Had a long conversation with the brother in law the other day. Very long. All the way to Merthyr Tydfil and back whilst we shared the driving. He’s a surgeon. And when we’d solved several world crises and, more importantly, sorted out football and cars, we spoke of the NHS. Where he’s worked for 40 years and where I went once to get a thorn removed from my foot. So we have a wealth of experience between us. And we came to the joint, unanimous and collective decision that: it’s fucked. Totally. Not that we don’t want it, we both do, from opposite sides of the bed. But that you can throw all the money you want at it (you listening, Kier Starmer???) but it still won’t work until its been knocked down and restructured. Not the hospitals, that would be silly, but the corporation. The monster organisation. However, paying KPMG or Deloittes 5 billion quid to work out a restructuring plan which would be efficient, economical and maximise resources, would never be seen as a ‘vote winner’. When Daryl Johnson from Barnsley has been waiting 14 years to get his hernia mended and it keeps getting cancelled because the Up North NHS Trust has run out of money. Thus the institution of National Elf remains in a state of total fuckage.

But when you’re so fucking ill that you’re one computer lead (to your kidneys, maybe) away from dying, the NHS comes into its own and is precisely the only place where you’ll stay alive. As the Bee Gees said. There’s no waiting list within the ICU. Nor consideration for funds. Its a little island of efficiency in a world of chaos.

The care my brother has received at the hospital is simply wonderful. Not the doctors, they’re fine, but other than saving his life twice (possibly three times, you tend to lose count), they’re fleeting actors on the stage of Richard Conway. It’s the nurses. Who are with him 24 hours a day. They tend him, wash him, turn him and upgrade his computer system three times a day. They check that the 73 leads and hoses currently plugged in are clean, safe and secure. They spend a lot of time watching his ‘server’. The main computer which shows how all the other computers attached to him are working. For a man whose life has been computers since 1978 when the Sinclair ZX81 came out, has now ‘become’ part of a computer system. He’d love that.

And yesterday he seemed ‘awake’. His eyes were open and following me. As I followed his gorgeous Korean nurse around. Like a puppy. And how’s this for care. She’d heard Richard loves birds, so there was birdsong playing on the sound system. I got her to play some music instead. How many fucking chirruping birds can any man stand? She asked what music he liked. I was tempted to get Black Sabbath on just because… but instead opted for Steely Dan. She’d never heard of them (though she had heard of Son Heung-Min and loves him as I do, but for slightly different reasons). But Richard loves them and they’re kind’a perfect in that situation. Calm, soothing, nice.

We’re moving in the right direction. Slowly. And that’s good.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx

Today’s pic is the Synagogue in Merthyr Tydfil. Obviously in pre-renovation mode.