Today is a once in four year event, so it seems only right that I post a quick blog about it. I’d spend longer and write more, but the busy week continues; I have been away for two days facilitating a course and now I am off with the girls from work.

Three things about today:

My husbands uncle is 17 today (work that out for yourself)

Apparently we technically work for free today if monthly paid. Except that there are less working days this year than last anyway due to the dates on which the weekdays fall (maths so obviously I don’t understand it)

A woman can ask a man to marry her today. I of course am already married so best  not do that, plus if a woman wants to ask a man to marry him on any other day then, why not!

So thats it, not much of a post, but why let your blog get in the way of life. More tomorrow when it will be March!

Since my last post on Friday I have been far too busy with real life to write any blog posts and when I haven’t been quite so busy I’ve been asleep or just plain knackered!  When you have no social life, which most of the time I don’t then you forget that it is tiring, fattening but enjoyable. Maybe it might be true that if you are in your mid forties you are less able to as they say ‘burn the candle at both ends’ plus drink alcohol and dance without getting exhausted than you were in say your twenties. But maybe I just have no stamina.  Here follows a bit of a diary like resume of the last few days:Saturday - Teen son, who at 17 seems unable to use a bus persuaded me to take him to town so that he could bank his birthday loot and have his birthday watch adjusted to fit his skinny wrists. Being the kind mother, who needed to buy a couple of things I of course did my duty, getting back just before we were due to leave for our weekend away. Hubby and I managed to get away shortly before 2pm and reached Rochester shortly after 3pm. A nice hotel actually, closely situated to Asda in case you might need any shopping (I didn’t). We unpacked, then headed to the bar for a couple of drinks before heading off to the shower and getting into the glad rags. Hubby scrubbed up well and looked pretty good in his dinner suit. In to the bar at 6.15 (early, yes I know) we met up with the cousins and aunt and uncle, had another drink then headed into the function room. My mistake here was not to appreciate that the food portions would be bordering on tiny and therefore not to adjust the amount of red wine already going down my throat. Still at the time this did not seem to be much of an issue. After dinner there was dancing, a raffle at which I won a smoothie maker (and a good one at that). Hubby who had worked in the morning only made it to around 11.30, but I didn’t get to bed until almost 1am.

Sunday - It was immediately clear that I had a hangover. Sadly I had no analgesia with me and Asda does not open till about 10am on a Sunday or I’d have gone shopping. Breakfast in the hotel was a bit of an anticlimax, it looked good and certainly the sausages tasted good but the rest of it was cold. Plus my body could only really cope with coffee (4 cups of it helped) and toast. If only I ever followed my own advice about the evils of drink, because then I’d never be hung over again!

We left the hotel just after 10 and headed west and then south until we reached Shaftesbury. We passed Stonehenge along the way, but hubby refused to stop on account of it being just a ‘load of stones’. What can you say to that. There followed a great family afternoon (mine this time), with my god mother who is now 70 and many of my aunts, uncles and cousins. We all met in a pub (diet coke for me), had sunday lunch in my cousin’s cafe and then chatted, ate birthday cake and chatted more. Just after 7pm we set off home, hubby in the back of the car as he apparently needed sleep (beer, his football team losing plus general tiredness) and teen son (who had arrived with my parents) in the front. An hour later and travelling down a dark road I don’t know we apparently ran over a nail or some other sharp object and got ourselves a puncture. What followed was a bit of a saga; fed up slightly enibriated hubby who wanted to sleep but instead found himself in the middle of a dark cold place changing a tire, a spare wheel that Reuault seems to want to keep located under the car rather than where it needed to be, me who managed to park up on a grass verge and who apparently drove over a nail on purpose and a calm and helpful teenager who now knows how to change a tyre.

Monday - Rather than remain in bed as I would have liked, I set off bright and early to be reminded how to facilitate a course (this takes place tomorrow and Friday). Learning stuff, having to pay attention and having to drive an hour each way doesn’t make you any less tired than you already are. Hubby was just as happy as ever when I got home since he needed 3 tyres for various reasons and is now £200 lighter.

Tuesday - We both took a day’s annual leave to go out with my brother and sister in law to see the Al Murray pub landlord TV programme being made in London. Today’s sagas included delayed and cancelled trains (apparently a fatality up the line), 2 hours spent queuing in the freezing cold close to the thames, and my sister in laws constant complaints about everything (ranging from my brother to the distance between the train lines on the underground and train delays being caused by this Labour government!). Al Murray though was good and perhaps I might be seen on TV on Friday!

