Minnie’s Musings

Random ramblings of a middle aged, middle class, middle income woman

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  • The Power of the Pen

    To make one feel much better.

    Stinging complaint has now been delivered. Once on the feedback form – and yes I was happy to share my thoughts with the public (but they won’t be) – who may or may decide to share them with the wider public – and once on an official complaint form.

    Just the act of writing the tale and my thoughts and feelings is therapeutic. It helps to nudge the anger and frustration further down the path by which they might leave my system.

    I use this technique in much of my everyday and working life. Writing an email to oneself about any untoward incident – factual, professional and honest – serves to increase the possibility that you won’t be brooding about whatever happened at 3am, while at the same time recording a contemporaneous account.

    As a special needs mum I rapidly learned to follow any and every conversation with the local authority with an email starting “Further to our conversation this morning, my understanding is…”

    Written records are invaluable. Even if you don’t come out smelling of roses yourself. And contemporaneous accounts are key . You are recording what happened and what was said while the memory is fresh. Memory gets faulty with greater distance.

    And honesty is vital. Admitting that you might have muttered “#%^*wit” under your breath from the outset gets your misdemeanour out there and can give you an additional sense of relief (the police have long said people who kill unburden themselves when they confess). It is also disarming.

    As a teacher rebooting and improving a relationship is way more successful if you ‘give’ a little at the outset. “start the conversation with “I know you think I was unfair and perhaps I overreacted for which I apologise. It might help if I explained how your behaviour looked from my perspective.”

    This kind of conversation has been dubbed ‘restorative justice.’ I prefer the term civilised conversation. Let us model this to the younger generation.

  • Bedside Manner

    Some 60 years ago my aunt Judy wrote a paper on bedside manner. Or lack there of.

    This was before my mother was subjected to a gynaecologist who shepherded his posse of trainee doctors to stand in a circle around her bed and announced to his acolytes, “Ah yes, Mrs Bradley here is a chronic aborter.”

    This was after her third or fourth miscarriage at least one of which was an ectopic. My mother was distraught. The ward sister wrote a very pointed to to say that she was the daughter of an eminent but dead professor whose numerous and powerful friends would have his guts for garters, in Grandpa’s absence. An apology followed, but only because the powerful connections were in place. .

    Well consultant who sawed away on my right hand yesterday needs a crash course. Urgently.

    So I am not comparing my pain and distress over my hand and my phobia of needles to the loss of a baby. But I did say to all and sundry that I didn’t like needles and anaesthetic takes a long time to work. I warned him.

    I will also admit that I have a very loud voice and got told off for swearing when I pushed out my son’s overly large head.

    Having your palm injected with local anaesthetic is excruciating. I cried out several times. But when he stuck the scalpel in and I cried out again, he told me off. Basically he was saying he couldn’t concentrate if I was screaming. Fair enough, but I did warn him.

    So , lying there on my own, feeling vulnerable and scared, while he disappeared behind me, presumably to have a fume about how feeble I was being, I started to cry. Eventually someone noticed and came to comfort me. I got a tissue, eventually.

    Anyway this ghastly procedure was done, I was sewn up and sent on my way. After Mr Bedside Manner Not waved the soggy tissue in my face asking me if so still needed it. I was escorted back by a nurse who was kind and, I suspect, a bit embarrassed.

    On the ward they asked me if it was better than the last time. “Err, no,” said my escort.

    After downing that all powerful remedy – a cup of tea – I was handed my paperwork and pottered back to my waiting husband whose smile dropped when he saw my face. Big hug, rapid exit, “I hate that man,” uttered loudly enough for the receptionist to hear.

    The envelope of paperwork contains a feedback form. When I can manipulate a pen I will sharpen it…

  • Quality of Care

    I am not sitting on the dock of the bay. I am sitting on a rubber chair in a day ward awaiting my slot to half the carpal tunnel on my right hand released.

    This is the snazzy private hospital round the back of the NHS edifice where procedures are farmed out to in the hope of reducing a waiting list. Apart from the complimentary coffee and and newspaper a (the relatively innocuous‘I’ and the freshness of the paint, there isn’t much difference.

    Because I am having this done on the NHS , I don’t have to sign away the cost of several months take-home pay. Hurrah!

    Unlike the last time when we found a private hospital round the back of Hatfield who could do this same procedure on my other hand in a timely fashion. While that operation was successful it did confirm my worst prejudices about the private health sector. Namely the risk of a surgeon deciding he doesn’t need to follow a protocol.

    If , as I have, you had the misfortune to get breast cancer and the blue dye indicates that your lymph nodes need to be removed, you are not supposed to have any form of tourniquet strapped to you arm, including blood pressure cuffs.

    But this chap decided that it would all be much easierr and quicker if the blood supple to my hand was reduced. So he overrode the anaesthesiologist and insisted on applying said rubber band.

    The huffing and puffing as he sawed away at the rigid block of tendons that had developed over several months, was alarming. He said afterwards that it was like cutting concrete.

    Anyhow I hope for better this time around…. this , I wrote, yesterday.

