Last time I needed a knee X-ray, the doctor gave me a form and told me just to turn up at Disgustedville hospital, where I was seen at once at a time of my choosing. This time I have an appointment a month tomorrow. Some ultrasounding I need has been referred to a limited company in Oswestry that doesn’t answer its phone. Well, I finally have an appointment month after next at an insalubrious address 45 minutes’ drive away. One could be forgiven for thinking that this is all part of the plot to send those who can afford it to the private sector, and to mete out an appalling service to those who can’t. Mr Attlee, Mr Bevan: you should be living at this time.
The good news on the health front is that after some years of six-monthly and later annual sight and eye examinations, the backs of my eyes seem healthy, intra-ocular pressure is ‘fine’, and I’m going back to normal Joe-Public two-yearly examinations. I’m getting less short-sighted - one of the few benefits of ageing - though of course worsening presbyopia is the other side of the coin. Given that I only wear my varifocals for driving these days (and my half-moons when I clip my finger nails!) I shall not be breaking the bank on new specs yet awhile, and recognise that I have much to be grateful for.
We were expecting the gas man on Wednesday, and on Tuesday we had a call to say that he wasn’t coming, with the next available date over a month away. Once again we took to social media, and when Br1ti5h G4s picked it up, we said ‘reinstate appointment or lose contract’. Well, he turned up on Wednesday. Not clear whether he fixed the intermittent fault, and his ‘if you still have problems, just give us a call’ remark provoked hollow laughter. So far, so good.
We took a drive out yesterday to look for some marginal plants to stick in at the side of the pond, and found some at our second port of call. Our journey took about double the normal distance thanks to all the roadworks, but we have our irises, and stakes for the tomatoes. Lynn’s surplus hanging basket pots, in which she brought the acanthus last week, are now planted up with bush and trailing fuchsias and parked in the sitooterie to grow on. The next sowing of beans has germinated well, and I’ve rigged up the last of the willow poles against the side fence ready for them once they’ve hardened off. Martyn has done a fine job of tidying up the edge of the pond and the encroaching grass, and planted the irises. We seem to have grass where we don’t want it, and bare patches where we do. (Kindly resist analogies with my hair.) The worst of the bare patches are now roughed up, filled and seeded, so maybe we’ll have something approaching a lawn by autumn. Recent heavy rain and now warmer temperatures have helped, but of course that also means more mowing. I think we can coax the mower through this season...
Air traffic seems to be building up a little: the only good thing about lockdown was the relative freedom from aircraft noise. It’s nothing like back to normal, fortunately, but it means that I do tend to notice what is coming over, with help of Flightradar24. There was a mighty racket a couple of days ago, created by two USAF fighters and a tanker. The Airbus A400s from Brize Norton, also rowdy brutes, are much in evidence: we can hear them at cruise altitude from 20 miles away. We hear a lot of small charter and business turboprops, such as the Pilatus PC-12 and the venerable King Air, so outfits like Jetfly are obviously making money out of people who would normally fly business class. And with the highest possible pollution per seat mile.
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