter using a road roller. It was a fair battle, but I think the verge won.

Wally the Tenby Walrus has reportedly taken off to Cornwall, and was seen some distance off Padstow. I imagine the Tenby tourist industry is weeping, but at least the pubs are open again so they can weep into their beer.

In a desperate attempt to stifle some of the rather ugly concrete driveway here, I have covered it with a sedum carpet, the kind they sell for green roofs. So far this seems to be working pretty well.

This garden, or 'concrete and tarmac pad' as you might call it, is very much the opposite of my Cornwall garden. It has practically no soil, is very sunny and extremely windy!

( Read more... )

The hot weather has gone away. Now we have Rain and Fog. A couple of days ago I foolishly risked going out for a longer walk with Rosie Roo, but without her coat: we all got caught in a major downpour so wet that you could see Rosie's under-fur spots showing through her soaked fur, AND there was thunder. Fortunately, one of the few things that dogs are usually afraid of that Rosie isn't is Thunder, and since Rosie ignored it, so did Theo.

And THEN, driving home, I stopped at the roadside veg stand to buy YET MORE strawberries, and when I got back in the car, it wouldn't start. With the rain pouring down, and I had left my phone at home... So, then I had to go bang on the door of the house that belonged to the veg stand, in the middle of a pandemic, and ask to borrow their phone. Fortunately for me, they were in, and kind enough to lend it to me. Then I had to talk to Green Flag rescue through the sound of a torrent pouring on top of my umbrella, which was not easy.
( Read more... )

Still having a knackered shoulder / neck /arm that was causing me quite a bit of pain, I decided to go to a physiotherapist who lives in a little hut in a back garden in Tavistock. It doesn't have chicken legs so I''m fairly sure that is OK.

She poked, prodded, acupuncted, used some sort of sound wave device that I'm fairly sure came directly from an episode of Star Trek, and by the end I had stopped hurting at least for a while, which was a huge relief, and got a proper night's sleep, ditto. It remains to be seen how long-term effective this will be : I did hurt quite a bit today, but not so continuously. And I have an exercise to do, and was given instructions about which over the counter pain thing to buy, which was also very helpful.

Also knackered: my car poor Helga Saab, whose suspension has completely given up the ghost. I joined a local artists group, went off to the first meeting, which was fun, and was halfway back and feeling cheerful when suddenly there was a sudden loud thumping noise...

Apparently they aren't making suspensions for 2002 Saabs any more and even used parts for the suspension are 'like gold dust' so Helga has gone to Car Graveyard. We went today to see a couple of cheap old bangers, since we do need to replace her. Pp's car is not really much use for carrying dogs, canoes, or boxes of role-playing stuff. After some debate, we put down a deposit on an ancient and cheap Volvo V70, which after only 142,000 miles and 14 years looks considerably younger than Helga did. Not 100% that we will buy it since it juddered a little at speed, but the place that's selling it is going to sort the wheel alignment which I hope will fix that.

If we do buy her, I think I'm going to call her Gambara. I was thinking it looked more like a male car, for some reason, but on the other hand, it's a Volvo, so should have a vǫlva kind of name, and this story about the Lombards is way too wonderful not to use.

In the event of sudden overwhelming attack on, say, RAF Benson, by, say, the serpent-spawn of hell, do you think that the crews of the Chinook and Puma helicopters stationed there would:

a) Attack the serpent-spawn, even though the helicopters are not really designed for that sort of thing (and I am not sure if they are even armed with anything that would be likely to give serpent-spawn anything other than very momentary pause).

b) be used to evacuate and flee the base, assuming that they have maybe three hours notice, tops, and certainly would not be able to remove everyone living there.

You can assume that they are not getting any orders from the MOD. I've already dealt with them.

Supplementary question inspired by

dhampyresa :

In the event of serpent-spawn infesting London and the French using their nuclear submarines to attempt to put a stop to the serpent-spawn before it moves across the Channel, how much of Northern France would become uninhabitable?

On Friday I took the hounds for a walk in the woods. Rosie decided that my choice of route was not the same as hers. And she looked at me down her long nose, ignored me calling and just *went*. I don't think she was even chasing anything. She'd just decided that my company was uncongenial. And she vanished. After I'd searched for an hour, I met a family walking their dog who said they had seen her in Latchley. So I walked to Latchley, but there was no sign of her. In the end I picked up the car and went home for reinforcements, only to find that she had arrived there about 3 minutes before me, having taken her own route home. She was delighted to see me and bounced all over the place! And she was still wearing her muzzle, and no sheep along the way appear to have been bothered, so I got away with it. But this Really Will Not Do.

This sort of thing is exactly the reason that some years ago I concluded that although Salukis are very attractive dogs, I didn't really want to own one. And now I have... well OK, not really two. And thank heavens, Brythen (now he has grown up!) has turned out to be just the kind of gentle reliable dog I thought he was going to be. Thank goodness he is only 1/4 saluki.

You'd think butter wouldn't melt, wouldn't you?

I've made some liver treats, and we are back to working harder on practicing recall training again.
Positive reinforcement is supposed to work on all organisms. Even Salukis, eventually...

