Parish Notice.
Ms Raccoon duly attended her quarterly interview with the oncologist on Friday; delighted to tell you that you will have to put up with me for longer than predicted – it seems the Letrozole is having some beneficial effects and slowing the progress of my cancer!
I’ve even, with the aid of the blissful ‘pain patch’ managed to train it into some sort of discipline that allows me to go about my normal prowl of the cyber waves. That being so, I shall be taking off on the good ship ‘Lord Nelson’ from West India Docks two weeks today…I can’t wait.
The NHS continues to throw up interesting characters – this week an utterly miserable receptionist. Long face, deep scowl, she was tasked with making me an appointment for another scan in three months.
‘Can’t do it ’til the 20th’, she said.
‘That’s OK, I shall look forward to seeing your smiling face on the 20th’.
‘You should try working here, you wouldn’t be so cheerful’.
‘You should try being a patient here’, I said.
Now bearing in mind that this was half past nine in the morning, what could possibly have gone wrong with her day that made her think her troubles were more profound than those of an entire queue of people with cancer waiting for news of when they might be ‘seen’ again?
I keep thinking about that exchange, every time I venture onto Twitter, which seems to be filled with people whose entire life has been ruined by someone using the wrong term to describe the ethnicity or disability of someone they have never met?
The ‘outrage bus’ has become a national joke, but something has happened to us as a race that we have lost all sense of proportion or the ability to mask our feelings for the benefit of someone worse off. People screeching in pain because a baker has failed to make a ‘gay wedding cake’ and ignoring several homosexuals hurled to their death from a building in Syria; working themselves into a lather over several journalists shot dead in Paris and ignoring the thousands slaughtered on the same day in Africa.
‘My pain is more important than your pain’ – it’s the national anthem.
Where is the outcry and hysteria for children abused today?
Discuss.
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August 16, 2015 at 8:29 am -
Are we allowed to discuss child abuse?
Robert Green ‘gagged’ for life about mentioning Hollie Greig.
Ben Fellows – “I have nothing more to say” – re Kennith Clarke.
Melanie Shaw – imprisoned after speaking out about abuse.
“In dangerous times, a wise man is silent.”
…and boy, do we live in dangerous times.
PS Good news about the Letrozole
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August 16, 2015 at 8:36 am -
Civics now focuses on getting something for yourself from government, rather than some sort of mutual obligation to your fellow-man or your community. A means of exercising new civics is by identifying yourself as part of some special group. Overlaid on this are the elite classes who speak up for these social groups but who have a comfortable lifestyle funded by the state, not based on a vocation or sense of public duty.
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August 16, 2015 at 8:38 am -
Clear skies and fair winds to you, Anna!
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August 16, 2015 at 9:18 am -
Ditto.
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August 16, 2015 at 8:40 am -
Wonderful news Anna! As ever fortune favours the brave.
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August 16, 2015 at 9:14 am -
Fortune favours the bloody minded more like!
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August 16, 2015 at 12:58 pm -
Nothing wrong with that Boss! Best wishes!
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August 16, 2015 at 9:07 am -
Indeed, Overthehill – couldn’t have happened to a more deserving patient.
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August 16, 2015 at 9:12 am -
delighted to tell you that you will have to put up with me for longer than predicted
As we are delighted to hear it. *imagines the Grim Reaper checking his wrist watch, tapping his fingers tunelessly on the table and muttering darkly about ‘bloody bloggers’ *
this week an utterly miserable receptionist.
I had cause this week to ring the PALS for a certain Norfolk hospital, I rang with some trepidation as supposedly ‘adult’ Eldest had been checked in , he said, under an assumed name to prevent the ‘dark men’ from Drug Mafia from finding him and he hadn’t listed us as his Next Of Kin. The Lady who took me call will, i feel,not survive the next round of the spending review, the NHS can’t be having helpful friendly and compassionate people with ‘sunny’ voices answering the phone. …people might start ringing them more often.
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August 16, 2015 at 9:23 am -
Bernard – we are encouraged to speak out about child abuse whether or not it happened and “you will be believed” except in the rare cases when you are seen to be clearly barking mad and shouting false allegations against a live person. Delighted the Landlady will be serving pints of frothy brew to others on the ocean wave, although her desire to do so is slightly beyond me. Each to their own. Perhaps she was Sir Edward “Sailor” Heath in a previous existence? Tall ships instead of tall tales. I suspect the woman’s motives. A true investigative journalist of the finest kind, I reckon it’s all a disguise to interview various ex crew members about a former Prime Minister. “Sorry to bother you at the top of this mast as you’re trying to tie a complex knot onto this bird’s nest but were you ever buggered by this man whilst he was covering up his awful teeth? Can I take that as a NO or are you shaking your head from fear and wind gusts?”.