So there you have it. Life has been fun, I have experienced a little drama and stood in the cold too many times. I ache right now, and could do with more sleep - roll on the weekend!

I made an observation to some people the other day that casual dress down Friday leads to casual attitudes to work. I have recently mentioned that some of the people in my new office, who are part of a single team dress down on a Friday and have breakfast at work. Today I spent all day in the office, smartly dressed as it happens and I was able to observe this behaviour (well from behind my back since that is where they sit). not a scientific survey, but actually true. A specific group did very little work having spent a good hour looking through a box of books, a further period of time discussing the snacks they would like with their afternoon tea and a further period of time surfing the showbiz internet and discussing it. I am not being critical here, just passing an observation. Plus there is some jealousy; after all I can’t ruin my weightloss of 2lb this week (20.5lb in total) by eating a sausage and egg sandwich, anyway I had already eaten my porridge. Secondly my team member who sits opposite me is off sick, so I had no one to chat to, though of course this in turn meant I got lots of work done. Anyway, I surfed the internet a little myself over my rice salad with tuna lunch.

Now though it is the weekend, and folks I am going away for that weekend. Tomorrow hubby and I are off to a hotel in Kent for a dinner dance and on Sunday we are off to celebrate my godmother’s 70th birthday in Dorset. So there you have it, despite not dressing casually, not eating breakfast baps or doughnuts I still have that Friday feeling!

What is more, Change of Shift is up at Crzegrl.net. For her Murphy’s Law has been the problem. While I am away relaxing, wining, dining and probably breaking my diet you can be doing the sensible thing and reading the great posts over there!

Update - change of shift is now available as a video blog, now how great is that? I am hosting on May 1 and I am not sure how I can even come close, after all there are no helicopters at my place of work!

For those who don’t know, the picture above is a crunchie bar, a rather sickly but not unpleasant chocolate with a honeycombe centre. At one time there was an advert which played on the fact that Crunchie gives you a Friday feeling. The punchline was: Thank Crunchie it’s Friday! This blog is turning into public service broadcasting!

I am beginning to think that our welfare state, whether we are users of it or employees within it is creating a culture of dependency. Life seems to be about what can be done for you, what your rights are, who you can blame for things. There is very little of the ‘I can do that’ attitude, very little ‘let me know what I can do’, very little ‘I take responsibility’. I spent some time yesterday with a reasonably new manager who is having problems with her team who are testing her out and one of which is being down right unpleasant to her. There seems to be a clear philosophy that they are the staff, they have problems and she as manager should ’sort them out’. Another colleague told a story of her team being disgruntled with the way that their agenda for change pay review had gone for them. She has tried many avenues to put things right, but ultimately she wasn’t their manager when the process started, she has done all she can to make things right but actually they need to take some responsibility. They signed off their job descriptions when they were written and now they could take out action against the employer as similar staff are paid more elsewhere but what they are waiting for is for the manager to do it all for them.Two members of my family are currently undergoing investigations for medical problems. People (and particularly the media) would have you believe that there is no choice of providers, no speedy treatment, and that generally there is a poor service. What they are finding though is that actually the health service in this country is better than you might believe. The trouble is that all too often we are fed information of everything that is not right; a drug people can’t have, a new procedure that can’t be accessed, that healthcare in the UK is provided in a grudging way and that you have to wait for it. That kind of attitude is kind of self perpetuating. If you expect the worst then maybe you will get the worst, or maybe you will be pleasantly surprised.

A patient once refused to be taught to give their own insulin since they had paid their national insurance ’stamp’ and were entitled to have it provided for them. That seems to be the attitude I encounter all too often and it doesn’t seem all that healthy to me.

I love my sleep and plenty of it am not really prone to insomnia. But occasionally, as this morning I woke early having been disturbed and could not get back to sleep no matter how hard I tried (maybe trying at all is the problem, I don’t know). Hubby starts work at 6am, and he has to travel an hour to get there so gets up at around 4.30 (the middle of the night in my world) but doesn’t usually cause me to wake up. If I am stressed or worried about something though then I will wake and not be able to get back to sleep. Last night I watched a programme on TV about self help and all of the different kinds of mechanisms for helping themselves that people use. This included cognitive behavioural therapy and neurolinguistic therapy amongst other things and advocated that when you are thinking of negative things that by changing around your thoughts to positive ones then your mood will lift (I am simplifying things here). With this fresh in my mind I thought I’d give that a go at 5am. Unfortunately my thoughts weren’t actually negative, just slightly jumbled and busy. Where is that meeting this morning? What will I cook for dinner tonight? How is  my niece and how are her parents coping? (she is undergoing some investigations for a potentially serious illness), will I have lost weight when I go to slimming world tonight since I have cut back on wine and tried to be really good. But none of these thoughts were serious on their own, not enough to prevent sleep. But in combination they were lethal.

