First published in the NASGP Newsletter on 22nd May 2023 Sometime around 3,500 years ago, someone living in Canaan inscribed the first known sentence in the written history of the world. Not a proverb, not an aphorism. Not the Ten Commandments. The earliest message that has come down to us through the generations was scratched …
Author archives: Chuck Anderson
It Ain’t Over ’til It’s Over
First published in the NASGP Newsletter 26th June 2023 Photo by Carolyn Brown On 5 May 2023 the World Health Organisation declared that Covid-19 was no longer a ‘public health emergency of international concern’. The same day our local convenience store took down the plastic screen which for three years had separated staff and customers. …
Eye of Newt and Toe of Frog?
First published in the NASGP Newsletter on 4th September 2023 A friend’s story: when he was a teenager an eye was severely damaged by a shuttlecock. One conservative treatment after another failed. The consultant decided to try surgery. But he couldn’t see to operate for the blood. He found a way to keep the operating …
Jumping Ship
As it is now more than five years since I renounced my American citizenship and the front door has not been breached by a SWAT team, it now seems safe to publish this account I wrote in 2018. One venue the current U.S. president is avoiding this week is the gleaming U.S. fortress embassy in …
Stakhanovism: It Hasn’t Gone Away
First published in the NASGP Newsletter in August 2021 Suddenly, sometime in the 1990s, NHS managers began talking about HR. What was that? Human Resources. What are Human Resources? What we knew as personnel. So the people seeing patients on the front line had become widgets in a corporate machine. Put like that, it sounds …
Getting the Early Bird Jab
18 December 2020 It was the oldest queue I’d ever seen. It made the queue outside the Wigmore Hall look like a youth club. We walked the seven kilometres to the vaccine distribution centre faster than we’d estimated and arrived 45 minutes before the appointment. Many of those in the queue outside the old brick …
Our First Expedition
Published: 13 August 2020 More than anything, in lockdown we’ve missed travel. We don’t have a car and we’re wary of public transport. So, for five months we’d not been south of the Euston Road except on Sunday mornings to visit the farmers’ market. Then, last week, for a medical appointment, we walked down through …
Brazil’s Hidden Cultural Treasure
Published: 25 January 2020 Rio, Iguazu, the Pantanal, the Amazon – fabled names tempt one to Brazil, but there’s also a hidden treasure you shouldn’t miss. It’s a bit of a struggle to get there, but it’s worth the effort. Inhotim is the world’s largest open-air art museum. It’s Yorkshire Sculpture Park on steroids. That …
When Should You Stop Skiing?
Published: 7 February 2019 I have skied with a few octogenarians. Patrick, with two hip replacements under his belt, left me in his tracks on the steep runs of St. Anton. But he quit last year. All my skiing chums have given up or died. After half-a-century on the slopes when should you hang up …