Starting them young...

With the day of strikes upon us, a snapshot of how things are done across the channel; at today’s protests against the proposed pension reforms in France, the CGT union launched its new initiative for children, ‘Ma premiere manif’’ (‘My First Demo’).

According to 'Le Dauphiné libéré':

Children are invited to visit the union’s official vehicle to collect a pack containing a certificate of participation, along with games and a colouring book to ‘help children and parents enjoy their day’.

Meanwhile, in the UK, teaching unions, having urged their members not to help schools or parents with planning by giving advance notice of their intention to strike, are now encouraging children to make banners and put together food boxes to sustain their striking teachers on their (long) march, a concept so far beyond irony that we surely need a new word for it. 

Although some of the damage dates from the activities of left-wing teachers half a century ago, the death knell of modern teaching sounded in the early nineties, when two Cs at A level were enough to get you into teacher training and the NUT set about building the militant super-union behind today’s mass walkout. Fuelled by the anti-elitist attitude that saw better-qualified subject specialists hounded out of many state schools, a culture has grown up in which pupils appear to be, for some at least, a means to an end, rather than their raison d’être.

Now it looks as if, along with their efforts to destroy the education system from within, the unions are soliciting a public show of support from those who will be most harmed by their irresponsible and cynical actions. There must be a technical term for this sort of thing, but I have a horrible feeling it is likely to be in Russian, or possibly Chinese.

WFH: Won’t F***ing Help

Over the past few weeks, some of the older members of Clan Macheath have had occasion to contact a variety of organisations by phone, including banks, boiler manufacturers and electricity suppliers.

By choice or necessity, our elders eschewed the internet and called the customer service telephone numbers provided by the organisations only to receive a variety of unhelpful responses from staff who, as far as they can ascertain, were working from home.

There were several helpful clues to indicate this, from the background sounds of of televisions, washing machines and noisy children to “I’m just putting you on hold while I let the dog out”, followed by a five minute silence. One caller was baffled by an irregular repeated pinging noise until, with the help of speakerphone, a visiting younger relative identified it as social media notifications and ‘likes’ from a nearby phone, which presumably explained the operator’s frequent lapses of attention during the conversation.

All of this suggests an environment less than conducive to concentration and focus on the customer’s needs and a lack of responsibility, an impression which is borne out by the repeated abrupt ending of calls mid-conversation. After calling back - and giving her details in full - for the third tIme, one of our tribal elders asked the operator point blank whether they were paid and assessed by the number of calls they took rather than whether the issue was resolved; the answer was yet another hang-up.

All in all, the overall feeling is that these home-workers, freed from the supervision of the office, are simply time-serving; nominally putting in the hours while paying very little attention to the requirements or needs of the customer - how else could one explain the cheerful complacency of the representative of a heating firm who, during last week’s cold snap, happily told an eighty-four year old with no heating or hot water that she would send someone to look at the boiler in two weeks’ time? 

It looks as if the practice of ‘driving customers online’ continues to permeate the business world; in any other circumstances, would employers be willing to allow their customer-facing staff to behave like this? (In the private sector, that is; the phenomenon of the self-indulgent time waster is sadly all too alive and kicking in hospital administration, social services and local government). Even when a call has been referred upwards, the managers seem unwilling to make much effort to help.

These days, customers who seek help via a phone line rather than online are likely to be elderly or unable to use a computer for reasons such as visual impairment or arthritis; to provide them with a second-rate service at the whim of inefficient and unhelpful home workers seems more than a little cruel.

The Long March through the teaching unions

Two years ago, when the Association of Teachers and Lecturers completed its merger with the National Union of Teachers, I returned my membership card and cancelled my subscription in protest.

There was an interesting precedent for this; half a century earlier, my father did the same thing with his union membership when a teachers’ strike was called. Aided by a number of like-minded colleagues, he rearranged the timetables and took on extra lessons and duties to ensure that the school stayed open and pupils, particularly those in exam years, received as much of their normal education as possible.

To anyone outside the profession, it may seem odd that either of us belonged to a trade union in the first place. However, as I have mentioned before, union membership was, until the recent emergence of an independent and apolitical service, the only way to gain access to expert legal protection and advice in the case of allegations of professional misconduct - a necessity when your job places you at constant risk of accusation based on the unsupported word of a child or teenager, however far-fetched or malicious.

Joining the profession therefore effectively meant signing up with a union. With the avowedly militant NUT and NASUWT available, those who instead chose the relatively genteel Assistant Masters and Mistresses Association, as the ATL was known until 1993, almost certainly did so because its policy of no strikes and minimal political activism was the best match for their own beliefs and opinions.

Unfortunately for these principled and peaceful souls, their good nature was to be taken advantage of in a cynical and manipulative coup. Starting in the early nineties, a concerted power grab by left-wingers led to the union’s first ever strike, affiliation with the TUC and finally the ‘merger’ - effectively a takeover by the much larger NUT - to create Europe’s largest teaching union. It is a virtual certainty that Labour supporters like General Secretary Mary Bousted, the hard-line Corbynite who masterminded the merger, joined this non-striking union with the specific aim of converting it into a militant organisation (in Bousted’s case, actually moving from the NUT in order to do so). 

