The Other Half

Hugo stayed with Roger while Penny and I had what I suppose could be called a "girls' day out". Luckily she didn't name it as such when she asked me to join her or I'd probably have refused. Visions of shopping bags and aching feet would have forced me to demur. We had good fun over lunch, but first we went to the glaucoma clinic in Ipswich for her to have her peepers checked. It was a bit of a revelation. The centre is very nice, clean and new, quick service. But all the patients were very evidently middle class. None of my "friends" from Leiston were there, the ones I help claim benefits, and fight the system when papers are lost and the money dries up. This was very odd, because down the road Ipswich Hospital itself would be jam packed with people like them, grey-faced, old before their time, drawn and anxious. And then it occurred to me that they probably can't afford to have their eyes tested and get issues like glaucoma highlighted. If they need specs more than they need to fill their electricity meters, paying much more for their power than those who can afford to do direct debits monthly, they go to Boots and get something cheap and ready-made. No optician's fee needed. And that goes for the dentist too. I see the proof of this when someone sits opposite me as we gently and carefully go through their paperwork and make desperate phone calls to Government departments. God, but that depressed me, and I needed a very large glass of Sauvignon to cheer me up again. I'm not going to go on about this. But could Bevan have envisaged such a situation 69 years after the NHS was founded?

I lit the woodburner as usual and retired to the warm kitchen as it gradually heated up. When I went in to check on its progress and throw another log on the blaze I got a sniff of that terrible burning smell when flame and wool coincide. Yup, a fat red ember had leapt onto the carpet and left its mark. There was a time when that would have caused me great distress, but I just rubbed most of the burnt fibres away and returned to the kitchen. Who can take such things seriously when people are going blind because of poverty? Not me. But the next catastrophe did rock me. I put my sheepskin boots on a towel on the Rayburn to dry after a glorious walk in the rain with Hugo. I checked a few times and they seemed to be OK, but this was the same Rayburn that scorched half a dozen pairs of my knickers which I had draped across the top to air when I first moved here. The rubber soles of the boots seem to have inverted inwards in the heat. I'm not sure if they will be usable again, but I'll wait until they've cooled to check. I'll try to take this set-back in my stride too, ha ha.