Arholiad Cymraeg

Dwi wedi pasio'r arholiad Cwrs Mynediad! 

Or, alternatively, I have passed my Welsh exam. 

Dwi'n hapus iawn.

A giggle for today

This came from TK this morning. Funny - but somehow, not surprising! :)

Keep up the fight!

I have just been reading this article on an Irish rural act of defiance. There are quite a few peat boglands  in Ireland where turf is cut and used as fuel, as it has been for centuries, but now, of course, we are in the 21st century and such activities are regarded as being bad for the environment.
I am not arguing the pros or cons for this, but what lifted my heart when I  read this article was the fact that, somewhere in Ireland, the 'little people' (no pun intended) are standing up to the powers that be, and all the better for it being the EU.
Excellent, I thought. Bring it on! There should be more of it. The EU interferes far too much in our daily lives, often with negative consequences and these peat farmers are making it clear that they want to reclaim the right to do what they have always done with their own land.

"They think it's all about money and that they can buy us off. They can't. This is about our rights to use our land as we wish," says parliamentarian Luke Flanagan.

Whatever the rights and wrongs of turf cutting, I am right behind their fight against the ever-intrusive powers of the EU.

Travelling

Today, I braved the heat to head south to Bristol to see Dad and bring him back to north Wales for a week or so. Hopefully, we'll be doing that tomorrow. Meanwhile, Elder Daughter and Husband have bravely, or maybe foolhardily, set off for Cornwall.  They will no doubt be accompanied by millions of families, whose children have been released from school for the next six weeks, so rather them than me.

Elsewhere, Younger Daughter, who has also been released from school, along with all her pupils, will tomorrow be zipping off from Newcastle to Liverpool.

The best bit will be that we will get to meet up with Younger Daughter on Monday or Wednesday (she hasn't decided yet) for lunch and Elder Daughter and Husband will be staying with us on Friday, having done a detour on the way home from Cornwall to Sheffield.

Let's hope the heat and humidity are a little more bearable by then!

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.