Is it summer yet...

I don’t want to say it too loudly or too optimistically…but I think summer might have arrived.

The sun was shining this morning and it stayed out all day. Not only that the breeze that has up until today been a  bit on the cool side, has lost its chill.

I’m going to reserve judgment though, just in case.

We had promised a friend that we would help him with his house move today so we caught the train down to Sydenham, just one stop away.

It was more unpacking than moving boxes and furniture. A small local moving company did the heavy work of getting his belongings from one flat to another. He didn’t move far really; just from one side ot the train line to the other. Not only that he is now a tad closer to the train line too.

The entire flat had had a repaint and looked good. Interestingly the paint job stopped just short of the grime on top of the high kitchen cupboards The Man is great, he got stuck with heavy duty cleaner and elbow grease. Now our friend’s precious pieces of china won’t get grubby from being up there.

This weekend a festival has been going on at Crystal Palace and the triangle was buzzing by the time we got back in the early afternoon. Across the road from us in a car park area striped stalls had appeared.

We walked between them on our way to do a bit of shopping a the local supermarket and stopped for a while to browse among the stalls and listen to a couple of talented female signers.

Turned out nice again...

I’ve been wanting to go to one of the big libraries to look  at an atlas of Parish Boundaries, so after a leisurely start, and getting all the washing and drying done , we had a quick bite of lunch and went out.

At the library I snapped a few pictures of the appropriate pages and I was done 

Next stop British Museum to see and exhibition called Pompeii and Herculaneum.On the way  we walked past parts of the old Roman City wall

By the time we got to the museum it had turned into a lovely summer day so we thought that there might not be too much of a crowd to see the exhibition. We were wrong. With an hour or so before out timed entry we had a walk around and look at some of the other exhibits.

The museum is an amazing place. I love the way they have roofed the Great Court. At one stage it must have been open to the elements. Now though there is an exhibition space in the centre.

A few years ago we went a similar exhibition that was on at Te Papa, the Wellington museum. We were especially moved by the body casts if a couple of the victims and one of a dog. Poor creature it had no hope of escape because it was chained up. 

 

Unfortunately we found this current exhibition a bit of a let down . OK there were a lot of exhibits, and the though the commentary said that they were trying to parallel the lives of the inhabitants of the doomed cities and our modern lives there didn’t seem to be much humanity about it.

Wild life in the garden...

Yup that’s right here we are again at the end of another week.

The weeks are flying by and we are on the countdown to Christmas. I know it seems way too early to be even saying the word.

One of the things I like to do when we get in each evening is to watch the wildlife down in our backyard. Well I call it our backyard but it belongs to the building and is cared for by contractors so all we need do is admire it, which we do.

Last summer we were entertained by the antics of four foxes play and mock fight, often screaming as they chased each other astound the trees.

Then there are the crows, they are such ugly and menacing looking birds. We throw food scraps out onto the back lawn and we were initially surprised to see these large birds burying food scraps. I doubt that much would be left if the birds came looking for their booty. I think it would either rot away or the wily foxes might sniff it out.

This summer we have only seen two foxes and one of those looked like it had hurt one of its front paws as for a few weeks it wasn’t walking it. When we saw in earlier in the week it was walking on it but with a bit of a limp.

There is also small group of pigeons, hmmm Hey Mr Google what do you call a group of these cooing feathered critters? A flock, or flight, or even a kit.

Occasionally we see a few blackbirds, but no thrushes and certainly no sparrows.With the help of a CD of birdcalls I think I can hear robins and blue tits. 

Then yesterday after The Man threw out some leftovers we spotted a largish birth with bright blue patches. Aha I thought and scramble for the bird ID book and sure enough it was Jay. The very first one I’ve seen.

Just my view...

Yesterday I had some sad news from my cousin back in New Zealand. Her mum, my aunt, who would have been 100 at the end of the year, had passes away. I always thought she would live forever.

One time when I visited her several years ago she said she was making soup ‘for the old lady across the road’. Said old lady was several years younger than my aunt.

She had a great life, and was much loved and cared for by her family, and importantly she hung to most of her marbles until the very end.

I hope I have inherited some of the same genes that she had.

The Man pointed out this headline in the local evening paper The Man and I have said to one another after reading similar articles that if either of us become get sick we would be off home like a robbers dog.

A woman left to bleed for 20 hours at an NHS hospital because staff did not have the time or equipment to treat her discharged herself and went private in desperation.

 

This is an article in the same paper 

One of London’s biggest hospitals is displaying a nurse’s name above each patient’s bed to show who is responsible for their care.

University College London Hospital, in Bloomsbury, writes the name of the nurse looking after each patient on its 1,107 beds, as well as the name by which each patient wishes to be addressed. The idea that patients be given a “named nurse” responsible for co-ordinating every aspect of their care was among recommendations made by the Francis. She said: “We want to make sure patients know who is looking after them and ensure that nurses know how patients would like to be addressed.”

Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt, in a speech at UCLH last week, said he wanted every NHS hospital to adopt the named nurse system. He said: “The buck always needs to stop with someone. And the patient has every right to know who that is”Howard Catton, head of policy at the Royal College of Nursing, said: “Trusts have got to have the right numbers of staff to be able to ensure that the named nurse concept is meaningful.

Hmm sounds a lot like primary nursing care, hang on it is the same as primary nursing care which is what has been practiced in New Zealand hospitals for years

Primary nursing has been described as “the assigned, fixed, visible accountability for

24hour care by one registered nurse for a group of patients throughout their hospital

stay”. It entails assigning one nominated registered nurse as the „primary nurse‟ who develops a plan of care for individual patients. The „associate nurse‟ continues this plan when the primary nurse is not on duty. The associate nurse or nurses (as invariably, due to the 24 hour nature of required care more than two nurses are needed), are not charged with the responsibility of developing major changes to the plan of care unless the clinical

Condition of the patient requires this I

This had been the model of nursing care since the early 1980s