17.10.06
Diary Day
What follows is what I sent to the History day wotsit: Most of you lot will know most of this so feel free to ignore this post. [edit: Actually I tried to post this but their site went weird and tells me that I must use less than 4000 characters (I checked, I'm only at around half that) and that I must enter my name (I did) and my county (I did). So I'll have to try again tomorrow.]
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I’m a 35 year old NHS physiotherapist based in Leicester. Today is a normal day for me except I only do a half-day at work on Tuesdays. My job is based in GP surgeries rather than the local hospitals.
On Tuesday mornings I work in the St Matthews area of Leicester. St Matthews is notable as having one of the most varied ethnic mixes probably in the country. Today I’ve seen people from Somalia, Iran, Turkey, Kenya and India as well as native white British.
Today two patients (out of eight) did not show up. It is a waste of time and money as those slots could have been taken by other patients. But the time gives me a chance to catch up on paperwork. There was a story about dentists fining non-showers on the local news this evening; I wonder when we can start doing the same in my service? Sadly it’s not likely to happen.
This afternoon I went shopping for Christmas (too early I know). My brother and his family live in Norfolk so I’m thinking about getting us both webcams to give us another option of contacting each other; I don’t want to lose regular contact with my nephews. I’ll probably get one for our parents too.
Thinking about “stuff” it’s easy to see that as far as material possessions go we, as a nation are generally far better off than ever before but yet the level of cynicism around leads people to feel that they’re getting worse and worse off. Personally I’ve never been so comfortable but, who knows, that feeling may change the nearer I get to pensionable age.
This afternoon is also the last chance I’ll get to spend with my fiancé before she disappears off home again tomorrow. She’s Bulgarian and will be heading off to spend 2 weeks home with her mother. She’s a nurse who was head-hunted from Bulgaria a few years ago to fill posts in the NHS when there were far too few home-grown nurses around. Now the NHS is contracting again there are concerns over jobs so it’s not the most comfortable time for us but, fingers crossed, we’ll be ok. We have plans to emigrate there soon anyway; we may just have to bring things forward if the worst happens.
Have fun.