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 …
Category archives: Uncategorized
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 …
Sans Teeth, sans Eyes, sans Taste, sans Everything
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 …
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The Health of the Nation: Who’s Keeping Score?
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 …
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76 Days
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 …
Searching for the Sweet Spot
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 …
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 …
How Do We Let Down the Drawbridge?
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 …
Learning to Live with Masks
First published in the NASGP Newsletter in August 2020 Judith self-portait, July 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 …