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August 16, 2015 at 9:59 am -
Great news about the Letrozole effect, Ms Raccoon! God bless the Lord Nelson and all who sail in her, including you!
And what a great blog: wish I could be so concisely punchy. I started with short blogs back in 2012 but now I struggle to stay below 2,000 words!
>Where is the outcry and hysteria for children abused today?
Indeed. We do not need hysteria but we could certainly do with more outcry about cases such as the following, which rated a tiny newsbrief at the bottom of page 14 of The Guardian yesterday.
A mother branded her 16-month-old baby’s cheek with a “smiley” mark using a cigarette lighter. She got a four-year sentence.
A few months ago, in separate cases, two friends of mine (former Radio 2 DJ Chris Denning and ex-PIE committee member Charles Napier) each got 13 years for historic child sex offences. Neither man would have hurt a fly, never mind a baby or a child of any age.
Terrible cruelty passes almost unnoticed now. There is no space for it in a national consciousness obsessed with spurious “abuse”.
PS Hi, Jonathan King, love your comment! Good to see your sense of humour has survived the ridiculously unjust sentence you had to get through long before the post-Savile floodgates opened.
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August 16, 2015 at 11:10 am -
All exclusively interested in young males it should be noted. Indeed, the entire historic allegations litigation industry until very recently seemed to revolve around young males. http://jimcannotfixthis.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/puppy-dogs-tales.html The original intent of savilisation seems to have been preface a Paradigm Shift, and “Exposure” was plainly solely about young females, but the scouting for boys angle soon led to the beast becoming business as usual. Jimmy’s most recently alleged adventures with Mr.99 – Jaconelli make it plain that it’s hard to keep a good man-story down. One does wonder how high the shark would have to jump before it would be accepted to have joined the cow on the dark side, of the moon.
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August 16, 2015 at 10:08 am -
The good ship “Lord Nelson” eh?
A couple of weeks experiencing “Rum, Sodomy and the Lash”? -
August 16, 2015 at 10:10 am -
Fantastic news for you and all other sufferers of this awful illness – enjoy your adventure, keep smiling and keep fighting – Mandy x
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August 16, 2015 at 10:22 am -
I’m reminded of the last days of my mother in law who died of cancer and lived in our house for 6 months before that because she could no longer care for herself in her own home. She was reluctant to take the diamorphine in case she got addicted. On one horrible day she was in intense pain, and it was a weekend. We called the out of hours service who suggested the diamorphine and see how it was in an hour. Before this advice was given, they required all the patient’s particulars (1). An hour later it was worse, so we called again, giving patient’s particulars a second time (2). A doctor was sent, and before he’d come in, he required PP (3), and then he attended MiL getting PP (4) – I’m tired of writing in full here – He called for an ambulance, giving PP (5) over the phone. To be fair, paramedics came quickly, but they too wanted PP (6), and when they got to MiL, they got PP (7) from my wife, as poor old MiL was incoherent by then and in additional distress because of what she’d lost control of.
They phoned ahead to the hospital, having given PP (8), and on arrival, PP (9) was sought on entry, PP (10) when she was first seen, and PP (11) on admission to a ward.
Several times I saw the PP being written down, and heaven knows what they do with the paper afterwards. Simply everyone who saw her was kind, considerate, skilled and efficient, but the bureaucratic paperwork turned the whole experience into a nightmare. She could have been given a case number on the first enquiry, or better still, simply her NHS number. I could invent dozens of systems much better than this. -
August 16, 2015 at 10:33 am -
* ‘My pain is more important than your pain’ *
One of my admittedly paltry understandings of modern Therapy is that the person asking for help is more or less told they must abandon relativistic ways of thinking. Thus attitudes such as “my life has been shit but others have it worse” are viewed as the cardinal error and in good part the very reason this person has repressed all their unhappiness. So, thoughts about how “my pain is less bad than someone else’s pain” is perforce the very first way of thinking that must be undone by the therapist.
The broad masses nevertheless want desperately to read about the shit lives of others, presumably on the basis that it cheers them up to know that they may not be so badly off after all. http://www.talktothepress.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/justice-after-abuse.jpg An alternative notion might of course be that they get off on such stories a little.
An entire society in need of therapy maybe…
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August 16, 2015 at 11:10 am -
I don’t pay a great deal of attention these days to ‘misery memoirs’, but nearly all of those currently published appear to be pseudonymous or anonymous. Presumably this is to avoid the fate of people like Dave Pelzer and Kathy O’Bierne and have their so-called memoirs proven to be fiction.
I’ve found an interesting, if a bit dry and academic, article on the reasons why people like reading this stuff even when they know its probably fake; one quote in particular caught my eye: “…the impostor, like the magician, seems to be very good at knowing what people will believe and, like the comedian, very good at knowing what people care about.”
