I am saddened, cheesed off and worried to find my GP has retired. It wasn’t the patients, I’m told, it was NHS bureaucracy that drove him onto the golf course.

It takes an age to build a rapport with your first port of call for medical assistance. Explaining ailments from scratch to a stranger in a one-disease-per-ten-minute-slot appointment doesn’t work for me. 

The day I discovered the grim news the surgery’s first available appointment was just under four weeks away,  worse than useless. If there’s something wrong with you you’ll either recover, live with it or end up clogging A&E.

I’ve had to make a few medical visits as age and a racy lifestyle takes its toll. With a few exceptions the treatment has been wonderful but the system is creaking more than I am.

The only solution seems to be to book a GP appointment every week and cancel the ones you don’t need. 

I don’t think money is the sole solution here. Somehow, the ethos has changed. As with some other professions, doctoring seems to be mutating from a vocation into a beancounter-controlled job. 

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Two weeks after my flu jab I was hit by a nasty virus – joints aching, muscles like overcooked spaghetti, noxious fluids exploding from every orifice. You forget how illness feels till it hits.

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This is my effort at the popular #tetrischallenge, all the essentials for a crime and thriller writer – tablet, keyboard, mobile, notebooks, pens, loads of strong coffee and a plentiful supply of Lotus Biscoff.

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Delighted to hear from an enthusiastic reader that she was tucked up in bed with Danny Lancaster by 9.30pm on Wednesday and having a great time.

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The writing project is putting up a fight. That makes for a worrying time but, hopefully, a constructive one. Past experience indicates the story is trying to spread its wings outside the plotting and planning straightjacket I’ve squeezed it into.

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Toddler Grandson’s rapidly-expanding vocabulary now includes ‘cheers!’ He clinks his water bottle enthusiastically with tea and coffee cups, beers, wine glasses. At Sunday lunch he tried it with a gravy boat.

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Don’t forget! The ebook of my first Danny Lancaster crime thriller – THE WRECK OF THE MARGHERITA – is free to download here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B007OVUG6Q. The other six are just 99p/99c each. Enjoy! – www.billtodd.co.uk

 

 

©BILLTODD