Business Lunch

Conjunctivitis put Sam into child-free quarantine today, so where better to go than the office, to meet Daddy?

No high powered lunches then for Gareth today (he's chuckling anyway at the mere prospect) just high-fives from his boy instead.

All the way there (I told him where we were going) Sam said "Dad, Dad, Dad". Lingering outside the office blocks, all the smokers were smiling at the little fella running past. So lovely!




Made up for our NHS debacle anyway (look away now if you're not British, you'll have no idea what I'm on about). Today's lesson was Choose and Book in practice:

-Choose the only available hospital with the sub-speciality (ie no choice).
-Get a 3 page print-out with phone numbers and reference codes.
-Spend 45 mins on the phone to the booking line only to find out the hospital has to be called directly.
-Spend a cumulative 2.5 hours to said hospital before speaking to an actual, real person.
-Find out that there is no choice whatsoever with timing of appts, a (waste of paper) letter will be posted within 4 weeks of said pre-ordained appt, which will be in over 6 months' time.
-Discover at this point that another related and equally relevant speciality have an 8 week wait, but have the wrong reference number, necessitating another visit to the GP.
-Bloody brilliant.

I wouldn't even mind so much if a) it wasn't such false advertising and b) I haven't spent so many years working so damn hard for the health service only for people to have such bad experiences because of inadequate admin.

Phew. Rant over. Happy Tuesday everyone.