Wild camping, science fiction, and the NHS

Ben has completed another wild camping trip in the Brecon Beacons. He is well prepared, but it looks cold and damp and very wild indeed. I don't think he met many people at the top.

Ben wet and wild camping on Pen Y Fan

On Thursday, the Science Museum in London held a late-night opening, with a special session on Science Fiction. Edwin and Andre had bought tickets, so we met up in South Kensington after Edwin finished work. The special exibition was old out, so having advance tickets enabled us to walk in the rain past a long damp queue to enter through a VIP entry. The display was cleverly arranged from the vantage of an alien visiting Earth, and noting how SF inspired new ideas and inventions, or simply encouraged youngsters to venture into science. An auxiliary hands-on exhibition focussed on the role of technology in supporting new science. Edwin tried his hand at welding until another hand (mine!) jerked his elbow, provoking an ungentlemanly response. Andre and I just kept laughing.

I was always inspired by the steam hall, under the heading 'Power', with the sight of so much ingenuity of invention, and the huge flywheels and connecting rods bringing raw power into the world from awesome engineering ability. Yet now I am reminded of T.S. Eliot, "In my beginning is my end.", or my own poem, Emergent Power from Girders in the Sand: 'O Power, emergent from the mind of man, /  Existing by our blocks of tumbling thought,  / Yet powerful as God of the Koran / Or Christian deity from Yahweh wrought;...', for surely we can trace the destruction of species and habitat to those grim furnaces of coal.  

Saturday, coronation day, brought the boys back to us to enjoy the many tempting nibbles Ann had set out. I well remember seeing, on a tiny black and white set at a neighbour's house, the previous coronation of H.M. Queen Elizabeth. There was then a magesterial, almost magical, dignity to the process, where QEII looked aloof yet regal. I always held that she had a deep intelligence and understanding of people. The new incumbant looks gormless and always has; he is a vague, uninspiring figure whose face has a vacant expression with no evident charisma or inspirational drive. Neither Ann nor I are arch royalists, but my defensive argument is, it is a better system than the corrupt money-driven system of America, better than the recurring vicious dictatorships of Russia, and much better than anarchy or civil war. Our monarch still rules by popular consent, by and large, although in Britain it would take a fearsome revolution to ever attempt to dispose of it.

Ann continues to be monitored weekly now at Addenbrookes, pending her cardioversion and eventual ablation therapy at Papworth, although no one knows how long the wait for these procedures may be. Monitoring outpatient drug therapy, heart rate, ECGs, and titrating drug doses up or down were once all done by the GP. I enjoyed this type of work, for it was simple and rewarding, with the hospital consultant always in the background if more aggressive measures were needed. Now, the GP is nowhere to be seen. They don't even give routine injections at the surgery any more; I had to go to our local chemist for my Covid jab, and the pharmacist even monitors blood pressures. The simplest method of improving the health service would be to move all GP surgeries to help run the A&E departments; these seem to be little more than glorified GP surgeries these days. 

We have just watched a newly released film about our Health Service, adapted from a stage play by Alan Bennett, called Allelujah. It is a depressing reminder of how good local cottage hospitals were, and what a loss now most of them have gone. They can never be replaced.