Early Risers.

[simontaylor484]

5 hours ago, Barry O said:

Ey up!

Who worries about unmatched socks? Why? Its more embarrassing if you have to take your shoes off to reveal.....a hole in a sock....

 

Sunny but chilly here this morning. Supposed to be cool but dry all week. Yipppeeeddddooo!

 

Her indoors is off to score at a crickwt match marking 100 years of Wetherby League later today. As it is in Kippax I won't be attending. Nothing wrong with Kippax but I don't watch made up games.

 

Good win for England yesterday and Yorkshire won at a canter. Great!

 

Hope you can get everything you want to get done, done today..

 

Goodluck to Dave in the escape process.

 

Positive thoughts to all!

Baz

I think you have had a good escape there baz the ground in Kippax is on the top of Mary Pannel hill and isnt one of the warmest places. Iirc Chris Silverwood used to play there. 

[andyram]

Afternoon all and supportive thoughts to Dave and his continuing time as a NHS prisoner / patient. I hope that you ca make your escape soon! I have been interested to read the various less than positive stories about the organisation so many clapped for on Thursday evenings during lockdown. I have my own negative experience (my apologies if I have told this before).

 

Back in 2002 I was playing five a side football when I landed awkwardly on my left arm. Picking myself up I knew straight away that something was wrong because part of the arm was flat. A trip to A&E and the subsequent long wait was rewarded with a temporary splint type of support and an appointment for a check up eight days later. At that appointment the splint was removed and I was discharged. Two days later, when opening my bedroom door I felt my arm go into spasm. A trip to the doctors the following day saw the diagnosis of soft tissue damage and I was told that it would take several weeks to improve. For the next two weeks or so I struggled to drive to work, had limited movement in my arm and was in constant discomfort. I could also push part of my arm in by a good half an inch. I decided to return to the doctors and was given the same diagnosis. As I rose from my chair and struggled to put my coat on, the doctor decided, as a last minute change of mind, to send me for an X-Ray. The result - arm had been broken was healing out of shape;  I ended up with an operation to re-break the arm and fit a metal plate. It led to five weeks signed off from my teaching job which took me to the six week's holiday. The result - 11 weeks off work! The lengthy break sounds great, but I was bored witless by the end of July and it was that which led me to return to volunteering on the GC. On the downside, the experience brought about the medial anxiety which I now suffer from - and has contributed to my subsequent battles with anxiety and depression over the years. 

 

Stay safe all.

 

Andy

[Tony_S]

3 hours ago, Coombe Barton said:

Am I the only one on here with a Doctors surgery that knows what they're doing but also manage to administer it all correctly?

I think mine is rather good too, and all the people they liaise with as well. 
Tony

[tigerburnie]

Lovely folk at our GP's but the couldn't organise a p1$$ up in a brewery, utter chaos on a quiet day.

[TheQ]

Afternoon awl, 

Our surgery has gone back in time, 

Pre covid they stopped telephone reordering of prescriptions,  only accepting paper prescriptions signed and filled in in their presence.  ( name address date,  type of payment).  Their only concession to covid is you have to fill it in correctly and stuff it in the letterbox. 

 

My diabetic routine six monthly check ups have also stopped.

I didn't get diagnosed there, I could never get an appointment,  I had to go to Lloyd's chemist and get their free diabetic test.  Then slap the results sheet in front of check point Charlie.. Ever since there has no problem,  in their old fashioned way. 

As for hospitals we are just about equidistant between 3 hospitals Cromer,  Norwich and Great Yarmouth to we get sent to any they fancy. 

 

Well, much to my relief , the combing corner fillet has finally  set,    so it didn't need stripping off.  So the end sections were glued and clamped on as were the cross pieces. Blue moon is looking like a porcupine with all the clamps sticking up. 

 

More decking cladding fitted,  then the tops of the walls,  and between the metal shelving all filled in with concrete.  Next week that will be tiled over.. 

 

A Bone fire was lit,  in the gentle breeze it went well, no massive roar because of  the dampness inside,  but it does seem to have consumed most of the pile. Ben the supervising Collie,  laid down in his most sphinx like inscrutable manner about 50ft away watching carefully.. 

