Early Risers.

[PhilJ W]

Goodnight all.

[BSW01]

Goodnight all 

[Tony_S]

The final family member who is a gp has just got home and had replied to my query about registering with a practice.  He said they get bed bound new patients who are in nursing homes and they can’t exactly get into the practice.  He is new to the practice and isn’t totally familiar with the procedures but thinks a carer can apply for someone. Like all the others he doesn’t think what is happening to Kelly should. I hope that this reassures @iL Dottorethat UK GPs are not all bad. A few years ago my mother had been in hospital in Birmingham. She was discharged from hospital and came to us here in Essex. She had been released with enough medication for a fortnight. She wasn’t ready to go home (she never did, she went to live near my brother in Droitwich). I asked if she could have a prescription issued as a temporary patient by our GP. The receptionist said she would phone Mum’s practice in Birmingham to see if they would issue a prescription. They claimed not to have any notes from the hospital stay. So immediately, Mum was registered as a temporary resident, I was able to do the paperwork, and she was given an appointment  and prescription next day. 

Edited April 4, 2022 by Tony_S

[PhilJ W]

Suffolk Punch horses.

https://www.facebook.com/bbcnewseast/videos/571440623997750

[J. S. Bach]

Night Owl from the Piedmont.

[laurenceb]

Night awl

[Ozexpatriate]

A Spring day today. Rain was forecast. What we had was:

• Overnight rain
• Hazy sunshine
• Light rain and drizzle
• Bright sunshine with blue skies
• Hail
• More bright blue skies
• A downpour
• A short-lived rainbow
• More light rain

The calendar says Spring and so it was.

[NGT6 1315]

Moaning awl. 

 

April sure makes itself felt. It was very windy for most of yesterday and now it's wet!

 

I seem to have slept relatively well, which is something that hasn't always been a given in recent weeks. Here's hoping that the next couple of days may provide at least some degree of an outlook to a calmer posting, to which end we're running multiple approaches in parallel. Of course, the news from Ukraine don't exactly lend themselves to promoting peace of mind either!

 

Be safe and enjoy whatever you got planned… 

[TheQ]

Kings Lynn to Bedford , 75 miles by river, there are 14 locks.

 

Maximum boat sizes

Length: 85′ 4″ (26 metres)

Beam: 10′ 4″ (3.1 metres)

Height: 7′ 7″ (2.3 metres) – Denver Sluice

Draught: 3′ 3″ (1.0 metres) – tidal section will fluctuate with the tide.

 

So only the oligarchs tender would be able to make it up there.. the Motor yacht would have to moor up at KL..

[polybear]

Bear here.....

Well the Beary Email Calendar informs me that today is Washing Day.  Turdycurses.

After which it'll be more wallpaper danglin'; I'm not sure how long supplies will last though, cos' a Certain Bear failed to order another roll before the 6pm Toolstation cut-off time for next day delivery.  Double Turdycurses.

 

In other news.....

Fear not, fellow road users; Messrs. Bear & Hippo Inc. have been despatched to the crime scene and have conducted a scrupulous waste disposal exercise, with not so much as a single crumb left behind.  "I've never seen anything like it, remarked the Fire Brigade Chief - the lads were all set to have free bikkies with their morning Tea Breaks for the next five years; the next thing we knew these two characters arrived and scoffed the lot faster than a Force 5 Tornado.  Turdycurses". 

[Barry O]

Ey up!

 

Apparently we have had some light rain overnight. I hope it now stays dry while I post her indoorsvtesting kit and buy some white bread.

 

Other than those two items.. that's my "to do" list.. done..

 

Just a pile of paperwork to catch up on..pah!

 

So,before it goes cold..Time for my mugatea!

 

Stay safe!

 

Baz

[TheQ]

Mooring Awl, 243 /118.

4 hours sleep Loooooooooooong awake, 1 hours sleep, woke with a start looked at watch, should have been gone an hour ago.. Started getting up, look at clock on wall... An hour till I need to get up... yep watch had changed time zones..

 

SWMBO's Aunt,  Uncle and my parents used to register as temporary residents at the doctors when they came down for long visits.. That was pre covid though...

 

Free dinner tonight, we have a company visitor, so the company is paying... This means I go home in a completely different route, via the pub. This will miss 2 sets of new road works, which caused a half hours delay in traveling 1 mile of the normal route home last night...

 

On the Normal route home there are several pub restaurants with signs outside advertising for staff ... A piece on the radio said there was a dire shortage of chefs.

