Running in a frosty dawn

Cold mist flowing above the valley floor, a ghostly river. Grassblades and leaf edges decorated by a white perfection, crystals of solid water, water vapour manifesting its presence. The sun struggles to throw aside the coral bedclothes if its sleep, so that it can transmute the solid water into invisibility. The river bathes itself with the blues and pinks of newborn day, its brown depths hidden. The earth is brittle under my feet. Air cracks in my nose, breath leaves a cloudy trail running in the frosty dawn.

Retire hurt

Today was a BMA retirement seminar. Not v helpful. The workshops were the best bits, hearing what other docs thought and felt about things. There were strong prejudices against having pre-retirement health checks - ironic considering this is what docs are supposed to be doing all the time in the "new NHS".

Also, sadly, reactionary views about exercise ("difficult and boring").
We should be emphasising that fitness is fun, and one of only two things that can reverse the aging process, the other being to have a good laugh.

And woeful ignorance about organic food: "No evidence of nutritional benefits". Not true.

There is evidence, but it is scarce, because there are no patents to be had from natural processes, so little science gets done. For the record, organic food has more micronutrients and antioxidants. And less water. The main influence of artificial fertiliser, apart from contributing to global warming, is to pump a load of water into your food.

How did science turn into a handmaiden of the conservative mindset?

First day of rest of my life

First day of retirement over. Cycled 30 mins to Clevedon, had heart check on treadmill, 13 mins Bruce protocol, no probs, 30 mins cycle back, stop off for celebratory lunch, long queue at counter but shorter queue for baked potato so opt for that , v. boring, then buy 4 bags sand, cycle back home, drive back to get sand, then tea with friend who drops by to congratulate on retirement, then 2pm start a 2 hr surgery, finish at 5pm, have tea, look at emails, answer person who thinks Greens mean to force us all to live in caves (we do not) go collect Laurie back from Germany, and collapse on sofa.

Knackered. But pleased to be retired.

Deepcuts into democratic values

Sickened by the news that there will still be no public inquiry into Deepcut Army Barracks in the UK, where there have been four deaths among recruits and 100 allegations of racism, serious physical abuse, rape and beatings. One of the recruits died of 2 (two) gunshot wounds to the head, and the official report refused to rule out suicide.

It could not be clearer that the situation needs to be fully investigated, but government clings to secrecy as tightly as some old style Soviet regime. What goes on in the minds of the officials who command the ministers to follow these obscurantist policies? Command is not too strong a word, for if the same ministers were in opposition they would be howling for an inquiry, but now they are in government, they are accomplices to the deception. Do they not realise that the truth will out in the end? Perhaps they look to Guantanamo, to Votergate, to the many other dirty secrets that government can get away with, and believe that truth can be defeated. We are looking at a collective failure of our political systems, abetted by the supine posture of journalism as a profession; they have lost their cutting edge, their investigative tendencies. The "best lack all conviction, while the worst are filled with passionate intensity."

In the past I have recklessly tweaked the tail of the tiger of nuclear power in the comany of a few dedicated greens, and marched with thousands to protest at the threat of a nuclear holocaust; but I was less deeply nervous then than I am now, in the face of events like Votergate, Guantanamo Bay and now Deepcut, where power seems immune from any real form of criticism.

Permission to stop panicking

Tomorrow I retire from full time general practice. 25 years of listening to complaints, asking questions, examining, making diagnoses, and offering treatments - sometimes boring pills, sometimes excting radical things like diets, environmental changes, acupuncture and imaging psychotherapy.

I have a huge amount of experience stored between my ears. It will continue to be used part time for a couple of years, but then it will just rot. Wisdom has no place in the new NHS where everything is itemised and given a price tag, another step to turning the NHS into the American style HMO system. Ready to be sold off in accordance with the General Agreement on Trade in Services.

All my acquired knowledge will not go to waste if I store it in Dr Doc. But that needs sorting out to make it work properly. And there is the Index of Governance to be sorted. And the boat. And the Mabinogogiblog. And the PKAT project. And the house.

Retirement is going to be busy. I should have stayed at work.

Yippee!!

Not often an e-mail provokes this response, but A Wood in Somerset, Iraq has just been nominated third prize in the Iraq Occupation Focus/Red Pepper Poetry Competition . Invited to read it up in London next Sunday, which I will indeed do for reasons of ego-massage, although I would always prefer to be in a wood in the country than up in the Big Smoke. Yer tiz, the poem:

A WOOD IN SOMERSET, IRAQ


Stone still in opalescent air
trees wait supportively

light splinters on new leaves.

Sun for the seventh day
blesses an English spring.

Two thousand lives away
this anticyclone fires up a storm
that drowns a nightmare world
in ochre light

The peace I feel
leaning against the powerful fist
that grips the earth, cushioned with moss
back shaped, kind as an elephant,

finds its reflection in a furious world
of men who sleep walk,
fall on their mother's skin,
give screaming fire,
act and react,
but cannot take it in

while birdsong fills my head
sharp as the sunlight
sparking on those tiny points of green.

One hammer headed woodpecker,
knowing no better and no worse
fires off his rounds.

I should be suffering
but the world is folded at my side,
its front page images of death
have left off stirring
in this gentle air.


© Richard Lawson
27.3.03

Thank you for reading right down to the bottom. Not everyone can do this.