Joe asks 'Is it me or what?'

Needs Help Soon

In some ways, the UK's NHS is a great success. You only have to read stories of how people in the USA are treated when they don't have private healthcare to know that a national system relying on taxation is fairer and less expensive. However, the current model seems unsustainable (partly because it was never properly funded from the start and always relies on current tax income). As with many system it follows the 80/20 rule in many ways. Twenty per cent of the users use eighty per cent of the resources.

Whatever its faults it's usually the case that the failings are systemic rather than being down to individual incompetence or apathy but my recent experiences had me doubting that somewhat.

It started early in February with a sore throat. Nothing too bad but it gradually got worse, I had a hacking dry cough that was preventing me from sleeping, and was still around after four weeks so I contacted my local surgery via an online system. I was told that an appointment wasn't necessary because a local pharmacy could assist me using a scheme called Pharmacy First - just ask for a Sore Throat consultation. This scheme was introduced recently to try and take some of the pressure off GPs and I was happy to try it although I had my doubts. I first spoke to someone at my surgery and asked which pharmacies in the area were scheme members. They didn't know but thought it was all of them. I wasn't about to wander from one to another so started by ringing in advance. The first was Boots, my nearest chemist. They told me their system was down and they couldn't help. The next one I tried said the person with the login details was on leave so they couldn't help either. The third one I tried said the pharmacist was busy but could I call back in an hour? This was more promising and I called back and was told to come in between two and three o'clock and they could help.

I walked to the pharmacy later that day, after phoning again to make sure they were ready for me. My coughing was so bad I could hardly drive and parking's not great in town so I thought I could manage a walk of about a mile. When I got there I had to wait for nearly thirty minutes only to be told that their system was now down and they couldn't help. Apparently, they hadn't tried to log on for a while and didn't realise it was out of order. At this point, I'm afraid I lost my temper with them and told them what I thought of their professionalism.

I next tried a walk-in centre that told me I could have an appointment in three hours but couldn't leave the centre in the meantime. I wasn't prepared to sit in a waiting room for that long but they suggested I try dialling 111 which is the non-emergency health number. Surprisingly, I got through quickly and after detailing my symptoms was told they would contact my local surgery and request a throat swab among other things. I should hear back within twenty-four hours.

As you may have guessed I never heard back and a few days later I tried my local surgery again. This time they told me to come in immediately and I left with a prescription for antibiotics as well as some heavy-duty painkillers. These were needed as I had pulled several rib muscles after a particularly violent coughing fit experienced during my wasted afternoon hunting a competent pharmacist.

After a couple of days the sore throat and cough began to calm down and after five days was barely noticeable. So it seems an earlier intervention would have saved many sleepless nights and some excruciating pain.

Not the end of matters though. Once the course of antibiotics had finished the cough started to return. I immediately contacted the surgery and got an appointment that morning. This time I had blood taken for tests (all negative) and was told to expect a chest X-ray appointment. I'm still waiting for that but at the moment the cough is just a nuisance and my rib muscles have almost recovered.

In the end, I took three days off work one of which was time spent seeing various health workers and two which were because I couldn't attend calls or work properly due to the combination of losing my voice and constant, painful coughing.

I'm not sure what the lessons learned should be on this. I even sympathise somewhat with the pharmacy for being too overworked to have time to test their system before booking an appointment. I'm sure everyone was trying their best and in my case, it was a prolonged and painful experience but that's all. It's easy to see how a sequence of relatively minor cock-ups could result in something a lot worse.

Lost in Translation

I learned a lot from the Ukrainian family that stayed with us for a year before they found a place of their own. While they were here, I tried to master some basic Ukrainian and found it difficult. I have a reasonable knowledge of the major Romance languages and some modern Greek and, although I can't claim to be fluent, I can cope with simple situations such as are experienced when travelling abroad - booking restaurants, organising travel, explaining to someone that my wife has lost her earrings/shopping/tickets etc.