One pub thought they had recruited someone, when that someone was offered £15,000 more to stay at their previous company, it seems a middling chef, not a head chef in a pub is now earning a lot more than me...

 

I remember just before leaving school a teacher saying we would be alright for jobs as the main baby boomers would leave before us making a shortage of staff so we would be well paid... Unfortunately that didn't happen till post the main bit of  covid, and now I'm due to retire...

 

Working on the changes to Blue Moon for rope routing , it requires several Blocks like this

Needless to say, the total cost could exceed a couple of Motive power units that run on 4mm to the foot parallel  bit of metal. 

 A rod of Acetal (30mm diameter), a rod of steel (6mm Diameter), some washers,  a couple of bits of wood from stock, plus a couple of hours on the lathe, total cost less than £20.

Though , I will build  the Sheaves into the woodwork of the cockpit sides, they'll not go in as a unit..

 

The new Clocking system, can't cope with me and others doing an unusual number of hours / days a week, so they just credit me with 7.5 hours a day. it's up to me and my boss to keep a track of what I owe it or it owes me.. good job I set up the spreadsheet.

 

Time for more measurements

 

 

[Grizz]

Morning All…

 

Bit rainy, bit sunny, definitely dark cloudy and a little breezy here in former subtropical Sussex. 
 

1sr order of the day, feed the chooks, coz happy chooks = more fresh eggs. Tick 😊

2nd order of the day drop number one son to railway station….Tick 🙂

3rd order of the day….breakfast. Bacon, eggs (home laid eggs = cheese omelette) and coffee. Part tick so far! 
 

4th order of the day, accompany Mrs Grizz out to the Nags, feed water, groom, check the fences et etc. quite a pleasant experience even for a non horse person like me. 
 

5th order of the day…check emails…not looking forward to this one.

 

6th order of the day, design the replacement horse stable which, Mrs Grizz has now informed me, needs to be large enough to accommodate 4 horses. The old one, which to be fair is over 40 years old, is only big enough for 2 horses. 
 

The blossom has started to appear on our Golden Gauge tree, just in time for the recent frosts to knacker any chance of getting a decent crop again this year. Our record was 83 off of the one tree and that was the first year of Covid, a particularly good year for gauges. 

Have a great day all. 
 

ATB Grizz

 

[grandadbob]

Good morning all,

Grey skies here but it should brighten up later and be a mainly dry day with some sunny spells.  Quite mild at 11°C.

Although we had a party for Nicki on Saturday today is her actual birthday so we'll be visiting her later bearing gifts and to have some lunch.  As we badly need the exercise we'll be walking although The Knee and Hip are already protesting this morning and don't think it's a good  idea. 

A minor miracle occurred yesterday and at long last I have had a phone call from the hospital for an appointment in three weeks to see a Consultant about my Dupuytren's Contracture and trigger finger.  I was beginning to think it would never happen. 

Time to make a decision about what to have for breakfast.  Porridge or er porridge?

Have a good one,

Bob.

[PhilJ W]

Morning all from Estuary-Land. Just a quick good morning as I want to be up waiting for the postman to deliver the parcels that should have been delivered on Saturday. 

[grandadbob]

What a difference nearly 50 years makes!  

 

 

[iL Dottore]

8 hours ago, Tony_S said:

…I hope that this reassures @iL Dottorethat UK GPs are not all bad. 

In terms of clinical ability, the General Practitioners (i.e. the physicians) in the UK are generally very good indeed. In terms of The GP – the practice the physician works in and the support staff - very much less so; as numerous anecdotal evidence posted on ER has suggested. I think that there are many good General Practitioners who are let down by their staff. Having Covid to deal with plus all the fallout imposed on general practices following the Harold Shipman case doesn’t help either.

Many of my physician friends and colleagues are ex-NHS and whilst the reasons for them going into industry and/or moving to a position outside of the UK are myriad, a common theme is the appallingly insensitive and often incompetent NHS bureaucracy, a “ penny-wise and pound-foolish“ approach by the NHS to finances and a total lack of NHS senior management regard for their staff. One physician friend, a radiologist, who moved to Germany to work ,told me that by moving abroad to work there, he was actually able to see his children more than once every three or four weeks…

[Grizz]

This morning the chooks have had their treat, an escorted visit to one of their favourite locations… the small compost heap. 
They are sooooo happy in there, chatting away to each other. I always dig it over a bit before they charge in. Sadly because of bird flu in the UK they aren’t allowed out into the garden at the moment, but they do get a daily escorted exercise trip to the compost heap, which obviously whilst I’m there with them the wild bird population keeps away. 