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August 16, 2015 at 11:02 am -
So pleased for you, Anna. I am convinced that being “bloody minded” pays off!
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August 16, 2015 at 11:11 am -
And congratulations from me as well. May you long continue to “Rage, rage…”
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August 16, 2015 at 11:10 am -
This is very good news, Madam. Unhelpful/hostile/bored/stroppy/don’t really give a shit receptionists are, I fear, commonplace, i.e. usually very common but always in the wrong place.
And stupid with it.
Your intended vessel is not, I presume, armed. A shame. Did you know that the main ordnance on HMS Belfast is trained on Scratchwood Services on the M1? Perhaps the bod in charge tried to get a decent sandwich there once…
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August 16, 2015 at 11:15 am -
That is good news about the cancer. Keep on going !
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August 16, 2015 at 11:33 am -
I’m utterly delighted that you’re going to get your share of the wheel’s kick and the wind’s song. You well deserve “a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover, And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick’s over.”
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August 16, 2015 at 11:36 am -
Lrd Nelson in 2 weeks time? Excellent news to accompany your Letrozole update. Are you doing the full 14 day voyage?
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August 16, 2015 at 11:50 am -
Nope, just seven days, Mr G’s nerves wouldn’t stretch to the full 14 days of not knowing what the Hell I was up to!!!
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August 16, 2015 at 3:10 pm -
Mr G’s nerves wouldn’t stretch to the full 14 days of not knowing what the Hell I was up to!!!
Sure…we believe you…..I mean…it’s not like Mr G hasn’t ordered in a fortnight’s supply of beer, dancing girls and quarter-sawn cabinet grade walnut….
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August 16, 2015 at 11:56 am -
I thought NHS receptionists had to go through an intensive ‘fuck you’ course with added ‘take the piss’ modules for those in more complex departments – she sounds highly qualified.
Marvellous news on being granted your sea-worthiness – it sounds like an awesome wheeze and I really hope you at least get a few clement days of late summer.
All the best to you and the ‘G’ster!
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August 16, 2015 at 12:18 pm -
As many above commenters have written, it’s good to learn your dogged perseverance with life continues.
Your readership knows that you DLTBGYD.
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August 16, 2015 at 1:05 pm -
I find the whole Janner thing smacks of a show trial. It’s a farce – whether he’s faking being mad as a hat stand or not. I suspect he isn’t. But we must have victims, we must have a trial, even when the bloke can’t defend himself. And no doubt. .compensation. How much is all this costing the public purse?
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August 16, 2015 at 2:25 pm -
I also suspect a lot of these cases – Janner being a prime example – are also shifting a ‘consensus’ amongst the unthinking masses that ‘old people’ are to be hated and despised, as opposed to protected and looked after. Instead of empathising with the weak, dying and dead they should be rounded on as ‘payoff’ not just for perceived misdeeds when they were able-bodied but also as scapegoats for generations who don’t seem to have any relevance other than as ‘consumers’ and who are ‘groomed’ to condemn anyone the media tells them too and are thus little more than ‘superstitious mediaeval peasants’
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August 16, 2015 at 4:37 pm -
As you say Gildas, if he is truly teapot then he is unfit to stand trial. But then these are show trials, and need not follow the rule of law. Bread and circuses.
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August 16, 2015 at 1:58 pm -
“Illegitimi non carborundum” (Don’t let the bastards grind you down)
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August 16, 2015 at 2:01 pm -
I hope you planted the biennial plants.
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August 16, 2015 at 4:07 pm -
May the wind be fair; the night air calm and the shoreline bounteous. Bon Voyage, skipper!
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August 16, 2015 at 4:35 pm -
I immediately thought of :
Stately Spanish galleon coming from the Isthmus,
Dipping through the Tropics by the palm-green shores,But settled for :
Dirty British coaster with a salt-caked smoke stack,
Butting through the Channel in the mad March days,
With a cargo of Tyne coal,
Road-rails, pig-lead,
Firewood, iron-ware, and cheap tin trays.Great news once more and enjoy the jaunt!
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August 16, 2015 at 4:54 pm -
Anna, always good to hear of your continual refusal to go quietly.
I’ve always wondered if there was an English finishing school for all these miserable Doctor’s receptionists. Maybe out on the bleak moorlands of Cumbria there is a draught plagued granite lodge with faulty central heating full of women being taught to scowl properly before their induction into the ‘wonderful’ NHS.
“A little more twist of the mouth, Laetitia.”
“Now, Julia, we can be a little more sarcastic than that.”
“Now, can you try that again, but with a little more disbelief please Sandra?”What an intriguing thought.
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August 16, 2015 at 5:50 pm -
Delighted to hear your good news Anna and long may it continue. I will remember your bloody mindness if things get worse for me! Have a wonderful time, you have certainly earned it.
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