A couple of hours lost sleep is not going to seriously affect my day, well not until about 8pm tonight when I’ll be wishing for my bed. Maybe I’ll have an early night say at about 10pm who knows? But what occurs to me now is that the mind is an amazing thing, and sleep when you can get it easily is not to be sniffed at.

The world of commissioning takes you to a variety of places, and gets to speaking to a host of people about things you would never imagine. That is certainly my thought for the day. Today has been one of those days where I have travelled about a bit and done a variety of things and today is one of those days when I can definitely say I liked being at work and things were good. I started by facilitating a team to look at the way in which people interact with each other, and got them to look at their rights and their responsibilities. Their rights to be treated well, to be respected and to be well managed all came up. However these rights don’t come without responsibilities to patients, to carers and of course to each other. Hopefully I left them with something to reflect on. Then it was back to the office to pick up on some work; emails, phone calls and the like. Then off again to facilitate an action learning group; getting a group of leaders of others to examine issues about their work. Finally I went off for a meeting at a mother and baby mental health unit.

When I had my son I took the whole thing in my stride emotionally. I had been unwell before the birth with pre-eclampsia and it was something of a relief to have actually had the baby and be free to get out and about and do what I wanted. That is not to say every day was a joy, because life with a young baby is tiring, stressful and at times frustrating. However I have thankfully never  known what it is like to suffer from a post natal (or any other) mental illness. But I do know a couple of people who have become seriously unwell following the birth of their babies and know that identifying the illness, treating it and being able to provide care and support to the whole family are vital. We are lucky enough to have a mother and baby unit not so far from here and through a chance encounter we have probably opened a can of worms.

I can’t go into detail about what led me there, but by the time I left I was convinced that we need to do more overall to ensure diagnosis and treatment of post natal mental illness. The links between our maternity units and the mental health team are not what they should be (the healthcare commission identified that too), and with only 100 mother and baby beds in the whole country we do not have sufficient facilities to manage this problem. Apparently 1 in 500 births results in a significant episode of puerperal mental illness, with 1 in 10 suffering what will feel significant enough but which be considered less serious. Our health visitors and midwives are skilled in identifying problems, but without the infrastructure of services, with many women having to be separated from their children and being admitted to ordinary wards and some children even ending up in foster care because families cannot cope then more needs to be done.

As managers in the health service we often get labelled as not caring, not being able to identify the needs of the people out there. I am a novice here, I am just learning about this issue but I am pretty sure that there is some work to be done here to make this situation in our area better. But only if I can find enough people who also care enough.

Then it is meme time:

Your Brain is 67% Female, 33% Male

Your brain leans female You think with your heart, not your head Sweet and considerate, you are a giver But you’re tough enough not to let anyone take advantage of you!

Statistics can sometimes be fun. WordPress is great at providing a few of those - numbers of visitors, referrals and out clicks and of course search terms used to get to the site. The top 10 all time search terms for Lifeinthenhs are:

All Time

Which go to show you that what you call a post is important as are some of the pictures you place on your blog posts because in the main they seem to be the two main ways people chance upon you (or else return without necessarily knowing the name of your blog).

In early 2006 I wrote a post called - What does a nurse do in 2006, and this essentially has been my most read post. Partly because a university that teaches nurses appeared at one time to advise their students to read the post. Second most attractive was a picture of a Pink Ford Ka, which I wrote about having seen one in my local high street and being amazed not just by the sight of the car itself, but also by the pink fluffy seats and other girlie decorations within it.

Recently lots of people have been using the term ‘things to write about’ which suggests a search for inspiration, so you can only hope that those people find whatever they are looking for and that I provide that for them!

Madeleine McCann who I have written about twice on this blog, is sadly still missing. The way in which she disappeared, the way in which the press picked up the story and her parents desire to keep the story in the spot light have contributed to this.

So there you have it. a pointless, but interesting post for a Saturday. But then we can’t always think of what to write about and have to look somewhere for inspiration. Sometimes that comes from other blogs and sometimes that comes from within!

