A Mother's Story: The school report

A Mother's Story: The school report

Monday morning

Monday morning and Jake, who had seemed under the weather since the previous evening, showed himself to be definitely on the ill side. In the early morning he had been sick and was doing the sick doggie things like licking his lips, panting and generally flopping about like a rag doll.

So once again, the help of health professionals needed to be sought and the experience was a little different to Sunday's.

8.30am a phone call to the vet's, answered immediately, produced an appointment to see the vet at 9.10am. 

9.08am Jake and I are sitting in the comfortable, spacious waiting room, having been 'checked in' as soon as we arrived. There are three receptionist/clerical staff visible at the desk, all gainfully employed.

9.11am we are ushered into an air-conditioned consulting room by a very nice vet, who proceeds to examine Jake and listen to my account of what has happened so far.

Jake is given an anti-biotic injection and we are asked to wait in the waiting room while the vet prepares the rest of his treatment.

By 9.40am we have his medication, full instructions on how to administer it, have paid the bill and are on our way home.

I know we have the reputation of being a nation of animal lovers but I sometimes wonder if we have the balance quite right!

Sunday morning

By this morning, yesterday's swelling around my right wrist, due, I assumed, to an insect bite or sting, had progressed further up my arm. I debated whether or not to hang on till tomorrow morning and go to the GP or go to A&E  today and get a diagnosis and treatment. A&E won.

When we arrived, I noticed there is now an out of hours GP service (OOH as it is known, apparently) and rang the bell as invited. The basic message there was that, unless I had made an appointment (How? Where?), I had no chance and I should see the receptionist for A&E. So, I stood behind a man in his seventies with an obviously bad leg who was balancing against the desk and we waited...  and waited ... for at least ten minutes. Even the cleaner became concerned and assured us there would be someone there any minute. The receptionist finally appeared with much smiling and joking and took our details. Would the man in front like a wheelchair? He demurred but she commandeered a porter (very fortunate timing there) and he duly wheeled the man across to the opposite wall. Eventually, he was called for triage. He was on his own, so he struggled out of his wheelchair and limped slowly across the several yards to the waiting nurse. As he reached her she, having watched him making his painful journey, then  said, "Oh, would you like a wheelchair?"

Eventually, I too was triaged and later again, seen by a very nice doctor and prescribed antibiotics.

The general belief these days is that  at weekends, there is more or less a skeleton staff in hospitals, so don't get ill then - wait till a weekday. What I saw this morning was plenty of staff, both in A&E and in and around the pharmacy, none of whom showed any sense of urgency whatsoever. I'm talking wandering up and down corridors in small groups, chatting and laughing, drinking cans of coke and having two or three people doing jobs which patently should only take one.

I have been at outpatients departments at that hospital and had a couple of small operations there and not had any complaints, so I would not wish to tar everyone with the same brush. My most recent experience of day surgery in April was second to none and the care and attention of the staff couldn't have been better. I have also had other experiences which left something to be desired and so has Keith. It seems that the Pareto Principle is alive and well in this hospital and probably in most others, loosely translated as 20% of staff doing 80% of the work and it does not inspire confidence to realise that the way one is treated is likely to be a bit of a lottery.

However, to return to our A&;E, if the staff on duty this morning had been working with any reasonable degree of energy and interest,  we would all have been seen and treated in half the time. After all, it was Sunday morning and there were only half a dozen of us there at any one time.

Betsi Cadwaladr Health Board is in trouble at present due to failings in management.

I can see why.

A letter to Direct Line

I am, to quote some TV sitcom that I vaguely remember seeing, a Woman on the Edge...

Let's see if I get any results from this letter. I certainly can't any other way.

Mr Darrell Evans,

Chief Customer Operator,

Direct Line Insurance,

Churchill Court,

Westmoreland Road,

Bromley.

BR1 1DP

Dear Mr Evans,

I am writing to you in the hope that you may be able to use your influence to bring about a statisfactory outcome to my extremely fraught dealings with Direct Line Car Insurance, as I seem to be making no progress at all through the normal channels.

At the end of April this year I did some research in order to renew my car insurance, due at the end of May and, having received a very reasonable quote from Direct Line, decided to buy from them. I paid the total amount and received the documents very quickly, in addition to a request for a Proof of No Claims Bonus letter and proof that an imobiliser was fitted to the vehicle. The NCB letter was duly dispatched and so was the paperwork that I had about the immobiliser, which, in all my forty years of driving, I have never before been asked for, I might add. Noticing on that paperwork that the car's number plate had been changed since the immobiliser was fitted (it is about 20 years old), I also sent the car's log book so that the VIN number could be checked as proof that this was indeed the same car.

As I had not had my documents returned by the end of May, as promised in the letter requesting them, I rang in early June to chase them up and was told that they 'had only just been received' which I translate into 'Because they were sent early, they have only just made their way onto our system' and I was told that they would be returned shortly. Unfortunately, we are now in mid-July and I am still waiting, which I presume means they are lost but that no-one is going to tell me so.