 

Time I think for a  long soak in the bath,  4 days of physical work. Is taking its toll.. 

 

 

[The Lurker]

Greetings all from Sidcup where it is cold and grey having been quite pleasant earlier. We are very firmly in the countdown to Younger Lurker starting secondary school later this week. He’s so young in himself and his anxiety can be almost overwhelming at times that we are treating him with kid gloves. He can however now tie a tie! Hopefully the TA that has been assigned to him will be evident at drop off; having said all this, one advantage of the virus is that the arrangements made for going to school will probably make the transition easier than it could have been; no crowded playground, no noisy dinner hall, staggered start and finish times all reduce the volume of kids which are the things he finds hardest.

 

I treated the family to paella today and now I have decided not to bother mowing the lawn!

 

sorry to read of Dave’s continuing incarceration - and I hope gets out tomorrow. And I shall raise a glass in Amal’s memory tonight.

 

i have had mixed experiences of the NHS - the receptionists still our GP surgery are loud and indiscrete but the doctors have been good; the hospital that put me in plaster for a sprained ankle have caused me continuing problems, and the aftermath of minor surgery to remove a cyst has led to unnecessary scarring on my neck; but the allergy treatment you get Lurker has received from the Evelina has been excellent (especially the successful allergy challenges) and we felt well supported through the period that led to his diagnosis with ASD. 
 

have a good day all

[The Stationmaster]

Afternoon all,

 

Black socks - done that one for years but the trouble is they fade at different rates when washed so 'odd' pairs are not uncommon. (not helped by keeping teh one good one when the other in a pair wears out.

Sorry to hear that Dave is still stuck in SalopLuft I.  I only hope he has better luck with scanning than when I was incarcerated in the RBH waiting for one after being admitted PDQ following a rather disturbing (for the medicos) image appearing on an X-Ray - I was then in there for 3 days a waiting for the right two people to be on duty at the right time to do the lung scan.

 

GPs - previous one in Tilehurst absolutely superb and a brilliant Practice Manager as well.  Present one is pretty/very good nowadays and the Good Doctor is on the PPG which might make a difference to keeping them in line as well.  Their big problem for some years were the equivalents of Chrisf's checkpoint Charlene on the front desk whose main aim seemed to be to prevent you seeing anybody from Dracula's daughter right up to the senior doctoring partner in the practice,  fortunately complaints were heard and they were all got rid of.

 

And no Tony - nobody has yet answered it.  So to repeat - Both Bristol and Glasgow got one twice but Exeter only got one once.   What is it?    BTW It has nothing at all to do with railways, or football,  or matters in any way connected with religion (in order to dismiss some previous ideas that were floated).

 

Enjoy the rest of your day folk and fortunately(?) the lawn and other grassweedland is still too wet to cut as is the front hedge.

 

 

[iL Dottore]

7 hours ago, AndrewC said:

...I can't remember if I regaled bored you with my exploits on an NHS trust IT project about 11 years ago. Suffice to say, there were 2 of us doing the actual work. One who worked for the trust and myself as a consultant/technical lead. He had a project manager, I had one from my company, one from the company we were sub-contracted to, one to the catalyst supplier (needed to do any NHS work), then one for the actual project who insisted on early Monday am face to face meetings that had a 50% cancellation rate. Normally cancelled after the half dozen or so people travelling 2+ hours were already enroute. Over that were department managers, IT managers, support managers, clinician representatives........  All in all about 20 people to do the work of 2. None of these people could agree on anything. The project grew and grew. Went later and later. One clinician refused to sign off as the output of scanned data was in b&w to save cost and make it easier to read. He insisted on colour as he wrote all his notes in purple ink. That alone cost the trust half a million in extra storage costs and a re-architecture of the system to cope with 10 times the data transfer. After getting what he wanted, he promptly retired. After I left as well they were still faffing about for another 2 years before it went live. <sigh>...

