Mission Statement: Keep on Truckin’
First published in the NASGP Newsletter in June 2021 There’s a TV series on Netflix which, despite its cringe-making title I think you’d find uplifting, but bear with me . . . The sixth age shiftsInto the lean and slipper’d pantaloon,With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;His youthful hose, well sav’d, a world too …
Continue reading “Sans Teeth, sans Eyes, sans Taste, sans Everything”
First published in the NASGP Newsletter in April 2021 How many new year’s resolutions have you kept? If I don’t get around to clearing out the box room, no-one is going to hold me to account and it isn’t the end of the world. How many countries fulfil their undertakings to cut carbon emissions? If …
Continue reading “The Health of the Nation: Who’s Keeping Score?”
First published in the NASGP Newsletter in February 2021 We know, more or less, how British hospitals are coping with the pandemic. We live it, or we read about it or see it on the BBC documentaries filmed at the Royal Free Hospital. But what was it like when covid struck Wuhan? What are our …
First published in the NASGP Newsletter in December 2020 On family outings to the seaside I always looked longingly at the candy floss stalls. But my mother wouldn’t let me have any, even in exchange for my daily sweet ration of seven Smarties. When, eventually, I was in charge of my own pocket money and …
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 …
First published in the NASGP Newsletter in October 2020 A year ago, who could define social distancing? Now, we’re all aware, though even people in authority seem unsure of exactly what the distance is and when it matters. Last month we took a train to Dorset, our first venture outside London since March. All my …
First published in the NASGP Newsletter in August 2020 Masks are going to be with us for a long time to come. We’d all better get used to them. Masks are uncomfortable, your glasses steam up, they muffle sounds and restrict facial expressions. It’s difficult to know if you are wearing them correctly. You can’t …
First published in the NASGP Newsletter in June 2020 What good has come from this unprecedented social experiment? And how do we preserve it? Last Friday, on my way to the pharmacy, a young woman, mask-less, was walking straight towards me, her eyes glued to her phone. Fortunately, one of us was alert.For me, she …
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 …
First published in the NASGP Newsletter in April 2020 In the future, when we look back on this strange period, the experience of all of us needs to be acknowledged, and I’m going back to time BC (Before Covid-19) to track how swiftly we moved from complacent normality to a fearful wartime footing. 1st April …
First published in the NASGP Newsletter in December, 2019 Bashar al Assad, President of Syria, Damascus, April 2011 In 2011, Hamza was a young Syrian doctor learning German in the hope of going abroad for specialist training. Then the civil war broke out and he opted to stay in Aleppo, operating in makeshift hospitals on …