1) The Wandering Whippet
All this week, our village has been distracted by a mysteriously appearing whippet wandering the main road through the village, all the way from the pub all the way to our other main landmark, the postbox.
( Read more... )

2) The Woeful Lurcher

I walked down to the river this evening. Such a wonderful evening, sun shining through the trees, the dogs were being so good, staying close and coming back to check in regularly.
( photo )
Rosie decided to race about for fun, and Brythen joined her. They were having such fun. And then Rosie doubled back, Brythen tried to follow, ran into a tree and laid his shoulder open. Poor big lump, he was crying and crying. :-(

Fortunately, once he'd got over the first shock he was able to walk, more or less. I'm not sure I could have carried him up that slope. Even more fortunately, I was in the one tiny patch of the Tamar Valley that by some freak of mobile networking actually has a phone signal, so I was able to call Pp, who brought the car down as far as possible to pick us up.

( Woe dog with hole. )

I went to install Eudora on this new computer, to find that even Eudora OSE, the Thunderbird-driven thing which replaced Qualcomm's original Eudora software, has finally passed away.

I've been using Eudora for my email since 1995! *weeps*

I feel as I would if I had just discovered that you couldnt' buy a kettle any more.

My mother's house is, strictly speaking, in Devon, not Cornwall, but it is close enough to Cornwall to fall into what it is tempting to call the Cornish Emmenthal Zone - ie, the area that is riddled with subterranean tunnels all over the place. So, of course when she bought her house, she had a mining search done, to check it wasn't on a mineshaft. Unfortunately, the gamble you take when you live on a Swiss cheese, is that your house isn't on a mine that was dug before about 1820, when it occurred to someone that actually making records of where all the holes were might be a good idea. Anything dug before that time is mostly unrecorded, and may leap out and bite you on the bum.

The parking area outside her house had 'sunk' a bit, and been filled in, and now it has 'sunk' again, and she was all poised to have it filled again, when a helpful relative of the builder pointed out that actually, when the ground keeps disappearing in Swiss Cheese land, it might be worth investigating. So, she got the Cornish Mining guy round, and he has poked spikes into the ground, and thinks there is probably a Shaft.

So now she is being advised that she needs to get the Cornish mining people to come and drill, at a cost of two grand (plus a skip for the debris, and making good afterwards, whatever THAT is likely to involve). And her insurance company say 'do nothing as the shaft is not actually under the house' - which seems something of a leap of faith, and surely an area right outside the house and surrounded by it on two sides, that you walk past to get to the front door, is close *enough* to the house to be at the very least, something of a worry. The mining bloke has told her not to walk over it!

Note to self: find out name of insurance company so that if my Mum and her house disappear into the Shaft, I will know who to blame.

I can still hardly believe this. Suma Bungle died today.
( Read more... )

It is a stupidly cold spring - freezing winds which somehow do not manage to freeze the endless mud - and our two-year-old boiler has just died. Woeisme! At least we have escaped the snow. Feels like it has been winter since approximately last June.

is it that when I think to myself 'Right! Time for bed, so I can rise bright and early tomorrow!' I inevitably find myself having to do something like scrub paintbrush cleaner off a furiously growling and savagely angry Bungle?

I think the Bungle is OK, having been scrubbed enthusiastically under the tap. Right. Now I AM going to bed.

Current Mood: scratched and sodden

I have definitely spent MORE than enough time this week, pretending to be a human being. MORE than enough. The illusion is, frankly, wearing thin.

I did a hedge survey course today. 2 injured out of 18 course attendees during a short walk along a muddy lane, 1 of them needing X-rays seems like some sort of record. Clumsy sods these human beings.

There was free food! Including excellent carrot cake! And I learned to identify hedge bedstraw, and how to tell a spindle tree when it's not fruiting. I feel I learned less about landscape archaeology, as mostly that section was strong on 'stuff we can't be sure about'. But that is a form of learning of a sort.

I wrote about undercover Romans, walked the dogs many times (Brythen now doing really well off lead, he really is such an easy dog!) watched some Crufts (the Cardigan corgi looked amazingly like Tommy! I wanted the Borzoi to win overall, but alas, was disappointed) decorated a jamjar with twirly polymer clay (no, I don't know why I did this, it seemed like a good idea at the time) watched a quite good science fiction film - Moon - and did DIY:

( in which Painting of Walls is carried out, a Painful Lesson is Learned, and a Resolution is made )

The daffodils and camellias are well in bloom, and the primrose-yellow Azalea is over already. I've bought some seeds! They were impulse buys from Morrison's so not exactly carefully-chosen specials but still:
1) california poppies (last year they did so well strewn in the sunny spot along the driveway that I thought I had to give them another go!
2) mixed climbing nasturtians
3) container peppers for the greenhouse
4) basil (am not sure it is possible to grow too much basil...)
5) butternut squash

Now I desperately need to get out there and weed and plant!

Current Mood: cheerful

( Cut for bodily fluids and dog castration. )
EDIT: Thurs. Mollydog has continued to be sick on and off today, and this afternoon she got up and then fell over :-( She has been to the vet and had an antiemetic jab: if that doesn't work she will have to go back tomorrow for X-rays.

Current Mood: WOE! WOE! WOE!

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bunn

January 2026

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Entries tagged with disaster

PPG & NHS

Random bullet points.

Post something damnit

Cats, continued

A garden-post

The cat came back! And other news

A post of many things

The Rain, some Arty Stuffs, Volvo woe, a fuzzy brain and strawberries.

Knackered Things

What-if questions

Disappearing Lurcher

Dog related excitements

End of the Eudora Era

This isn't a mine...

Suma Bungle

Bollocks

Why...

Hmph

Things Done This Weekend

All hail the Great Lord Vax