The other problem was that the proof of immobiliser which I had sent was deemed to be inadequate, as it was 'only the handbook for it'. If that is the case, it would not have had the previous registration number on it and VIN number on it. I was advised to take the car to a garage and ask them to provide written proof of the presence of an immobiliser, which I did. However, as the auto-electrician who provided the letter does not have headed notepaper and there was no information about the model of immobiliser on the actual immobiliser, this too was deemed to be unacceptable, even though he was able to guarantee that an immobiliser was fitted and working. Maybe if the documentation I orginally sent could be returned to me, I would have the model information and could provide it! (The conundrum of which comes first, the chicken or the hen, springs to mind.)

Every time I ring Direct Line, on an 0845 number, by the way, I am informed that 'We are experiencing an unusually high volume of calls' and that my call will be put in the dreaded queue. I might add that I have now found a way of circumventing that. If I choose the 'cancel policy' option, I get through to a living, speaking person straight away. A cynical person might choose to interpret that in a decidedly non-favourable way.

The last person I spoke to offered to open a complaint for me and did so, but I am still told I need proof of the immobiliser, albeit the headed notepaper demand has now been waived, and I STILL have not had my documents returned.

To add insult to injury, I was then emailed with an online customer satisfaction questionnaire, but it was concerning the lady with whom I last dealt. I had no problem with her handling of my problems. My complaint is with the fact that I have not had my documents returned and with the difficulty, not to say expense, of contacting Direct Line.

At present, I am one extremely dissatisfied customer and I am hoping that you will be able to instigate some action on my behalf. I await your response and thank you in advance.

Yours sincerely,

Chester 2013

Well, here we are at last, the long awaited, much heralded SUMMER! Or at least we are hoping so.

Today I was doing the 'Ladies who lunch' thing with friends, Gill and Julie in Chester and decided to take my new camera to have a bit of a play with it.

Keith, meanwhile, has threatened to create a group called 'Geezers who trough' - I think he feels he is missing out!

School days

News that schools in England are going to be allowed to set their own holiday dates was aired on television this morning, prompting Keith to muse that, if all schools just closed permanently, it would immediately solve a lot of problems.
When I queried this, he expanded on his argument.
All boys would be provided with a Meccano set, an aeroplane modelling kit and a bike, delivered in parts for assembly by them.
Well, that might keep the boys busy, especially if their interests lay in those areas, but what about the girls?
Girls? Oh well, they could be given dolls.

Yes, he is still cowering behind the sofa, hands over his head...

Sunday and Monday

So off we went again on Sunday, forth into the wilds of north west Wales, where Radio 4 and Radio Cymru battle it out for supremacy of the airwaves and, luckily for me, Radio Cymru wins. We got to listen to a couple of hours of Welsh language radio, which is useful for me because, even when I only pick up a word or two here or there, I can get the gist of what is being said a little more easily these days.

And thence to Monday, when I seem to have spent the whole day doing battle with one 'jobsworth' after another.

I have a ongoing feud with Direct Line car insurance, who have insisted on seeing written proof of the immobiliser on the car, refused to accept it when I did send it and are very dilatory in returning it and the other documentation I sent them. This is the very short version of events and has been ongoing since the end of April.

It took me most of the day and several attempts to speak to someone at Direct Line because they were 'experiencing very high volumes of calls' and, it being an 0845 number, I wasn't anxious to hang on waiting for too long.

Next was a letter from Bosch. Would we please check our dishwasher as they thought it could be one of those which is in danger of spontaneously combusting. (We've had it for nearly 10 year, so it's taken them a while to discover this). Tried to book an engineer's appointment of the website but it wasn't having any, so I had to phone. "All of our operatives are busy at the moment but we will get to you as soon as possible," the voice intoned, but at least it was an 0800 number, so free. Oh, and the website wouldn't let me make an appointment because it didn't recognise the address. It's North Wales, for Pete's sake, not Outer Mongolia!

But the best encounter of the day was good old Royal Mail.

Keith had bought me a camera from an Ebay seller (nice man that he is!), which hadn't arrived. On emailing the seller, he was sent a tracking number and, lo and behold, the postman had apparently tried to deliver on the expected day. 

I rang the local office. I worked hard to convince the man on the phone that, no we hadn't been left a 'you were out' card and no, it wasn't possible that someone had hidden it, eaten it or otherwise disposed of it. Well, he couldn't understand that at all (and he certainly wasn't going to apologise) but, yes they had the parcel there. I arranged for delivery today and then mentioned the ongoing problem I have with persuading the postmen to take advantage of the new option of leaving parcels with neighbours rather than taking them back to the depot.

"Oh well, it's not up to the postman to find  a neighbour to take it it," he said. 

"Well yes, actually it is under the new scheme." I replied.

"Oh well, I'm not sure if that's actually in place," he said.

"Yes, it is," I said. I tried to tell him that I have mentioned it a few times recently when having to collect parcels from the depot and one lady even made a note of my complaint to pass on to the manager. However, he insisted on talking over me.

"I'm not going to argue with you," he said, "Your parcel's here and we'll deliver it tomorrow."

I am left thinking, not for the first time, that maybe privatisation of Royal Mail can't come soon enough!