Well no real excitement actually, just busy with real life and no topics that spring to mind easily for discussion. The world of commissioning is interesting and is pretty much keeping me out of mischief. The only problem is that the issues I am dealing with are pretty specialized and for that reason often difficult to share on a place like this. My job is about services for children in the hospital and about maternity services. It would be true to say that our local hospitals are not perfect, that there are definitely things to be improved and as a commissioner it is not me that can do the improving it is me who is charged with getting other people to improve the services so that they are the quality that the local population need and deserve. I am a relative novice to the world of health care for children and mothers to be but I am enjoying finding myself as an advocate for them, and learning more about the issues we have in getting things done in that area.

There is so much about my work I would like to discuss here, but I am finding that actually the individual problems and issues that arise there are more difficult to disguise than any patient problem I have ever come across, and that is saying something.

In just under 3 weeks I am to become a lady who cruises and so I am concentrating in my spare time efforts on planning the whole experience. Before you begin to wonder (based on my recent posts about money, debt and cars) my in laws have decided we are to be treated to this cruise and therefore to a cruise we will be treated. My research so far has informed me that for some people traveling on cruise ships and then talking about it is like a full time job to some people.  There are people on a cruise forum I have been visiting to get information and advice who have 3 or 4 trips booked into the future at any time. It is surely like another world, and it is one I had never considered entering but find somehow oddly compulsive. Apart from the chance to see places like Rome, Naples and Pisa the main thing I am interested in about this whole thing is in actually coming face to face with these people who go on cruises and in seeing them in action. I am looking forward to getting to a warmer place, to getting a bit of a break and to generally getting away from it all.