Yesterday I had a day off during which I took my mum Christmas shopping, bought fruit and veg from a farm shop and then spent the evening having a meal and being entertained by a friend’s daughter who is a singer. What do I find this morning? High drama apparently because during my absence Dr Crippen has been pronounced dead by a troll pretending to be a colleague, and while obituaries were still being prepared all around the blogsphere others have confirmed that the good doctor is actually alive and well, just not taking part in blog activities for the time being and who knows may have turned out to have retired without so much as a good bye.  I found all this out through the 18 rated NHS Exposed blog and no wonder they have that rating when stories of death, deception and general hysteria are being reported.

This saga has all the makings of a Miss Marple mystery. We have a (probably) dashing doctor, who maybe lives in a large house in a sleepy village (though his patients probably live somewhere less salubrious), and we have people from all around the world who hang on the doctor’s every word. For 2 years NHS Blogdoctor has been compulsive reading, he has regaled us with tales of the challenges of working as a GP in the UK. This doctor is an advocate for his patient and all that is good in the world, but at the same time he winds people up by expressing his opinion about the poor state of health care in general, the poor state of government (he was particularly vitriolic about a former health minister), and the miss management and poor leadership of those in charge of the general medical council. what is more he is of the opinion that nurses should nurse rather than worrying their pretty thick heads with any kind of extended scope of practice. Doctors should doctor, ambulance people should collect patients and get them to hospital and nurses should stop being too posh to wash. The sentiments of what Dr Crippen was trying to say was something I tend to agree with, it was the way in which he often said it that made my blood pressure rise and got me biting back in the comments section of his blog. Dr Crippen has upset quite a few people over the last couple of years, more than likely created a few enemies and for that reason, if he had met his maker it wouldn’t have been through natural causes but more likely murder most foul!

The written word as expressed through a blog is open to the interpretation of the reader. You have to trust that the words written are true, that they are written in an open and honest way and that they express the views of the person who wrote them. But you cannot have a proper discussion (as with a spoken conversation) with a blogger. You read them and you make sense of them and from that you judge what you think of them. Over time though, on sucessful and avidly read blogs like NHS blogdoctor people start to think that they know the author rather better than perhaps they do. We all crave success, and hope to have more than 2 men and a dog (and the dog probably can’t read) visiting our websites. We hope upon hope that we are not writing for our own benefit but are actually reaching a wider audience. What happens though when thousands of people visit your blog, and participate in discussions on your site? The pressure to post regularly and with originality must grow, not only that but you must then read the comments to each post and contribute to those, and meanwhile you are busily being a GP, husband, father and general ordinary person. It would perhaps have been better if the person that calls himself Dr Crippen had posted a short note on his site to say that he was taking a break as he did in the summer. He didn’t and this meant that speculation was rife, it still is after all here I am writing a whole post on the subject. It is however a very odd person that writes that another individual is dead when actually they don’t know what has happened. But then the very odd people that inhabit real life are also alive and well in the blogsphere but then again that is what makes blogging a fascinating and slightly obsessive pastime.