In my line of work we can have big project teams, but each team member has a specific role to carry out and in many cases, senior team members may have many hats to wear (at one point I was juggling 3 projects - theoretically 3 x 33%FTE but in reality more often than not 3 x 100% FTE). Occasionally you'd have a senior team member plus a junior sitting in. And whilst funding is most certainly available, every single penny has to be justified  (and accounted for). One particularly fun experience was going in front of very senior management to ask for CHF 24 million. (I must have made a good case as I got the money). As for throwing a strop and demanding that technology would be set up just the way I wanted it , well let's just say you'd have a very short shelf life if you did that.

 

Aah, happy days....

 

iD

p.s. just in case you're wondering that CHF 24 million was NOT for personal use. I didn't even get a brokerage fee

[simontaylor484]

Have just watched the 3 missing Dads Army episodes they seemed to be well cast. Fraser didnt seem to be his self though.

[simontaylor484]

36 minutes ago, The Stationmaster said:

Afternoon all,

 

Black socks - done that one for years but the trouble is they fade at different rates when washed so 'odd' pairs are not uncommon. (not helped by keeping teh one good one when the other in a pair wears out.

Sorry to hear that Dave is still stuck in SalopLuft I.  I only hope he has better luck with scanning than when I was incarcerated in the RBH waiting for one after being admitted PDQ following a rather disturbing (for the medicos) image appearing on an X-Ray - I was then in there for 3 days a waiting for the right two people to be on duty at the right time to do the lung scan.

 

GPs - previous one in Tilehurst absolutely superb and a brilliant Practice Manager as well.  Present one is pretty/very good nowadays and the Good Doctor is on the PPG which might make a difference to keeping them in line as well.  Their big problem for some years were the equivalents of Chrisf's checkpoint Charlene on the front desk whose main aim seemed to be to prevent you seeing anybody from Dracula's daughter right up to the senior doctoring partner in the practice,  fortunately complaints were heard and they were all got rid of.

 

And no Tony - nobody has yet answered it.  So to repeat - Both Bristol and Glasgow got one twice but Exeter only got one once.   What is it?    BTW It has nothing at all to do with railways, or football,  or matters in any way connected with religion (in order to dismiss some previous ideas that were floated).

 

Enjoy the rest of your day folk and fortunately(?) the lawn and other grassweedland is still too wet to cut as is the front hedge.

 

 

Would it be universities

[Gwiwer]

8 hours ago, Barry O said:

Who worries about unmatched socks? Why? Its more embarrassing if you have to take your shoes off to reveal.....a hole in a sock....

1.  One of our Duty Nuisances Managers, that’s who. New to the industry, ex-supermarket. He writes you up for the tiniest deviation from uniform specification yet wears his black shoes with red shoe-laces.  He has little credibilty among us. 
 

2.  All socks are authorised to have one hole. I remember well receiving a report from a staff member (whilst managing the job in Australia where uniform socks are a thing) stating that their socks had “More than the authorised number of holes”. It would perhaps have been easier to simply request a reissue of uniform. 

[jamie92208]

5 hours ago, Gwiwer said:

Surely a man of influence and learning such as yourself could arrange a centrally-heated or air-conditioned facility?   

He could of course be heading for somewhere rather too warm.

 

Jamie

[pH]

9 hours ago, AndrewC said:

After I left as well they were still faffing about for another 2 years before it went live. <sigh>

Well, at least it eventually went live! 

[New Haven Neil]

Andrew's purple ink guy must have been related to the doctor that finally caused me to leave the NHS, after pulling the plug on a project I had spent 6 months and £££££ of NHS money on, because HE didn't like something, that had been previously unanimously agreed by the multi-disciplinary clinicians that actually used the system.

 

On the upside, our GP surgery is pretty good, the odd Checkpoint Charlene not too bad, and one very gay Checkpoint Charlie fantastic, hopefully he will succeed the practice manager when she moves on.  Our new GP is also very good, we have been lucky with them here, bar a temporary one when we lived in the south of the island for a year when we first arrived.

 

And let's not forget, for every duff member of NHS staff in any role, there are a great many trying very hard indeed to do a difficult job well, often in trying circumstances.  Got the T shirt.

[PhilJ W]

Afternoon all from Estuary-Land. Went to Tess Coe's this afternoon for some bits I'd forgotten to get yesterday. One of the items was eggs which in the Pitsea store are alongside the bakery. As I passed the bakery I espied a fresh batch of bread pudding so I grabbed one and upon seeing the use by date of the 4th of September I grabbed another. I now have to consume half of a bread pudding every day for the next four days, life is hard.