But Ukrainian was a challenge with its large alphabet (33 characters) as well as:

• sound groups that don't exist in English such as sht, dv and vsh
• single letter words that are just consonants such as з [z] - with and в [v] - in
• a case system whereby words change depending on what function they perform. Latin is renowned for this feature (and it still exists in other languages such as Russian and German) but it has withered away in English although it can still be seen in such things as pronouns - I love you but you love me
• strange treatments (to me anyway) of plurals

[Skip to next paragraph if you wish] This involves using a different form of a noun if it follows one, two to four or, and this is the strange part, five or more. This would be like English having one year, two years, five yearz (sic). But it seems more complicated than that. The form of the noun depends on the unit value in a large number so twenty-one year, twenty-two years, twenty-five yearz (sic).

Once you've got over the different script then many words, which at first look horrifying, are just transliterations of fairly common words in English and other European languages - the following are all pronounced similarly to their English equivalent:

• Таксі - Taxi
• Метро  - Metro
• Супермаркет - Supermarket
• Ресторан  - Restaurant
• Кафе  - Cafe

The language also has some interesting quirks such as little use of the present tense of to be. No I am, you are etc. Instead the verb is just left out:

• I am tired - я втомився - literally I tired
• Where is Dad? - Де тато? - literally Where Dad?

Our guests struggled with English but with the help of Google translate, some dubious charades and a lot of pointing, we managed to get by. My most memorable misunderstanding was one morning when I was greeted with the sentence, "I have done the cathedral". After a bit of confusion, I realised that the Ukrainian for cathedral (собор) and dogs (собаки) sound vaguely similar and Google had got it wrong. She was trying to tell me she had fed the dogs.

Another cultural awakening was the amount of cooking they did, especially for basics. That, of course, may have been a family trait rather than a Ukrainian one but they did spend a lot more time in the kitchen using the oven and the hob. When they first arrived they were presented with a box of groceries which included a few cans of soup. They asked me what they were and almost laughed when I explained. They always made soups from scratch and had never seen tinned soup before.

One pleasant surprise was Borscht. I always thought of this was that it was a vegetable soup with beetroot as a primary ingredient. This may be the case in Russia but for them, it was a more substantial concoction, almost a stew, and, to my vegetarian wife's regret, usually came with big lumps of pork.

More insights in a later post but enough for now :)

Red Tape Still Rules

Last year my wife and I decided to share our house with Ukrainian refugees.

Since our children have now left home we decided we had room and we felt we should help those whom an unhinged Putin had unjustly attacked.

After a couple of false starts, not everyone wanted to move to Devon and be isolated from their countrymen, we ended up sponsoring a married couple with a young girl. The process was not straightforward. I spent some five hours one evening filling out application forms for them which was a bit of a struggle given their English was quite poor and my Ukrainian non-existent.

There were also some strange questions, especially for a one-year-old girl, such as previous addresses etc.

It took a few weeks and many interactions with the powers that be for their visas to be issued and I got my local MP, Ben Bradshaw, involved because two of the visas were relatively quick but issuing the third dragged on. Eventually, they booked their flights from Poland, after travelling by road and rail from their home town, and my wife met them at Bristol airport.

We couldn't have asked for better guests. They were clean and constantly tidied up, helped feed our dogs and tried to be as inconspicuous as possible (except for using the kitchen). Since they moved out I've had to remember how to unload the dishwasher :)

They both found work quite quickly and, after a year with us, decided to rent a house of their own in Exeter which they have now been in for a few months. I have quite a few stories to tell about the meeting of two different cultures and these will appear in future posts. 

So what were the pros and cons?

On the plus side:

• We felt we had done something worthwhile
• We could go away overnight and have someone trustworthy mind the house and feed the dogs
• I learned a bit of Ukrainian and quite a bit more about their culture
• They kept the house tidy
• I still get the odd free manicure (she has her own nail treatment business in central Exeter)

Negatives:

• Utility bills rose steeply - but we had a contribution from the council that mainly covered this
• They tended to monopolise the kitchen as they cooked a lot more than we do
• Their young daughter could be noisy but that was good practice for when our granddaughter appeared last November :)

I will be expanding on some of those topics, including what I discovered about soup, in future posts but now to the focus of this post - red tape. Last October the family wanted to invite her parents over for a couple of weeks at Christmas. This involved applying for a travel visa and that was the problem. Under the Homes for Ukraine scheme that they had used their passports were scanned and verified using an app on their smartphones. There was no need to leave their home until they needed to travel. It was a bit of a faff, especially with the language barrier, but it all got done eventually.

