I went back to the future ... not entirely sure we've made much progress

I've just spent a couple of days at my mum's and as a walk was off the agenda we spent the time looking through old photos. This one is from 1992: the only reason I know this is because the poster in the background is for the movie Under Siege. Never saw it.

1992. 4 TV channels; if you wanted a taxi you phoned Ace Cars, or hung about on the street waiting for a yellow light; crossing the channel meant hopping on a ferry; the world wide web had yet to be released to the public; and the Transpennine Express took 90 minutes to get from Sheffield to Manchester. Imagine!

So much has changed in the last 30-odd years (though clearly not my hairstyle) ... or has it?

Ankle-Gate

I know you've been fretting so let me reassure you. I will live. My ankle is not broken; my toes are a-tapping and I can stand on one foot. It's been a learning experience though.

Trusting in Triage

So, as you know, I twisted my ankle last Saturday. At which point I (multiple choice)

a. Took myself off to A&E

b. Stayed in and iced it so that it would get better quickly

c. Limped off out to the local sushi restaurant

Answer:

C. Obviously. Which is why, come Sunday evening, I had something resembling an elephant's foot at the end of my leg. Grey in parts, puffy and wrinkled.

"You need to get that seen to!" announced my daughter, who I have to say is very practical but lacks something in the bedside manner department.

I promised I would act first thing Monday.

When I say "act" I mean "do anything possible to get this fixed whilst avoiding a trip to hospital to get an X Ray". Because in my head X ray = visit to A&E = 5+ hours of your life.

First stop was an online video consultation with someone through our health insurance. We met on teams and I managed, not without some effort, to angle the i-pad so that she could see my foot close up.

"It's very swollen" she said.

"I know"

"I think you need to get it seen to" she said.

"Isn't that what you're doing?" Anything to avoid the answer being "you need an X Ray", which of course was always going to be the answer.

She told me to phone 111 as they would "triage" me. I thought this was bunkum and told my daughter I was off to A&E.

"You should phone 111" she said. "That's what we did at uni and it made things a lot quicker when we got to hospital"

Pincer movement. Against my better judgement, I did what I was told and phoned 111, still suspecting that I was A&E bound. Got through to a nice lady, who took my details, transferred me to another nice lady, who asked me a string of questions, the conclusion of which was:

"You need to be seen in the next 24 hours, your GP will phone you later today."

By now, in my head, this was an emergency. I'm an otherwise healthy 50 something year old with no medical history to speak of but lots and lots of things to do and I'm easily bored and I'm supposed to be going on a walking holiday in two weeks, and skiing at Christmas, and and and and so it's clearly a priority that - if I need treatment - it starts as soon as possible!

The triage system clearly didn't see it quite that way (I could hear, in the background, someone saying "so are you sure his face has dropped ...") so I waited and waited until, eventually, at 6.30 pm the GP phoned.

"You need an X Ray." I started to think about the bag I would pack to take me to A&E to while away the 5 hours wait.

"Go to the imaging department at the Royal London in the morning, give them your NHS number and they'll see you then."

"The imaging department?"

"Yes"

"Not A&E"

"No."

Tuesday morning, since I'm nobody's fool, I packed my bag - book, i-pad, orange, Soreen, diet coke, glasses, phone, headphones - just because it has a different name, doesn't mean there'll be a different queue. Ordered an Uber, left the house at 8.45 Royal London bound.

9.15 I was home, orange uneaten, Soreen still in its wrapper, coke can intact. X rayed, diagnosed, no broken bones.

The system worked. Turned up to reception, gave them my number, my bum had barely touched the seat in the waiting room before I was called in to X ray and within 5 minutes of that happening, the results had been viewed by an expert and diagnosis pronounced.

The lesson I took away from this very long story is that there is a different way, in 2024, of using the NHS. And for all its problems and faults, some parts of the NHS are not actually completely broken. Maybe we all need to just learn to use it differently. Pharmacists for vaccinations, waiting patiently for that GP call back, A&E only for proper emergencies.

Although, then again, an elderly relative turned up for an important back operation on Friday only to be turned away because there was no anaesthetist. Has to wait another month. Three steps forward & all that ...

Going for Growth

Apparently, we're all going to hit by tax rises of one sort or another in this coming budget. This, allegedly, is necessary if the country is to achieve "growth." Exactly how this will happen hasn't been spelt out yet but in any event, I'm not entirely sure that "growth" on its own is a good enough objective.

Hear me out.

I'm a member of a club. It began life in 1995 in an old Georgian House in Soho with a pretty narrow focus: a meeting place for the creatives who tended to work in an around the area. An antidote to the stuffy old boys' clubs just down the road in Mayfair or Pall Mall. It was small, cool and exclusive - membership was limited and tightly controlled. (They didn't actually let me in until 2006, I was in no way shape or form cool enough but that's a different story, for another day).

Anyway, said club is now enormous, with outposts from Mumbai to Nashville. It's largely owned by a couple of billionaires, floated on the New York Stock exchange but, according to recent press coverage, loses money. Is there a danger of pursuing growth at all costs?

