Your Very Good Health

I have it. The app that allows me to blog on the move, but I am hesitant to use it. For starters, my ill-matched 'package' gives me over 400 'phone minutes and texts that I have no use for, but allows me so little data usage, I'm afraid to use my Smartphone away from wifi... Furthermore (what a lovely word. I shall use it again...) Furthermore, I am not a spontaneous blogger. I admit it, I am too inhibited. Goodness KNOWS what might happen if I took to instant escritorial enterprise! I may let fall an indiscretion, or WORSE, allow a grammatical error to slip by unnoticed. Spelling errors - highly improbable: an internal alarm sounds at the slightest hint of an errant letter.

But I'm thinking about it... 

I have just returned from the  doctor's surgery for a thyroid function test. There is much that might be blogged in a doctor's surgery. I watched a woman with a kindly face and a set of wheels steer her way into a chair, completely and inadvertently blocking the exit to the corall of smart blue seats which was occupied solely by she and I. I began to speculate as to the etiquette of freeing myself from my unintended  prison, but she departed before I needed to exercise my manners. 

The Magazines! I passed up on the hunting and shooting periodical. The lead article on humanely dispatching a pheasant didn't appeal. I am not against shooting on principle, I just can't imagine myself ever being safe around a gun. I fear I might discover hidden depths and unexpected talents.

I settled for a long-dead issue of Good Housekeeping. Noting in passing,  that 'Woman', 'Woman's Own', ' Woman's Weekly', ' Reader's Digest'and 'The People's Friend' are unaccountably absent. These worthy papers punctuated my medical expeditions over the years. I only ever read any of them in the doctor's surgery, which, come to think of it, partly explains their absence today. Women, I sighed ( being one of them) have little enough time to read magazines these days. 

I have absolutely NO interest in Celebrity Gossip at any other time in my life other than waiting to have  a pregnancy confirmed (tested by a pharmacist, wait three days, result sent to the doctor... Well it WAS thirty years ago.) high blood pressure monitored, or a limp explained. Come to think of it, I am remarkably fit... Just you wait.

However, in the doctor's, I suddenly become avidly interested in the lives of others. Today, it was a smiling Dawn French beaming down from seventh heaven, letting me in on her new-found happiness with her Biggsy. I approve. I love happy endings, being confident of one myself, and heartily wishing for them for everyone I know.Of course, until you depart this life, it can only be a 'happy meantime', but I'm content to settle for that. 

I didn't get to finish the article. A smiling nurse called me in for my blood test ( five minutes before the appointed time) and quickly drew a phial-full of the stuff. In and out in four minutes, including a very pleasant conversation on the weather.

I love the NHS. Two of my daughters work for it: one in policy-making, another in preventative care, so I have a great deal of insight - bad and good - into it's workings. I know it's far from perfect, under constant stress, and always spectacularly on the verge of bankruptcy. But I have a feeling we, the Great British Public are so committed to it, that the monkeys who run this country will leave it be. I hope so. 

An American commentator wrote recently:

Philanthropy will buy you a hospital wing. Social Justice will deliver a national health service. 

Was I thinking of social justice whilst giving Dawn French the thumbs-up? No. I'm glad I didn't have to. All I had to concern myself with was the weather.