Tag: National Health Service

Hospital notes

August 19, 2022 4 Comments
Hospital notes

1 When I arrive, the ward is full.  I’m redirected to where the ophthalmology patients wait.  It’s a poor fit: my body part for attention is some way south of the eyes.  The surgeon comes, to tell me briefly what could go wrong.  A nurse tells me to undress, and leaves two items of hospital […]

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Happy birthday Michael Rosen

May 7, 2021 0 Comments
Happy birthday Michael Rosen

When I consider how the government of our country – I mean the one with the satirical name ‘United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland’ –  has fallen under the control of a set of unscrupulous and heartless gangsters, who lack any kind of moral standard or basic competence, and when I consider that […]

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Dido Harding: a failed state in microcosm

May 30, 2020 78 Comments
Dido Harding: a failed state in microcosm

I thought I recognised the name Dido Harding, when her name popped up on the news recently.  After all, Dido isn’t the commonest of names.  There’s Dido, the excellent singer, and Dido Twite, the heroine of Black hearts in Battersea and other stories by Joan Aiken.  And, of course, the original, wonderful and tragic Dido, […]

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Remembering Walter Conway

June 30, 2017 12 Comments
Remembering Walter Conway

In the last couple of weeks I’ve been in and around Tredegar – Tredegar as it is today, but mostly Tredegar as it was in the first part of the twentieth century.  Most people know about the town’s best known resident, Aneurin Bevan, and many know about Bevan’s pre-War experience of the pioneering services run […]

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