Today was an entertaining day. We knew that we had an appointment later on the morning so that Meg could have her eyes checked over and, after breakfast, we picked up our newspaper and headed for the Kidderminster Intermediate Treatment Centre as it is known. We were fearful when we arrived because all of the car parking spaces appeared to have been taken and there were cars parked on yellow lines, squeezed onto grass spaces and, evidently, people in desperation had parked whereever they could, legal or not. This was no real surprise to us and I wonder if the private company that owns the car parking land actually does prosecute patients for non compliance when the available parking is evidently under all kinds of stress. Nonetheless, we managed to find one space and arrived at the clinic five minutes before our appointed time. We had taken the precautions of taking along a flask of coffee and some biscuits because, in the past, we have experienced a total hospital stay of some two and a half hours. Today, though, it did look as though we were going to see the consultant himself which we eventually did after some initial tests on Meg’s vision. We discussed the options for two different procedures, one on each eye and decided to go for the simpler laser treatment that would probably help the condition in one eye and would consider options for the other eye at a later date. As we were not in the hospital for a very long period of time, on the way home we called in our Irish friends wo we knew had been away for a long weekend in Munich. We joked about seeing a video with our friends quaffing beer served by long-haired Germanic maidens with their hair in plats whilst listening to an ‘umpah’ band with much thigh slapping from the leder-hosen clad musicians. This video was in my imagingtaion but our friends did show us another video, complete with music soundtrack, poduced on their iphone so I must find out how to do it sometime.
After a lunch of quiche, I telephoned the dotor’s surgery to attempt to make an appointment to discuss Meg’s medication. I was offered an appointment in a week’s time which I felt was too long to wait under the circumstances. When I wanted a faster appointment than this, I was directed to a website which was inoperative – but only designed to be functional between 7.30 and 8.30 tomorrow morning in which to log requests. Whether this will result in obtaining a doctor’s telephone consultation which is all I require in the first instance, I am at a loss to say but I will try at 7.30 in the morning just before I go shopping and hope for the best. I suspect that this difficulty in getting through to a doctor’s appointment system is the same all over the country and not just in our locality but the difficulty in getting access seems to have intensified since the pandemic. I have a terrible foreboding that leaving aside the ‘worried well’ we are storing up masses of problems for ourselves when those with symptoms cannot get the required access to their GP. On the medical and social care theme, I received a phone call from the technology company to whom our reference was passed recently but we were left with a rather indeterminate outcome with a possible referral to another link in the chain.
This afternoon, Meg rather fancied a walk in the park. This we did and bumped into some people from our church who we certainly not expect to see. We exchanged some pleasantries and then sat on our usual bench for a few minutes until it was time to come home – we just about avoided a rain shower and so home to a welcome cup of tea.
News from the other side of ‘the pond’ is that Donald Trump has finally been the recipient of a further four indictments. Now, the former president,who is seeking re-election in 2024,has been charged with what amounts to an attempted coup. In addition to his other legal woes, he faces four criminal charges relating to attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, which he lost to President Joe Biden. The indictment outlines how Trump and his co-conspirators allegedly sought to misuse their authority to subvert the transfer of power and keep him in the White House for another four years. Altogether, the indictments amount to a document some 45 pages long and contains some quite explosive detail. Commentators are of the view that this is the most serious of all the various legal challenges that Donald Trump is facing. Of course, to the avid Trump supporters all of this is just evidence of a witchhunt and are keen to pursue challenges to Hunter Biden – the wayward son of Joe Biden – trying to establish some kind of moral equivalence to the two types of transgressions. The indictment against Donald Trump states :’These claims were false and the defendant knew that they were false. As violence ensued, the Defendant and co-conspirators exploited the disruption by redoubling efforts to levy false claims of election fraud and convince members of Congress to further delay the certification based on those claims.’ Furthermore there is a further possible indictment coming from the state of Georgia that Trump tried to interfere in the electoral process.
© Mike Hart [2023]