Reflections

Being deaf means it is impossible for me to hear much of the ebb and flow of free conversation among a group of people, especially if they are young people who speak as we all did in those days: quickly, in partial sentences, using the coded language, cultural touch-points and shared history of our particular generation

An exception today was when one of our party - a medical practitioner - remarked that they had been surprised to learn from a respected fellow professional that the commonest cause of hospital admissions among children is problems arising from poor dental health

I have looked this up, to get it precisely right. In 2021, the  Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health published a report stating:

"Tooth decay has been the commonest reason for hospital admission among children aged five to nine for the past three years" 

(It also notes that things are better in Scotland and Wales than in England, because the devolved authorities actually have oral health strategies.)

Just one example - but somehow a particularly stark one - of the penny-wise, pound-foolish philosophy that bedevils our public life. Public expenditure is always cast as, at best, an unavoidable evil. The benefits that might result are ignored, not just when they are "intangibles" - like better quality of life, cultural richness, community cohesion or mental health - but even when they are easily represented in financial terms as savings in other areas. I'm thinking of things like health education, childcare provision, insulating houses or delivering social care, and adequate dentistry. The examples are legion because this is such a ubiquitous failure in our culture. I don't know if it is fixable - I certainly don't have the easy answer

We walked in the wetland nature reserve and stuffed ourselves with lunch in the excellent cafe. We idly looked at some birds - most likely a raven, possibly a grebe, certainly coot and moorhen, definitely a curlew (but could I really be sure it's not a whimbrel?) - enough to keep us happy on a day that constantly threatened rain but never followed through. Finally a revisit to the starlings - their display growing in energy and complexity every time we visit. But the thing I most enjoyed in the grey, damp semi-darkness was the reflections