With a travel visa, this wasn't possible. Due to old legislation, each traveller had to present themselves to the visa processing centre and have their documents inspected manually. This would have meant a 300-mile journey to Kyiv, through a war-torn country, for two people not in the first flush of youth. They weren't prepared to risk this and all looked hopeless until someone suggested they also apply to the Homes for Ukraine scheme. This went through without a hitch!

So they came over in December and spent an enjoyable couple of weeks with their daughter and her husband. They could legally have stayed but returned to Ukraine as planned.

I thought this country was trying to discourage immigration but due to being slow to take up new technology, in this case a document scanning app, they are encouraging people to come and stay even when they don't want to.

Men Are From Earth, Women Are From Earth

You may remember a book titled Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus, which purported to explain the psychological differences of the sexes by positing that they are two separate species with different social customs and views.

I don't think we need to go that far and I've always considered myself a gender equalist but there are differences and one reared its head recently relating to success.

My wife and I enjoy rugby and go to most home games at Exeter and, pre-Covid, many away games. She is the bigger fan and understands the game much more than I do. I enjoy going out - a few drinks - but we both make small wagers on the game to add a little interest.

One of our common bets is on the try-scorers. We both pick two or three players we think will score. This recently led to one of our infrequent arguments because she refused to tell me whom she had bet on - which meant we usually ended up picking different players.

I took this in a negative way - she didn't want to share her success and, instead of us both cheering on the same person, would rather she collected her winnings and I lost my money. I rather spitefully described it as it's not enough that you succeed, everyone else must fail. That was my take on it at least, but hers was completely different - whether the difference was because of gender or simply that we are two different people I don't know.

So what was her rationale for wanting us to not choose the same scorers? She explained that she wanted to maximise our chances of winning something and the more players we picked the better that possibility. If we both picked the same players we lessened our chances of winning albeit that if we did pick a winner the reward would be greater.

So there you have it - I completely misinterpreted her motives and felt like a fool. Whether you think that maximising the chances of reward is more important than having a shared goal is your decision. I would be interested to know whether it is a gender-based division.

Finally, my local team, Exeter Chiefs, have not been having the best season so far any tries would be a bonus - whether we predict the scorer or not.

 

Coffee Break

It's been a long time since my last post. It all seemed to be going well when I wrote Survivor Guilt.

 

I was working entirely from home rather than half and half and I had Fridays off as my firm moved to a four-day week. Like many others, I had such plans: improve my foreign languages; crack on with the novel I have started three times and am yet to finish the first chapter; all those home improvements. Out of these, the last has had the most success but even that has been restricted to organising rather than doing.

 

One of the reasons for so few posts is that most of mine are about incidents in life and not going out much for eighteen months puts a damper on that but I also have an interest in language and this post was spurred on as I queued for coffee after taking our dogs for a walk (to be fair my wife takes them and I provide moral support and buy the refreshments afterwards).

 

As I was waiting to be served I noticed their sign read Cappucino. I have found out after many false starts that no one wants their spelling mistakes pointed out, it should be Cappuccino (mnemonic think two CuPs of coffee to match the two central Ps and Cs).

 

However, what started me wondering was that I knew there is a type of monkey called a Capuchin and I knew there was a religious order called the Capuchins

- so how were these three related and which came first?

 

The word cappuccio meant a hooded cape of a type favoured by monks and worn by many orders including the Camaldolese. The diminutive, meaning a small-hooded cape, is cappuccino.

The actual Capuchin friars were founded as a splinter faction of The Franciscans in 1525 when Matteo da Bascio and others decided that the Franciscans, founded over three hundred years previously by Francis of Assisi, had strayed too far from their founder's way especially in matters of simplicity and discipline. They were given shelter by the Camaldolese and started to wear the same garments and took their popular name from the hooded cape.

