Write-Place

I had barely written the opening line to a new blog post, way back at the beginning of November  with appropriate links to past posts on a similar subject  - "Time for a post to prove to myself that I am still able to write a few coherent paragraphs, as I am feeling better than I did yesterday" ...  when  I became very poorly, physically and mentally and was barely able to function in the most basic and fundamental of  human actions. The reason, which knowing me or from reading this blog is not difficult to understand   - I had stopped taking my prescribed medication; yes again. (see links at end of post) The reasons for doing so are predictable (for me and for many others I have discussed this with). I was fine. My diet and lifestyle was healthy. I ate vegetarian and organic, drank teas made from herbs grown in my own garden, used home made soaps, laundry, home cleaners and toiletries which were "Free From All Nasties and Natural". I wanted, again, to...

Here we are, already on the 3rd day of the new year of 2023 and I have been berating myself over the weekend for not having a thought or two worth expressing here about anything at all.  Anyone looking back over the 14 or so years of this blog will see that this is by no means a new 'thing' for me, and a simple search of " New Year" "Christmas" or even "Time" finds me castigating myself for not writing a post, the timing of a post or for the feelings and thoughts that I should or shouldn't have had about the season.  (I have posted handy links for some of these posts to save the reader searching themselves, which is a thankless task :) )  So where does Mr Micawber come into this ? He is a character in Charles Dickens' book "David Copperfield" and is renowned for many sayings which we use in everyday situations, such as "Something will turn up". Here, I need to explain that his quotations come about due to his inability t...

The World Health Organisation (WHO) will officially rename Monkeypox, following concerns about stigma and racism surrounding the virus which has allegedly infected over 1600 people in more than two dozen countries.  The WHO’s director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has announced that the  organisation is working with partners and experts from around the world on changing the name of the Monkeypox virus and its ‘clades’ (from the Greek ‘klados’ for ‘branch’) and the disease it causes. A clade consists of an organism and all of its descendants; for example, the shared ancestry of apes and all of that species descendants would comprise a ‘clade.’   T he  WHO has said it will make announcements about the new names as soon as possible. Monkeypox in the UK Although more people have been diagnosed with it recently, only a small number of people in the UK have had Monkeypox and the risk remains low. It is extremely unlikely to catch Monke...

Since the "pandemic" started or rather since "lockdown/safety measures" have been in place, from March 2020, there has been little else on my mind but Covid19 and the restrictions that have been forced onto the nation. Perhaps if I had not watched TV or listened to the radio, refrained from all social media and newspapers media, spoken to no one or listened to any one, or even spent the last year on an uninhabited island miles from home, then I may not have been impacted as much as I feel I have.  Granted there have been thousands/ millions/ billions who have been in a much worse position than me and have been immensely more than inconvenienced, as no doubt it could be argued, has been my position. The thing is that this issue is a personal feeling of how we have been affected and the effect or lack of it that has been experienced by each of us and those close to us, whether physically, mentally or in the abstract.  I do not intend to debate the possible rights and ...

Dystopia :   a community or society that is undesirable or frightening.                 :  an antonym o f Utopia  a term coined by  Sir Thomas More   and figures as the title of                      one of his best known works , published in 1516, which created a blueprint for an                           ideal society with minimal crime, violence and poverty.    Wikipedia Dystopias are often characterised by   tyrannical  governments, environmental disaster, dehumanising  or other characteristics associated with a cataclysmic decline in society. Dystopian societies appear in many  fictional works  and artistic representations, particularly in stories set in the future and some of the most famous examples are  Aldous Huxley 's  Brave New Wo...

In 2004, this incompetent Government introduced a new GP's contract which increased the pay of the doctors but also took away a lot of the services, like weekend working, and evening surgeries. The ususal mismanagement in the civil service in their financial administration showed another waste of tax payers money. Now it's been reported that the situation may be even worse than we thought. Some family doctors are now earning £300,000 or more. Am not sure if any Maltby GP's earn anywhere near this amount - I guess if they did they might be living somewhere different to Maltby - but it seems a bit excessive considering the hours they work for their local patients. I do not begrudge anyone in the NHS their hard earned pay. I know that especially in hospitals, doctors (usually junior ones) work ridiculous numbers of hours which is both immoral and dangerous. But wouldn't it be better to have the old system of your own GP comes to visit you "out of hours" and gets ...

There are more couples over 70 years old having sex – and enjoying it – than ever before, says a survey for the British Medical Journal. 1500 people have been asked by Swedish researchers about their sex lives, over a 30 year period (that’s the research that was over a thirty year period, not the questioning of the same people !) The number of people who said they had sex increased as well as the number of women claiming to be “fulfilled”, shall we say. An “expert” in the UK says older people today grew up in more sexually liberated times and though there are many studies about sexual "problems" to do with the older age groups there is little research about "normal" sexual behaviour later in life. So the scientists from the University of Gothenburg in Sweden got to work interviewing 70-year olds about periods of their life from the 1970’s onwards. Their results showed that the number of 70 year olds reporting to have sexual relations had risen quite dramatically, b...