Yet again I have moved offices, that makes about 5 times in 3 years, it could be more but I am beginning to lost track. At this place, while I have a nice desk and some drawers with an actual key there is no where to put your larger files or anything. So far I have some under the desk and more back at the old place; not sure what I will do about that. The people who sit near me are quite friendly, particularly now I have more or less moved in properly. Generally people keep their heads down and get on with their work, and that suits me as I have enough to do. One of the colleagues in my team sits opposite, so when she is in at the same time as me we have a bit of a gossip and put the world to rights. This is as it should be.Behind me, sit a whole team of about 20 people in about 3 rows. We are talking quite large open planned here. These people do a job for the health service in the whole county. They order stuff, equipment of all kinds. They have been there a while, and they are not employed by my own PCT but by the local acute trust, though as I say they order stuff for everyone. These people stick together, are friendly with each other. They are in a club together for coffee, tea and milk. The club buys bacon and egg rolls and sausage sarnies and the like on Fridays and on that day of the week they all dress down. They are not unpleasant, once or twice one or two of them has even smiled or acknowledged the presence of me and others around me. However they are exclusive, some would say cliquey. Their conversation is for themselves only and their milk and tea and coffee is not to be stolen. Their mugs are for their meetings. The meeting room is theirs, though others can book it.

Someone has been using their mugs and drinking their tea and milk. Rather than actually speaking to anyone else they have had a slight freak out moment and one of them has printed off notices which have been put up in the kitchen. I have my own coffee and on Monday I bought a pint of milk which was lasting me all week. Today a different person sat in the seat next to me. The usual person who sits there has been on holiday this week and she was picking up some of her work. While I was going about my normal business today she told the girl opposite her that she had ’stolen’ some milk to make her coffee. When I went to the fridge I found it was my milk she had taken. But I am not petty, so I said nothing and took my coffee black. After all I am not the kind of person to make a fuss over nothing, I won’t be putting up any notices either!

Cartoon from here

It is becoming clear that the UK government would like to control every element of our lives. There is no doubt that there are some great ideas going on there in the various government departments. Ideas about better parenting, opportunities for children, the variety of education, the food that we all eat, our lifestyles and the amount of exercise we take, the way we live our lives as adults, the food and alcohol we consume, our moral lifestyles and the way we spend our money. The trouble is they are not happy with just offering up ideas and schemes, they are not happy with giving guidelines, making policies. No they want to tell us all how to live every aspect of our lives.

Over the 11 years of this Labour government, one which I might add I voted in on 3 occasions (I come from good old fashioned working class stock and was brought up that way), we in the world of health have got used to targets, measurement, league tables, more money, less money, more staff for the sake of getting more staff and recently getting rid of people for the sake of getting rid of them and saving money. Education also is heavily assessed, both in terms of the schools and colleges and of the individual children who do annual tests from the age of about 5.

At some point though, this over interference will backfire and maybe within the realm of education that day has come. Our children already receive an hours teaching each day in maths and english, then they need more PE, and cookery lessons so they don’t become obese and know the meaning of being healthy, there is science, learning how to be a fully paid up citizen and now today apparently 5 hours of culture including music, drama and visiting art galleries per week. The only way to fit all this in will soon to be to either extend the school day or send them to school from birth to 25. Or is that already happening since the government would like half of all 18 years olds to go to university.

I am all for a good all round education. It is quite right for the ministry of children and schools to set out the broad curriculum, but deciding what is to be taught how often and when from a government department is mad. I am not sorry that my son has just a year of school to go. What I do know is that his whole life is now one big essay (his words) as he prepares for AS and then A2 levels. What I also know is that my granny who thought labour would be the party to save us from the terrible world created by the previous conservative governments of Thatcher and Major would be spinning in her grave if her ashes weren’t buried under a rose bush in my parents garden!

My teenage son is to be 17 next week, now where has that time gone to? Not only have I now experienced him as a baby, toddler, young child, new school boy, growing up to 6 foot tall boy and morose teenager he is now emerging into an almost adult. He is well read, knowledgeable about music, has opinions which he expresses and is much much calmer than I ever was at 17. He has great friends, generally knows that the effect of alcohol is not something you want to experience every day, he is thin and can eat anything he likes but knows when he is full and stops eating (oh to be able to do that!) When I look back on his childhood I do so with happiness and pride. Yes there have been difficulties, bullying at 5 which then in my opinion led to learning difficulties for about 3-4 years due to anxiety and lack of confidence. There have been issues with underage drinking and cannabis use, but these almost began to right themselves before I got to realise something was wrong. He and I have a good relationship, he knows he can talk to me about stuff and that I won’t fly off the handle (usually) and he has told other adults this. So why do I spend the time I can’t see him or know he isn’t safely in school feeling slightly anxious?

