Musings on a Wednesday Morning

It isn't laziness I can assure you, though I don't appear to be doing very much at the moment. A combination of things have quite overcome me at the moment, and I wish that I could see my way out of them. Oh, nothing very bothersome, nothing nasty, just minor irritants to be honest.

Pat's Sister had a hip replacement about a week and a day ago. It's the nature of the thing that she had the job done in one of these new NHS facilities that seem to pop up now and again, small, ultra-modern and usually run by Canadian, Australian or American Health Companies. They look like private hospitals but are actually part of the NHS and you don't have to pay to use them. But what is wrong with us doing it for ourselves and under the NHS. What is it with our government in recent years, it seems that the attitude these days is that if it's British then it's not to be trusted, but if it's an American idea then it is the best thing since sliced bread. I realise from watching the news over recent months that our American cousins are not enamoured of our NHS system. I think it's regarded as Socialist or even Communist, but I think I'd rather be middle class and poorly in Britain than America. I always get the impression that going into hospital in America requires an explosively large amount of money. Yes, I realise that they have Insurance to pay for medical treatment, but my experience of Medical Insurance came when I applied to BUPA for Health Insurance a few years ago and they finally said that they would be prepared to accept me as a customer as long as I agreed to pay them a vast amount of money every month and I agreed that the only part of my body they would treat would be my left big toe. That's an exaggeration of course, but not a huge exagerration. Sorry, rant over!

No it's not. the other thing that I find fascinating is that these super clinics get set up in leafy Cheshire. I know of two of these places and they both serve Cheshire. Why don't they build one in Gorton, or Ancoats or some other less well off part of Manchester. Cheshire! To them that have shall more be given! I've always thought that they should relocate Cheshire somewhere south of Surrey.

So anyway. All of that has absolutely nothing to do with my lack of blogging. Being on my own in the house with Jasper the manic spaniel has not prevented me from blogging or anything else. Not that I've done anything else. When Pat went away I said that I'd clean the house while she was away. So far I've cleaned nothing at all and it's Wednesday morning. She'll be back home on friday. Added to that, barbara is coming round to visit this afternoon and the house looks like it's been hit by a dust bomb. I must go for my constitutional with Jasper, then get a bit of cleaning done. At least the lounge and the kitchen, or I will be in deep doodoo.

In the last three weeks the computer has died on me twice. About three weeks ago everything started to go wrong. Programs would not load and then it simply refused to start up at all. I decided that it was me loading a piece of wonky software and it was my own fault. So I rebuilt the computer from scratch, software rebuild, nothing at all to do with screwdrivers etc. Then about ten days ago it did the same again, so I've had to rebuild it all from scratch again. This takes time because every piece of software has got to be reinstalled. This time I've taken more time over it, put each piece of software on one at a time, rebooted the computer every time and then done a system backup to make sure. So far, so good, but it all takes a lot of time.

But you don't expect this from a brand new computer do you, well a four month old computer anyway. It was my retirement treat to me from me and I spent too much money on it. Now I'm beginning to wonder how big a mistake it was. And no, Daniele, I have not treated myself to several new computers recently, just this one, and the last new computer I bought was eight years ago. That is a very old computer.

But I shall get to the bottom of this, even if I have to ring up Hewlett Packard in the USA and moan at them. I wonder if they sell Health Insurance as well?