 

Presenting……

Solar

And……

 

Lunar

They are both rescued chickens from a lovely farm in Ditchling. Occasionally a few of the chickens they have are below average size and so get knocked about a bit and generally ‘hen pecked’. These few are then rescued and placed in their chicken hospital to recover and then as often as possible they are re-homed with people like us. These two came as a pair, they have completely recovered and have firmly made themselves at home here. In normally times they get free reign of the garden areas, with the exception of the vegetable garden and the potted plant areas, as 5 minutes there leaves total destruction.

 

They really seem to be happy little souls…..so far as one can tell with chickens anyway. 😊

 

Edited April 5, 2022 by Grizz

[New Haven Neil]

Morning from a dull and windy rock, but that is warmish at 10c.

 

Slept in this morning for the first time in living memory, didn't surface until 0845 after a disturbed night.  Hips don't like this current weather that changes rapidly.

 

iD's mention of Shipman brings me out into a cold sweat, being the manager of an outpatients department at the time it brought masses of work that we had little time to actually do, and it caused some major panics from the higher echelons of management in NHS HQ as they didn't think to speak to area management to explain some of the statistical returns they demanded.  JB would have laughed his socks off at their ineptitude.  

 

Off out later to the village of Laxey, home of the world's largest waterwheel, which is presently cunningly covered in scaffolding and not working for the start of the tourist season, to collect a complete set of...shh....the Great Western Journal.  At a price that couldn't be turned down. Honest guv. 

[BSW01]

Good morning everyone 

 

Weve had quite a bit of overnight rain, so everywhere is very wet! I have a 2 more sets of solar lights to set up in the garden, but I’m not sure if I’ll get that done today, we’ll have to see if it dries out a little. Apart from that, there’s not a lot else planned for the day, so I may get a bit more work done in the workshop. 

 

Bak later. 

 

Brian

[monkeysarefun]

So with 600mm of rainfall making it the wettest March since records began surely April must be drier. I'll just check.

 

 

Oh Ffs!

 

Edited April 5, 2022 by monkeysarefun

[Barry O]

@monkeysarefun  no worries.. we are not due to get to Oz until January next year!  I suggest that is enough time to get teh Ark finished!

 

Baz

[PhilJ W]

Hello again from Estuary-Land. One of the three packages has arrived. It came in the letter post as the item was in a Jiffy bag. Apparently the other two packets will be with a separate parcel delivery. In the Jiffy bag were some small items for magnetically joining larger items together that run on parallel strips of metal 16.5 mm apart.

1 hour ago, Grizz said:

This morning the chooks have had their treat, an escorted visit to one of their favourite locations… the small compost heap. 
They are sooooo happy in there, chatting away to each other. I always dig it over a bit before they charge in. Sadly because of bird flu in the UK they aren’t allowed out into the garden at the moment, but they do get a daily escorted exercise trip to the compost heap, which obviously whilst I’m there with them the wild bird population keeps away. 

 

Presenting……

Solar

And……

 

Lunar

They are both rescued chickens from a lovely farm in Ditchling. Occasionally a few of the chickens they have are below average size and so get knocked about a bit and generally ‘hen pecked’. These few are then rescued and placed in their chicken hospital to recover and then as often as possible they are re-homed with people like us. These two came as a pair, they have completely recovered and have firmly made themselves at home here. In normally times they get free reign of the garden areas, with the exception of the vegetable garden and the potted plant areas, as 5 minutes there leaves total destruction.

They really seem to be happy little souls…..so far as one can tell with chickens anyway. 😊

I assume that they were kept in a barn were the farmer has animal welfare near the top of the agenda, so many are not as good. I would like to keep hens but there's just too many foxes around.

[PeterBB]

13 hours ago, Coombe Barton said:

... I’m thinking that official figures are not reflecting what is happening on the ground. ...

 

https://johncolby.wordpress.com/2022/04/04/whos-right-on-the-figures/

Free tests gone - and of course HMG figures only count positive test hence agree the the ONS are far more likely to be correct than the 'official figures'.

 

Eroica - was reminded while listening, one with rather less brass than others.

Edited April 5, 2022 by PeterBB

[simontaylor484]

Afternoon all 

 

Windy here again but generally its warmer

Shipman practiced for a bit at Pontefract Hospital its not known if he killed any patients there happen @jamie92208 would know different. He was the first of 2 murdering Doctors at Pontefract Hospital the second was an Anethetist called Tommy Shanks who shot his nurse girlfriend with an Ak47 outside a pub in Castleford