 

Next came the monkeys which inhabit south and central America. They were named after the friars because of their colouring. I couldn't find out exactly when the monkeys were named but it appears to be sometime after their discovery (by Europeans that is...) in the early sixteenth century given that the Capuchin friars weren't well-known until later.

 

Finally comes the coffee drink. It was also named after the friars in the seventeenth century but was a different drink from one we know today. It took a couple of hundred years, at least, to settle down into what you will get when you order one now. Whether or not the idea of the monkey also influenced the name is not known for sure but it seems likely.

 

 

So now you know - to sum up, it was Capuchin friars, Capuchin Monkeys and then the coffee and don't forget - it's caPPuCCino.

Survivor Guilt

May you live in interesting times is traditionally a Chinese expression of ill will. While there is disagreement whether it is actually of Chinese origin (most sources say not) we certainly are living in them - see the somewhat humorous note on the door of my local.

The lockdown measures are certainly causing problems in many areas, social and economic, but it seems that any relaxation at this stage would increase the number of lives lost to Covid-19. Perhaps we are reaching the point where people are prepared to accept that?

I don't like siding with the government as I think their motives are questionable but while certain sectors are clamouring for reducing the strictures there will then be blame from others when people die as a result. It seems that Boris can't offer a solution amenable to all until an effective vaccine and treatment are available and that seems a long way off.

The problem is I'm suffering from survivor guilt. I realise how lots of people are struggling both health and wealth wise and empathise with people in dangerous domestic situations.

The trouble is I'm rather enjoying lockdown.

Yes, there's job insecurity: if lockdown isn't eased soon it's difficult to see how many businesses will survive and nearly all will have to change dramatically to continue at all. At 57 I don't fancy looking for a new job in the ensuing debacle. And yes, I miss socialising especially restaurant meals with friends and family but on the other hand, there's so many things to like.

For one thing, I am writing my first post in ages due to the fact that things are less hectic.

Some of the plus points:
* A break from travelling between Exeter and London every week to work and the organisation needed to manage tickets booked months ahead, rented flat etc.
* More free time - I'm now on a four-day week along with most of my colleagues and although rugby is off the cards and bridge is now wholly online (which isn't the same) I am reading more and delighted to start some of the more serious books such as a biography of Leonardo Da Vinci by Walter Isaacson that was a present from nearly two years ago. I'm currently getting through about three fiction books per week. I've always been a big consumer of podcasts when travelling and, while there's less travel, I still listen to these when exercising or just completing chores. They are a combination of tech, language (Something Rhymes With Purple), economics (Freakonomics) and radio shows via the BBC Sounds app (Old Harry's Game with Andy Hamilton is my current choice for comedy)
* Family time: I am currently ensconced in Exeter with my wife, son and girlfriend (his, not mine). It's been a nice balance of community versus personal space. There's enough room to spend time on one's own as well as enough to form a quorum for games and activities
* Nature's recovery: it's amazing how quickly nature seems to be regaining ground (both literally and metaphorically). Cleaner water in rivers, less pollution over major cities, wildlife flourishing etc. If that can start happening after such a short time then surely we can work out a way to continue the good work when the pandemic subsides?
* Appreciation of key workers: especially health staff. Let's hope that continues when it's over and manifests itself in something more tangible than applause every Thursday
* Acts of kindness: many examples from people sponsoring Colonel Tom Moore to the tune of about £32m to neighbourhood delivery services run by volunteers (I won't go on about why the NHS needs to be publicly financed when it already is paid for by tax)
* Finally a silly one - not worrying I'll run out of phone charge :)

So should I feel guilty that so far nothing bad has happened to me while others struggle - or do I just make the most of a bad situation?

Josef K. Meets Flybe

I work the first part of the week in London and from home in Exeter otherwise. I used to travel by rail but it meant leaving on a Sunday evening as there isn't a way to arrive in the office by nine o'clock. So now I take advantage of Flybe's relatively new service between Exeter and London City Airport that leaves about six-thirty and gets me by eight-thirty if all goes well. And it normally does go well; the majority of cases where I've been delayed have been due to either a strike by French air traffic control or poor weather, and train journeys suffer from similar problems.