Last night he as at a party. Several of his friends are turning 17 this week too and last  night one of them had invited him to a party. This particular group of kids are studying English Literature for goodness sake so can’t be bad and anyway he is a good judge of character and tends not to mix with people who are not ‘a good sort’. I was fine till about 10pm then I wanted him home. I surfed the internet, read a book and generally looked out of the window till about midnight. Then my hubby suggested a cool and calm text, which strangely was followed by a phone call from the son to say he was on his way and no he required no lift. He was fine, I knew he would be fine, but that doesn’t stop me worrying.

My son is an only child, that bit was not planned but it is just the way it worked out. During his early days we spent a lot of time just the two of us as hubby went off finding himself. I guess that defined our relationship. I look at him now and I am proud. Proud that I have managed, goodness knows how, to bring up a well balanced boy to the brink of manhood and proud that he is doing so well at school. It is just that as he goes out into the world and explores as surely he must I hate the fact I have no (or very little) control over what he does and who he does it with.

I guess these feelings are normal and the fact I have insight into them is also a good thing.

Cartoon above from here 

This morning I found that I have moved up the healthcare 100 to something with hundred in it. Ok so my blog is not as popular as some out there, but I am putting effort in here and finding more interesting stuff to blog about. As a kind of celebration I decided to put the little widget into my sidebar, but will it show up? No it will not. So it definitely is time to plan a move to my own domain.

The question is what domain to get myself. Lifeinthenhs.co.uk /com / org at all available and that is what I have been known as, but I am thinking of a subtle change here. I am thinking of changing to something else so I can write about any subject I like and feel that it fits in with the style and purpose of the blog. So right now I have my creative thinking hat on. Once I come up with a cunning idea and a plan of action then I will be letting you all know and I shall leave the safety but boringness of wordpress.com .

Talking of moving, a job has become available in operational management within provider services and I am seriously considering an application. More of that when a firm decision has been made and an application submitted.

That would be my message to my manager, who despite being on holiday this week has sent me at least 15 emails and phoned me once. There seems to be a culture within some areas of the public sector that no one else can do your job and that if you disappear for a week or two the world as we know it will collapse. It would be true to say that at various times in my career I have been unable to forget work during my off duty time. These have mainly been when I have been stressed by work, trying to carry a job that was too much for one person and have generally convinced myself that I was indispensable. My current manager has gone from carrying the entirety of the workload pretty much alone to having a team of 6 and I guess that takes some letting go of. Add to this equation the introduction of the ultimate gadget, the blackberry and it is no wonder that the poor woman cannot leave us all alone. These things are highly addictive, imagine being able to access your work emails 24 hours a day? How on earth could you manage not to look at the thing? Even a days shopping might not put you off. Well actually yes it should. Happily she made the mistake of emailing her own boss who knows that actually as a team we can cope without her. Next holiday my boss has been told she is to leave the blackberry behind, or at the least switch it off.

Guess what though, the whole team is to be given a blackberry so we can all send each other emails 24 hours a day…….

Whatever has happened to our roads? I am not referring here to the amount of traffic on them, though I certainly could have a bit of a moan about that, no I am talking about holes here. This morning I dropped teen son at his friends’ so they could walk together in a social matey kind of way. This particular road is long and also subject to many road calming humps (but that is yet another road story) and now it also contains many (and I mean many) large pot holes. Onto the main road and again all of a sudden numerous holes seem to have appeared. On one roundabout I have to go round most mornings there are now so many holes it is a wonder I don’t actually sink down one of them. Our roads are fixed by the county council to whom we pay more than enough council tax, but while driving slowly along the roads (due to traffic congestion and hole avoidance) it is easy to see that most of what has been done recently around our area is hole filling and none of that has been done well. I am obviously no expert on the materials and workmanship of road maintenance but even to my untutored eye it is obvious that something is not right.

Just when I thought I was turning into a TOG (due to my morning listening habits) I discovered there is a bit of a campaign going on in the local paper. Apparently the roads I use in our local town and on my journey to work are not the only ones to be suffering from poor repair. A local Mechanic is worried about the damage being caused to people’s cars by the poor state of the roads locally compounded by the growing tendency of traffic calming road humps to appear in the night. If this had been a cold winter then no doubt the highways agency would be blaming the snow and ice, but we haven’t seen much of that so I expect that it is all down to global warming and rain. Because everything these days is due to the planet, our over reliance on gas guzzling cars and of course our obesity.

For your information though my body is currently shrinking and my car is small and economical. Therefore I blame the materials currently being used to build and replace road surfaces plus the lack of investment.

End of Rant.

Now for something more interesting get over to Change of shift, which this week is hosted at Nursing Voices.