8 hours ago, Gwiwer said:

Surely a man of influence and learning such as yourself could arrange a centrally-heated or air-conditioned facility?   

 

2 hours ago, jamie92208 said:

He could of course be heading for somewhere rather too warm.

 

Jamie

That was my thought as well.

[newbryford]

3 hours ago, Gwiwer said:

 

2.  All socks are authorised to have one hole. 

 

Obviously.

Otherwise, getting a foot in may be a bit difficult.........................

 

Edited August 31, 2020 by newbryford

[Simon G]

Today’s planned walk up Miterdale proved to be a very pleasant excursion.  It was also well socially distanced, as in a three and a half hour walk, we only saw two other walkers, who were on a ridge about a mile away, and the farmer of a farm we passed through.  Miterdale is known as both the Hidden and Secret valley, and it lived up to those names today.  It was occasionally a bit wet underfoot, but none of us got wet feet.  I took a few photos on my old phone camera, so here are some of them:

 

 

Miterdale with the end cliffs just coming into view, and with Scafell in the background.

 

 

The end of Miterdale with the now tiny River Mite in the foreground.  We found some rocks on the right hand side to sit on while we ate our picnic lunch!

 

 

Having had lunch, we went round above the end of the valley and got a good view of Scafell, with Burnmoor Tarn in the foreground.  This is one of the more remote Lakeland tarns, and the stream leading from it to Eskdale is called Whillan Beck, after which the Ratty’s newest loco is called.

 

 

 

 

Edited August 31, 2020 by Simon G

[BoD]

Evening all.

 

We booked into a local National Trust place and enjoyed a most pleasant picnic and walk today.  This was our first proper day out for months. I was a little wary, especially when we arrived and the car park was almost full, but, the place was large enough to make it feel quiet and everyone was polite and following the various protocols which in itself was a pleasant surprise.  It felt good to be out and I’m sure the greenery and exercise released all of the right sort of chemicals into the brain.  I’m feeling much more relaxed this evening.  
 

Stick with it Dave.

[Coombe Barton]

... succulents, advice on dogs and attention from Fox News ...

 

https://johncolby.wordpress.com/2020/08/31/spam-spem-spem-spem/

[tigerburnie]

G'night all

[Chris116]

Last day of Eat out to help out saw big queues at a number of restaurants in Wimbledon but I had booked an early meal at the Green King pub in Wimbledon who provided a very nice meal served by staff who made us feel very welcome. It was our third meal this month there and before that we had been going there about once a month for nearly 18 months. We will be supporting them in future and I hope they will continue to supply the excellent food that we so enjoy.

 

The buses in each direction were suffering from lots of people wanting to travel on a Bank Holiday service! At least everyone around us was following the advice on masks and distancing unlike the other day when four people in one journey were reminded to put their mask on, did so and as soon as they got to their seat took them off again!

[TheSignalEngineer]

35 minutes ago, BoD said:

Evening all.

 

We booked into a local National Trust place and enjoyed a most pleasant picnic and walk today.  This was our first proper day out for months. I was a little wary, especially when we arrived and the car park was almost full, but, the place was large enough to make it feel quiet and everyone was polite and following the various protocols which in itself was a pleasant surprise.  It felt good to be out and I’m sure the greenery and exercise released all of the right sort of chemicals into the brain.  I’m feeling much more relaxed this evening.  
 

Stick with it Dave.

We've been to three NT site recently. Only partly open at the moment but things are improving. 

[Erichill16]

Evening All,

Busy day so not up to speed so as always I hope an acceptable day has been had.  Spent most of the day in garden but did some paperwork after tea as I’m so far behind and promised myself I would get some done over the weekend. Still got plenty to do and something else will inevitably turn up tomorrow. Sometimes I wonder why I bother.

Goodnight

Robert

[The Stationmaster]

6 hours ago, simontaylor484 said:

Would it be universities

Alas  for your suggestion - No.

[Barry O]

Goodnight all!

Baz