However, Flybe's customer service when things do go wrong can be very frustrating. Little can be done online and the operators have very little power to do anything other than quote the company's policy manual. I once spent three months trying to get credited with some AvIos points (air miles) that I hadn't received because of a fault with their system. I have an audit trail of seven phone calls and even more emails detailing my efforts.

Then take the following which occurred recently...

I normally get up shortly after five when I'm flying and reach the airport around six but just after four, I received a text from Flybe saying my flight was delayed by 75 minutes. Normally I would just have got up and gone anyway but that morning I had a meeting that I couldn't miss. I could attend by video link but couldn't afford to be in transit and I probably would have been if the plane took off over an hour late. So I decided to get the train later in the day and told my wife, who takes me to the airport, that she could have an extra hour or so in bed.

About forty-five minutes later I got another text. The plane was back on schedule but it was too late for me to change my mind. For one thing, my lift was fast asleep and for another, I had now told everyone that I was attending by video and, more importantly, I had booked a train ticket.

So I attended my meeting, caught the train and then the next day tried to check-in for my return flight. Now I'm not really claiming to be as unfairly treated as Josef K. in Kafka's novel but it did seem that I was in a horrible situation through no fault of my own.

Firstly, once you have missed the outward part of the journey you can't check-in online, you have to call them. That's when the fun really started.

Me: I'd like to check-in for reference XXXXX

Operator: I'm sorry, that journey has been cancelled as you didn't turn up for the outward flight.

Me: Well that was hardly my fault but even so if I pay for a return ticket I still expect the return part to be honoured.

FO: We may not have any seats left.

ME: Okay, then please refund my money.

FO: We can't do that, it's a non-refundable ticket.

Me: Non-refundable means I can't initiate a refund, not that I can't get one if you won't let me travel.

FO: I will check availability... we do have a seat would you like it?

Me: Yes, please.

FO: Okay, there's no charge but next time please tell us before you fly that you won't be taking the outward flight.

Me: Fine, how do I do that - online?

FO: No, you need to phone in.

Me: And when do you open?

FO: 08:00.

Me: So how do I tell you when the flight leaves at 06:30?

FO: Ummm, well tell us as soon as you can.

Me: That's what this call is...

The operator then tells me he will email me the new details and then I can check-in online - but it's not over yet.

The next day, the day of travel, I receive an email asking me to complete a survey on the quality of their customer support. After I've calmed down I realise I never received the email following the previous day's call and I still haven't checked-in. I try again online but no, it's another phone call.

I explain the situation and am told that they are having problems with emails (but failing to explain how I got the unimportant one) but eventually it's all sorted and I log in online print my boarding pass.

I am still inwardly composing a letter of complaint about their policies when I see a tweet that there are no trains from Paddington due to power lines being damaged; so a good job I didn't get that refund :)

While I'm ranting about Flybe I might as well mention their mobile app that used to let you check-in and download a boarding pass. Then they announced an improvement to their services and now you can't do either, you just get shunted to their website which is more difficult to use from a phone. They have also shut the machines at the airport so you can't get a boarding pass that way. Not sure how this counts as an improvement.

Update on 22 October 2018: I received the confirmation email regarding my flight on the 17th :)

So British

I did tweet about this but I feel it's worth repeating.

I was witness to a terribly British conversation in my local shop.

Shopkeeper: I'm sorry, I can't serve you, you've been banned.
Bloke: That was ages ago.
S: It was a lifetime ban.
B: I know, but I thought it had ended.
S: No.
B: I'm so sorry, I didn't realise, goodbye.
S: Goodbye.

I'm not sure what grabbed my attention, the idea of a lifetime ban ending pre-mortem or the apologetic finale - I had half expected a fight to break out.

Worth Its Salt

I have a deep interest in language, how it developed, the origins of words, the relationships between the world's many tongues. I don't often write on the subject but felt that once wouldn't hurt.

The world's languages are grouped into families, the theory being that the languages of one family arose from a common ancestor. Many of the Western European ones fall under the Indo-European group, this includes Latin and its descendants, the Romance languages, as well as the Germanic and Scandinavian ones (Finnish being an exception).

Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is believed to have been spoken around four to seven thousand years ago, there is no literary record and it has been reconstructed from its descendants.

