I decided to create a post using my iPad today. Blogger has put the pictures where it thinks best!
They are of a lovely walk around the lake at La Celle-Guenand with Hugo one morning last week and our lunch. A sabayon is usually a dessert but these were a delicious savoury version. In a week or so we'll be on our way back to the UK for the winter, hopefully having restored the house to a normality of sorts and made it more mouse proof. We will probably arrange for an Ocado delivery for the day after we arrive and if they have these delicious little Picard items they will be on our order!
During the 2019 general election campaign Boris clearly said he had a plan to fix social care. Last week the Care Quality Commission reported that of all the hospital patients that are ready to be discharged 50% have nowhere to go so they have to stay in hospital - they are "bed blockers". They no longer need hospital treatment but are not sufficiently independent to go home. They need a rehabilitation facility, a care home, or care at home, and the crisis in social care is that there are not enough places or carers. My brother is one of them.
He's occupying a hospital bed for the simple reason that the government has left social care on the back burner year after year with the subsequent effects on the NHS. The bed occupied by him could be given to someone who needs treatment, who may be on a trolley, in a queue in A&E until a bed becomes available. Then there are those who wait hours and hours for the ambulance to come to their aid - the ambulances that are queued up outside A&E waiting to discharge their patients when a trolley becomes available, which is after a bed becomes available.
What an awful, unbelievable mess.
The UK seems like a third world country these days. Ordinary citizens have the same sorts of worries and sense of powerlessness against those who have seized power and are grimly holding on to it.
ReplyDeleteOn a cheerier note, if you like savoury sabayon type things, I recommend you try L'Evidence restaurant in Cour-Cheverny one day. They often have something like that on the menu.
You have mentioned that restaurant before so it's time we gave it a try!
DeleteAt least we won't be getting Boris back as PM this week
ReplyDeleteHooray! Heard on R4 this rnorning that the £ had dipped when he flew back from holiday....
DeleteThank goodness. That out of a sense of honour he must do the right thing he has declined to stand.
DeleteMore like he knew he had no hope of winning and didn't want to be seen to lose. Always doing what's best for Boris.
I wonder if he will be staying on to hold surgeries in his constituency and get on with looking after his constituents? Or going back on one of his endless free holidays, more like.
A savoury sabayon? Had never heard of that before!
ReplyDeleteI feel terribly guilty. Starting in August last year I had two quite separate cancer ops, two, or was it three, biopsies, four months of chemo, three or four scans, innumerable blood samples, a dozen visits by the district nurse, a handful of telephone chats, and various post-op consultations. All bang on schedule and at medically appropriate intervals. As if I were enjoying NHS benefits back in the unhurried seventies and a thousand miles away from the headlines in The Guardian. Why was this possible here in the Welsh Marches? One reason is I was shuffled round different hospitals to wherever there was a vacancy. I've now notched up Hereford County, Worcester General and Kidderminster Acute. Next Monday I'll get an MRI scan at Coventry Alexandra. Perhaps it's because no one outside the county is aware of Herefordshire's existence; or if they are they confuse it with Hertfordshire. Previously we lived in Kingston-upon-Thames and I doubt very much I'd have fitted this schedule in the same timespan there.
ReplyDeleteI can only imagine the matters in the UK. If there is any consolation to you things could be more ominous soon here.
ReplyDeleteYou're so right about the mess that social care is in, Jean. I'm so sorry to hear about your brother's situation. One of my nieces has the uneviable task of trying to arrange the discharge of those at present languishing in hospital when well enough to be discharged. It's unbelievably frustrating for her that there is such poor provision for home care and so few places she can try to find a bed.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad to hear your brother is well enough to be discharged, it's maddening isn't it? Our family is in the same boat. My mother - 92 - (who broke her leg seven weeks ago in a fall), can't get out of hospital either. She's so fed up, bless her. Johnson said he would fix social care, Sunak should be following through on that election promise, it's what the tories were elected on. Where are the extra hospitals also promised by Johnson? Fingers crossed things don't get worse on Thursday with the budget ...
ReplyDelete