Image

I think I need a new image.

At the Baftas I noticed that Dev Patel had gone all floppy haired and informal which apparently sent the women ( and many of the men) in the room wild with desire. 

Eddie Redmayne donned a white tux and looked very 1950s and even Steven Fry, who usually looks like a bag of coal in a suit , scrubbed up well enough to lead the charge against Trump's references to the overrated Meryl Streep.
The Prof has a new twitter profile photo. ( see above)
It shrieks professional & Individual 
If I had one there would be a gravy stain on the shirt and egg in my beard.
Unprofessional & Individual 

It's time to change!
And so......Before I take neighbour Trevor to the doctor's surgery this morning I 've made an effort...it's the turning of a new leaf!
I've washed my face and combed my hair! I've put on clean jeans and a jumper spring fresh from airing on the bathroom radiator. I've brushed my teeth and have put shoes on instead of my crocs with the holes in the sole
And feeling fairly dapper strode out to get myself a coffee from the kitchen

.....and promptly stood in a pile of George's bile sick lurking by the fridge

Hanging Up My Stethoscope!

My work retirement documentation arrived in the post yesterday.
There is a whole booklet of things to complete....it's bureaucracy overload!

I aim to leave intensive Care around my birthday which is in June.
By then I would have been a nurse over 35 years!
35 years!
Bugger Me!

Recently a colleague asked me if there was much difference between the nursing of today and that of thirty years ago, and Without much pause, I said no
Caring is caring whatever the decade.

What has changed is the system itself. Pressure on the system by increased demand. Pressure on the system by more complex care needs and pressure on the system by patients who are living longer and who are expecting more.
The system is now dominated by quality control measures, audits, specialist managers and all of the paperwork that goes along with ticking a box. The nhs monster is so big that great swathes of the supportive services have been contracted out and balancing the books will now never be a possibility no matter what Hospital Trust you work for.

Like I said the caring  part of nursing hasn't changed.
But almost everything else has.

I was a good ward manager and dare I say a very effective rehabilitation nurse that often ran things by the seat of my pants. Now I am a safe intensive care nurse, but I can see that the management side of nursing has become harder and harder. The burn out of senior staff is a sobering fact of modern day nursing life......nursing management is more fire fighting now, fire fighting and juggling!

After I retire, I still intend to nurse occassionally. After all I will be 55 and not ready to fully hang up my stethoscope for eternity! But it will be nice to officially leave a system that asks so much of
you...

Mini Drama

A pretty little tabby is presently sat on our coal bunker making moo moo eyes at Albert .
Like any lazy and pragmatic fellow , Albert is sat on the kitchen windowsill , next to his feed bowl.
He is warm and comfortable and surprisingly is looking at the sad stranger in a rather benign way
The tabby looks cold.
I took her out some food as she is meowing in a needy way.
William is watching proceedings through the cat flap with his one good eye.
The Prof has already gone to bed with George.
Winnie is warming her nipples by the fire
Mary, as usual is with me in the arm chair, she too is asleep.

So the little Mexican standoff remains largely unwitnessed.

I'm watching The Bourne Ultimatum on tv.
Jason Bourne is walking quickly through the city

In the ad break I put more food out for the tabby.....she is very  hungry
Albert is still on the window ledge pretending he's asleep.

Who says nothing happens here on a Saturday night

Top Shelf

Written last night 20.30 pmI am writing this at Manchester airport.....Terminal 1 ......the arrival hall.
The Prof's plane is late
I've just been told off by the woman in charge of WH SMITH for pulling all of the zombie magazines  onto the floor when reaching for an old Walking Dead magazine.
It could have been worse.....it could have been the porn shelf!
I got all in a fluster and broke wind rather loudly during the scrabble to pick everything up
Apart from this......,
I've had a lovely day.
A Non stop catch up with old friend Cheryl over three hours of lunch in a nice restaurant in Chester was so therapeutic, literally as my old mate is now a much talented psychotherapist!
We've both done a great deal in two decades!
It was lovely to touch base again
Hey ho 

28 Years Later

I am having lunch with an old friend this afternoon.
We have not seen each other for twenty eight years.
I had just started my first staff nurse posting at the Mother and Baby unit at Bootham Park Psychiatric Hospital in York and Cheryl was a student nurse.
She lived down the corridor at the nurses home.
I'm a little nervous in one way about meeting up.
I am not that svelte gauche unopinionated  character that I used to be
Hey ho

Sending a dear friend and fellow blogger -Weaver

A group hug tonight 

Don't Like It?...don't read it.

Over the past couple of years, blogland has experienced it's own number of trolls.
Now thankfully the true anonymous nasty buggers that cause real mischief are thankfully rather thin on the ground, but there are certain characters who seem to delight in  popping into a thread in order to hurt, ridicule or impart anger and bad feeling.
I've seen this recently on a popular blog that I follow
Now don't get me wrong, being devil's advocate about a subject, or having an alternative view is vital for bloglands cogs to be well and truly oiled, for there is nothing worse than a blind acquiescence to a much sweated over blog entry.
It has all of the real validation of a husband's tired remark of " No you look lovely" when confronted by his wife's constant moan of " Does my bum look big in this? " 
Balanced arguement and debate is king and gentle Micky taking and joshing is entertaining to read and participate in but when things become personal and destructive...it's time to grow up.
I've always say the same thing when I have a follower who becomes destructive.
" If you don't enjoy reading this shit ( regardless of whether you agree or not with the content) then DON'T READ IT" 
Plain and simple

"Goodbye Flower"

Mrs James rang me this morning with the sad news that Gay Gordon had passed away.
" He died quietly in his sleep" she said , the irony plain in her voice.
Gay Gordon, as we all know, never did anything quietly.
The village will miss the old motor mouth, famous for booming " HELLO FLOWER" at every turn and for pouring a whole bottle of brandy into a gigantic fruit cake, so big that it had to be transferred to the Flower Show tea tables via invalid trolley.
Gay Gordon was  not gay, but he was as camp as a row of tents and by all accounts he was a bit of a lady's man before ill health and good living took its toll but despite everything he remained resolutely cheerful albeit in a fey Brian Blessed kind of way in his final years with Big Mary over in the pensioner bungalows in Trelawnyd.

I called in with a card for Big Mary, though she can clearly no longer be called " big Mary" anymore given the amount of weight she has lost over the past year. She was understandably tearful and upset but managed a laugh at the card inscription.
Trelawnyd will be a dull place without him 

Riding into his final sunset

Gay Gordon and his invalid trolley

RIP