The PIE word for salt was *sal. (The asterisk is used in linguistics to denote a form that has been assumed as there is no actual written record.) The reason for this post is that I was struck the other day by how many words in English derive from this rather humble noun.

The Latin derivation was sal, the Greek equivalent was hal. This follows standard practice, many words in Latin beginning with S started with H in Greek (this is somewhat simplified as it was more of a breathy sound at the start of a word than a traditional English H as in house). For example, the Latin for six was sex as in sextuplets but in Greek we have hex as in hexagon.

But back to salt - here are some of the words we use to today that derive from the Latin sal or the Greek hal:

• Salary: from the Latin salarius, an amount soldiers were paid which literally meant salt money, possibly slang in the way beer tokens is used jocularly for money today
• Halogens: from the Greek meaning salt generator - a group in the periodic table including chlorine and fluorine that produce salts, common salt being the one produced when sodium and chlorine combine
• Salad: from Latin salata meaning salted and used in the expression herba salata meaning salted vegetables
• Sauce/salsa: again from Latin meaning salted or spicy in the sense of making food salty, salsa means sauce in Spanish and the dance is named after that for being metaphorically saucy
• Sausage: salted meat, the root is more clearly seen in salami and also is part of the French stew of spiced meats called salmagundi
• Saltpetre/saltpeter: potassium nitrate, one of the components of gunpowder, it looks like salt encrusted rock (peter)
• Silt: arrived via Scandinavian and/or Germanic languages meaning sediment deposited by salt water
• Souse: to pickle something, via Germanic languages, by extension meaning drunk

So there you are, next time you tuck into a sausage, a salad or add some sauce, remember it all started with sal.

Breakfast Is Served

I stay in hotels quite a lot, both for business travel and when I'm playing at a bridge event. I usually have the traditional breakfast, i.e. the full English, and am quite critical of the hotel if they fail to come up to my standards. So for all you hotel managers out their, if you want to keep on my good side here's how you are marked.

1. Firstly there's the process of being seated, I don't expect to be kept waiting in a queue if I have already booked in for breakfast, nor do I want someone telling me I am not on the list. I realise there are peaks and troughs with people arriving but don't keep the whole queue waiting because one person has forgotten their room number.
2. Obviously, the table should be clean and I like to be offered tea or coffee shortly after arriving, a choice of teas is welcome, woe betide you if you don't have my favourite (Earl Grey). Toast is also better from the kitchen rather than those machines that are invariably set to loop around once for underdone, twice for burnt. I also expect a choice of breads not just white sliced.
3. A good selection of cold drinks and, for those who procure the glasses, please don't scour the internet for the tiniest vessels available just because you think people will drink less. I've seen larger shot glasses than what some hotels have on offer. (Pro tip: keep a pint glass from the bar when you retire for the evening, it's useful for those hangover preventing water drinks at bedtime and you get proper volume of fruit juice.)
4. A good choice of cold items, cereals, fruit, yoghurts, cheese, pastries etc. I'm not a great devourer of these but the good lady wife is.
5. For the main event, I expect heated plates, they don't have to be too hot to handle but at least not cold, a good choice of traditional foods, black pudding being a particular favourite but at least sausages, bacon, beans, tomato, mushrooms and a form of potato, usually hash browns. I personally don't eat eggs but there should at least be a choice of fried and scrambled. Bonus marks for more unusual items such as red pudding or choices of sausages.
6. The hot food should also be relatively fresh, I don't want something that's sat under the heat lamp for hours. Nor do I expect to be greeted by a plate with one miserable sausage on offer and have to hunt for staff to replenish it.
7. Friendly staff, I'm sorry you're working at this time on a weekend but that's not my fault.

A good establishment should be scoring at least 7 out of 10 although a couple I stayed at recently only got about 5. The best Breakfast I have had in the UK was at the Hilton in Paddington which scored 9+. It was expensive though, this was a few years back and even then it cost about £25. If you happen to be in Islington and fancy a satisfying meal that's great value for money then you can't beat the Hope Workers' Cafe on the Holloway Road. It's good for lunch too!

Bon appétit!