  • The Cat on the Lap

    Is snoring loudly but not digging her claws in. You win some, you lose some.

    Of course she is also leaving hairs on my lap as she snoozes, so I will have to use yet more sheets of my roll poly to get them back off my black trousers.

    This is annoying. But I must credit her with functioning as a hot water bottle. For I am a quite cold.

    For clearly there is a difference of opinion on whether the heating should or should not be on. I am sympathetic to he whose bank account pays for the gas and electric but I am cold.

    And now I am even more cold as cat has vacated my lap on appearance of he who pays the bills (in the hope of food, perhaps). She knows which side her bread is buttered on.

    Fickle beast as cats can be.

    Must now find the roly poly thing…

  • Channelling their Inner Parisian

    Many moons ago BB and I stopped for a cup of hot chocolate in a cafe near Notre Dame. I was about 7 months pregnant so needed to sit down.

    The presence of one’s derrière on a not particularly comfortable wooden spindle chair at table with chequered red and white table cloth appeared to warrant the equivalent of a £10 surcharge. A voluble WTF preceded our protest which was met with the inevitable Gallic shrug and almost comic “Zis is Paris”.

    The other thing that trip ensconced itself in our dual memory was the teeniest, tiniest of hotel rooms somewhere in behind the Moulin Rouge (plus being charge £10 for a breakfast consisting of chocolat chaud and a pastry – 30 years ago FFS, so I am entitled to fume – where my then boyfriend, now husband, was propositioned for my services.

    This was brought to mind when we eventually succeeded in negotiating the locks to access our apart-hotel and then our room. The building was extremely quaint and extremely snug. Its charms flew out the window when we realised that we would be spending the next three nights sidling around the bed and trying not to electrocute ourselves on the dodgy wall sockets.

    To add insult to injury the kitchen and terraced promised in the advertisement was closed. So all that palaver in Montreal Station with redistributing the various breakfast items, fruit and half bottle of wine had been an unnecessary headache.

    And my vociferous complaint to the office was met with a “We are sorry that you missed our notification about the kitchen etc that we sent out…” Passive aggressive gas-lighting, arghhhhh! Well we were not the only weary travellers who didn’t get the memo as we met other guests acting with equal bemusement as they hunted for somewhere to boil a kettle.

    I suppose I should be grateful that the third or fourth eventful event – me leaving my bag in the Musee de Orsay (Sp?!) but not realising until we were about to climb Mont Matre – was not repeated. Though I recall myself marching back across the city in a fury to retrieve said bag – deprived of the cash in my purse – and can only admire the speed I achieved given the size of my tummy.

    Quebec City has architecture that reminds you of Rouen.e Complete those high walled fire breaks which I have now learned are designed to stop flames leaping from roof to roof.

  • Leaping Ahead

    With all this talk of peace in Palestine (alliteration there…) and awarding DT the NPP, I can’t be the only one thinking “Hang on a sec, this is a ceasefire. It’s fragile. It can break down anytime.”

    Yes there is a glimmer of hope. Yes, people are entitled to feel joy. And one doesn’t want to dampen the mood.

    But Hamas is just about to give up its only remaining bargaining power. And, given the Israeli government’s current record of blatant disregard for the lives of innocents and/or the opinion of any other nation who has proffered one, surely we should hold our breath and see what happens next?

    DT has his eye on the prize. Will he lose interest once he has it in his ghastly little hands?

    Remember the excitement of the Arab Spring? Remember what happened next?

    Let us hold our breath. Cross our fingers. Pray to our god, join hands in praying with others of another faith.

    Imagine that this glimmer of hope is a tiny candle flame struggling for life in a howling gale. Cup your hands around it. Protect it from the malevolent winds of hatred.
    And only sit back and bask in its glow once that flame burns brightly, with strength, flickering in the silence when the guns cease their unrelenting racket because peace really has prevailed.

  • Reasonable and Adequate

    Many moons ago we went to tribunal to force the county council into funding a place for our son at a local special school.

    Said placement was expensive but not eye watering. County argued that our soon needed to go to the local MLD school, arguing that the provision matched his needs.

    Unfortunately for county defined His Nib’s needs and as two levels below what they were and compounded their error by calling him by the wrong name not once, not twice, but three times in their paperwork.

    That said I do recall the county rep arguing that their legal responsibility was to make provision that meets a child’s needs not provide everything the parents want or the ‘best’. This is not unreasonable as long as the county assessment of needs is accurate.

    So when watching last night’s Panorama and listening to a mother justify the package she wanted her daughter to receive which included one to one tuition and horse therapy, one did wonder whether this could possibly get past the ‘good husbandry’ test.

    I have long said that early intervention (at a cost) is essential to reducing the bill as the child grows into adulthood.Local authorities tend to be fighting g fire with funding so think in terms of crisis in the here and now rather than the long term.

    So I see where mum was coming from when she said, they should have invested in her child earlier.

    However there has to be a limit. If the provision isn’t designated as specialist by a credible authority then you are expecting the county to fund a place at a private school. All children benefit from the smaller class sizes and better resourcing in the private sector.

