Seven-a-side at lunch time

I expected today to be complicated and notable for having time pressure. In the end it was neither of those. The patient who had been booked to see me for a review of treatment rang the service early in the morning to postpone as she had too much to do today. That removed an hour of travelling between hospitals, and also the time to assess and then make notes. 

The complications arose because I had to be at Auckland Hospital for two waste of time important meetings about how we are dealing with the strike by the resident doctors. The effect on our day time services is minimal as we have what is mostly a specialist provided service. The night time call work has to be covered by the psychiatrists, some of whom queue up for it as they like the locum rates they get for doing it. Additionally, this is not uncommon as we have gaps in the registrar call roster at least once a week.

I took the extra time and relaxation and went into the Auckland Domain to have my sandwiches at lunch time. what I took to be a casual game of seven-a-side football was being played out on the sportsfields, including over a couple of cricket pitches. The young man wearing the hoody (in temperatures that would have made most people strip off) showed real scoring ability while I watched. Here, however, he was in an unaccustomed defensive role, and showed little interest or skill.

This evening, S made an excellent suggestion for how to think about a presentation I'm expecting to give in about four weeks. I started the process for that.

A good day.