Sticking with the nineties, Antonio Carluccio opened his first shop in 1991 and first cafe in 1999. It grew and grew and grew just like Jack's beanstalk until it got so big that it met the proverbial giant in the form of private equity, which went for more and more growth right up until the whole thing came crashing to the ground and into administration in 2020.

Matches started as a Wimbledon boutique in 1987 and was a champion of new designers. They went online in 2007 originally with the same philosophy, caught the growth bug, sold a stake to a VC firm in 2012, grew and grew and grew (both the top line and the losses) until this time Mike Ashley played the role of the giant, bought the whole thing, sacked most of the staff and Matches is no more.

Sadly, many of designers who had used the platform were left nursing significant losses as a result. I read that Mulberrry are currently fending off a bid from the very same Mike Ashley.

And is it even possible to keep growing the economy without consuming more and more energy, depleting the earth's resources, adding to the climate emergency? And for us to grow, does someone else's economy need to shrink?

There is an alternative view, one proposed by Kate Raworth, author of Doughnut economics which is, I quote "a compass for human prosperity in the 21st century, with the aim of meeting the needs of all people within the means of the living planet". I don't think Rachel, Kier, Morgan & co are big fans though.

Defence Minister Missing in Inaction

With all the wars going on in the world you might have expected to have seen a little more of John Healey, the Secretary of State for Defence.

Well, here's some inside information. Poor John has been too busy defending himself and the Labour party to be worrying about what's going on in Ukraine. Because, alongside being Secretary of State for Defence, John is also MP for Rawmarsh and Conisbrough, the constituency where my mum lives.

She was incensed, by the way, when they redrew some boundaries and changed its name from Wentworth (very pretty village, home to the beautiful Wentworth Woodhouse, a wonderful maze and a garden centre that seems to grow faster than Jack's beanstalk - it now has five separate cafes!). Here's the Woodhouse.

Rawmarsh and Conisbrough, on the other hand, were both pit villages, though to be fair Conisbrough does boast a castle with a many-sided keep. The rest of it is pretty grim.

Anyway, that level of annoyance pales into insignificance when you hear her complain about the winter fuel disallowance. She is MAD as a HATTER. And if you think I like to put pen to paper, you should meet her. She is currently on her sixth letter to John - they are on first name terms - and every time he thinks he's put the matter to bed she has another go.

Despite teaching in the state sector all her life and never sending either of her children to private school, she is now ranting to him about VAT on private school fees, explaining that people should be free to spend their money however they like and pointing out that his mate Kier seemed to have taken thousands of pounds worth of accommodation so that his precious son could study in peace and this isn't what she expects from a Labour party .....

She's also gearing up for the budget, which I'm sure will give her plenty of ammunition too. No doubt scrapping entrepreneur's relief will deeply offend her admiration of anyone with a "can do" attitude. She's definitely tenacious.

Congratulations & Commiserations

The Elizabeth Line has won the 2024 RIBA Sterling Prize for architecture. Well deserved and a real mark of progress. Some things definitely have improved over the last thirty years, public transport being one of them.

Although, then again, it depends where you live. Here's the Transpennine "Express". 90 minutes from Sheffield to Manchester. When it's not cancelled.

In Another Backwards Move

The alternative to growth, obviously, is to reuse, recyle, repurpose - hence the huge popularity of second hand clothes sites like Vinted (which, by the way, was Lithuania's first Unicorn, turns over €600m and also makes a profit - and it's still privately owned at the moment).

The other option is to go backwards. Rather than all wait for the "next new thing" we could all start going in reverse and taking up the "last new thing". I'm not kidding. Saw this advert on the tube recently. Before you know it we'll all be digging out the Sony Walkman.

The Culture Slot

I've had to spend a lot of time with my foot up this week - ankle still sore. So to cheer me up I've been:

Listening to: London Rules by Mick Heron. It's the fourth in the series so follows the TV show that's just ended. It's laugh out loud funny. Really recommend it.

Also listening to: the Media Show. It's presented by Katie Razzall and Ros Atkins and it's a nice antidote to all those blinking news podcasts which are OK but, with the exception of Newscast have the downside of all being presented by very self-satisfied, holier than thou, figures who flatly refuse to see any value or merit in any political view other than their own.

Reading: Our Evenings by Alan Hollinghurst. It's tremendous. Proper quality.

Watching: The Devils Hour season 1. I'm not sure how I missed this the first time round but suspect it was something to do with the blurb hinting at the paranormal - not the biggest fan. But it has Peter Capaldi in it, who is brilliant, and there's a season 2 coming, so I gave it a go. Pretty good.

Also watching: Industry. Now on season 2. Not so much supernatural as superhuman. How those people survive on so little sleep and so many drugs is beyond me.

Working: It's amazing how much you can get done when you're confined to a chair with your foot up. Can't say it's bearing a huge amount of fruit yet; think bag of grapes rather than a bushel of apples.

Reflecting on: The passage of time ....