    I am not convinced that they who shout the loudest should always get their way. But then I shouted – literally- very loudly indeed and it cost county a fortune. But the provision we got was 200 miles away, down the M4 and we broke our hearts sending him to the only place we could find that would both take him at all and be able to meet his needs.

    Therefore I remain ambivalent because education is strapped across the board and there is cavernous gap for students who fall between the mainstream and special school to tumble into, taking their families with them.

  • Polite but Firm

    Since when – I ask you – were there weight restrictions on baggage for trains?

    Not on British Rail I can tell you that.

    Not on EuroStar, I can also tell you that.

    But on ViaRail Canada they are as strict as Ryan Air (straight after they have reduced the size of carry on baggage, again).

    We did not encounter this problem when we boarded our train from Cornwall to Montreal, primarily because the conductor was only loading a handful of passengers and all the trains were delayed.

    But boy did they get the scales out in Montreal. And I mean literally.

    It did not help that BB had disappeared in pursuit of coffee.

    It did not help that McD’s lost BB’s order for coffee.

    It did not help that our case was overstuffed because we had stowed it in left luggage for the day.

    I was told to get rid of the weight.

    But for goodness sake, the rampant repack was mere redistribution of weight as I testily remarked to the lurking ViaRail bod. He had zero sympathy and adopted the polite but firm manner of Canadians whose natural disposition is friendly, but in this case he had a job to do. So I just moved the excess into random carrier bags and tried not to swear too loudly.

    By the time BB appeared, I was cross and dishevelled and very worried we were about to miss our train. As a railway professional himself, BB was flabbergasted that there was any maximum weight for luggage and would have paused to expostulate on this had I not been fizzing with panic and irritation, clearly about to explode.

    I handed him his backpack – now stuffed with his shoes – and we made a dash for the platform.

    I have since decided that someone has introduced a rule with a maximum weight of 50kg. This may be because transport companies want to save themselves thousands in work place injuries.

    But I am still cross.

  • Montreal: The Penny Drops

    It did indeed. But not in Montreal. Back in Blighty. Yesterday, to be exact.

    On day two in Montreal, we decided to take a hike up Mount Royal. This involved packing up and traipsing up to the mainline station to find left luggage. Montreal has a whole subterranean city so citizens can move about freely during the harsh winters and hot summers. Well, they need a better map is all I can say.

    After testy march up and down tunnels and escalators we stowed our stuff and found the train to Mount Royal. Which I may say is nowhere near the mount named ‘Royal’ itself but rather slap bang in the middle of a decidedly bohemian neighbourhood. I would have felt hip and happening were I 35 years younger. But I’m not. So I didn’t.

    Anyway, we eventually got to the park –can I say that digging up roads and cutting off pedestrian crossings is also a Montreal pass time – and hiked up the hill. Does it qualify as a ‘mount’? Probably, but possibly not in Mr Munroe’s book. On a warm day it was quite hard work.

    Anyway, what a view! I love a view. Right across the city, with the St Lawrence snaking sluggishly in the distance. We admired said view from all angles and had a beverage and sandwich in the pavilion at the top.

    Lots of people were up there with us. The cynic in me (for which read deeply sanctimonious if knackered scaler of numerous hillocks including Snowden and Kinder Scout) thinks they might have taken the bus. But I am uncharitable.

    But I would also add that I think it is lovely seeing families of all descriptions out and about enjoying the sights and sounds of a new city, meeting friends and generally having a good time.

    Ahhh yes, back to the dropped penny; Mount Royal translates to Mont Real. Isn’t that clever?!

  • Montreal: The Mighty St Lawrence

    Montreal is a delightful, modern city with lots of skyscrapers downtown and a decidedly cosmopolitan vibe. We stayed in an aparthotel with a washing machine (hurrah). We got there late and every shop and restaurant we tried was shutting up shop for the night. Pizza it was and jolly nice it was too.

    Then we discovered there was a nightclub next door. Now I am all for people having fun so tolerated one night of thump, thump, thump… but on a Sunday. FFS?!

    Our day for exploring Montreal was a Sunday, so we strolled through the old town admiring the architecture and reading the various explanatory plaques. I had realised by this point that my carefully purchased guidebook was not in my bag but still on my bedroom windowsill. I hate being without a guidebook.

    What an interesting place Montreal all is. Particularly because of its position on the St Lawrence where it played a significant role in opening up the Canadian interior to European settlers through trade.

    If you had asked me as a teenager, or even as a history student, whether I would find the ins and outs of dredging marjor arterial rivers and building mechanisms to divert ice flows fascinating, I would have scoffed (more interested in the murderous tendencies of your average Roman senator or Tudor monarch than anything socio-economic).

    But it was soooo interesting. Particularly as the river flowed past in stately grace with mighty power (more on the power of this river to follow). It was particularly interesting to Best Beloved as his grandfather had sailed up the St Lawrence when he emigrated to Canada prior to the Great War.

    As with many metropolitan cities there were Sunday demonstrations including a Quebec separatist gathering and Pro-Palestinian march past. This kind of sums up the city. At once parochial and at the same time international as Canada has absorbed numerous diaspora for several hundred years.