Sadly, the apolitical stance of most ATL members was no match for the warlike ambitions of Bousted and her cohort; very few ever bothered to attend meetings or vote in union ballots, giving her and her associates an easy route to the top and to full control of policy. Even when their union’s very existence came under threat, a paltry turnout of 25% for the merger ballot suggests that three quarters of them just closed their eyes and hoped it - and she - would go away. Instead, they found themselves trapped in Bousted’s new super-union which, within a year, was demanding the restoration of flying pickets and the return of the closed shop.

It’s hard not to feel a deep sense of betrayal at this imposition of militancy on those of us who rejected it on principle at the outset. I am surely not alone in saying that neglecting pupils for political reasons goes against everything I believe about the importance of my chosen profession. I could understand taking part in a demonstration during the holidays or at the weekend, but to use children’s education as a bargaining chip seems to me despicable - to say nothing of the impact on parents in low-paid jobs obliged to take unpaid time off work if a school closes.

The NEU ballot turnout was 53% - a scant 3% above the legal threshold - suggesting that many of those apolitical ATL members are still out there, even if they are now so outnumbered by militants that their votes - or abstentions - can have little or no impact. For the sake of a generation of pupils whose education has already suffered considerable disruption, I hope that, when the strike days arrive, they will uphold the once-proud ethos of the union they originally joined and, in Churchill’s immortal words, keep buggering on.

Now every man (and woman) is an island

Had you been a fly on the wall in a certain library in Southern England some thirty years ago, you might have been startled by a heavily pregnant woman slamming a book down on a table with a most unladylike exclamation.

The book was a then fashionable guide for new parents and I had just reached the chapter on childcare, which suggested that a mother could return to work as early as six weeks after birth; ”You may be concerned”, it said loftily, “that your child’s caregivers do not have your level of education or language skills, but these worries are unfounded; studies have shown that this will have no long-term detrimental effect on your child’s development.”

The book did not, as far as I could see, offer much information about these ‘studies’, or what evidence they provided for their findings, but it was clear in its message that ‘quality time’ at weekends more than made up for a baby being farmed out for the majority of its waking hours (in educational terms, at least). Breathtaking intellectual snobbery aside, there was something disturbing in its complacent assertion that, while the child may repeatedly cry or show distress when left at nursery or with a nanny, this should not prevent the mother from returning to work (the same advice appears on today’s NHS information website).

The Shadow Education Secretary’s recently announced plan to make childcare available for all children from the age of nine months is another manifestation of the belief that children will thrive away from their mothers from a very early age. What concerns me about her arguments are that, while she cites mothers who ‘have to give up jobs they love’ because of a lack of childcare and the need for single mothers to be able to work, she makes no mention of the effect on the child.

Raising a child is - or should be - a huge responsibility. Every experience and every new piece of knowledge will contribute to the adult it will eventually become. I find it hard to understand how a mother would willingly - or even cheerfully - pass her infant over to the influence of relative strangers for almost the entirety of its weekday waking hours rather than be there herself to oversee its development and provide comfort whenever necessary. In any case, children under 3 naturally suffer from separation anxiety; it seems inhumane to override this by making the mother’s interests paramount.

Staying at home with a baby or a young child can be frustrating, boring and lonely at times - we were never meant to rear our children in isolation and some mothers may need support in the form of mother-and-baby groups and help to access the activities on offer - but it also means that the parent is a constant presence and a source of continuous reassurance when the child’s brain and emotional behaviour patterns are developing at their fastest rate. We may have invented smartphones but we still respond to the same pheromones and biological cues as our ape ancestors; for a pre-verbal child, being deprived of its mother’s presence for hours at a time on a daily basis must surely have a detrimental effect.

In fact, that effect may now be making itself evident. The generation born around the time that book was published (and Harriet Harmann was boasting about the number of UK working mothers with children under 5) has turned away from the institution of marriage to a startling extent: in 1976, 90% of men and 80% of women under 30 were married, while by 2019, the figures stand at a third and a quarter respectively with a further decline predicted for the future. Meanwhile, England and Wales last year passed the landmark point of a majority of babies being born out of wedlock.

Admittedly many more people are willing to embark on long-term relationships without marriage but there does appear to be a shift towards serial monogamy and away from commitments surviving long enough to rear children. The knock-on effect of universal childcare policies may turn out to be a solipsistic society composed of individuals whose formative experiences have left them unable to sustain stable relationships in adult life and a resulting manifold increase in state subsidies for single parents.

Spit and Spatter

A recent exchange of comments at Ambush Predator’s place led to the discovery of the above phrase being rather vividly used by staff at a chimpanzee sanctuary to describe the primates spitting water or throwing their faeces at humans.

The latter, while generally an expression of frustration or emotional turmoil, has apparently become a common form of attention-seeking behaviour among captive chimps, encouraged by the shocked reaction of onlookers, or a means of retaliation when their keepers deny them something they want. Some chimps have even been observed defecating into one hand and carrying it around until a suitable opportunity presents itself to attack the chosen target.

In other news: ‘Harry says royals ‘stereotyped’ Meghan’, ‘Harry accuses Prince William of attacking him’, ‘Harry brands Queen Consort ‘dangerous’ and ‘a villain’ ‘(...continues ad nauseam)

On the subject of poo-flinging chimps Prince Harry, I’ve been giving more thought to the parallels with George, Duke of Clarence (him of the butt of Malmsey). Like Harry, Clarence seems to have harboured an increasing tally of petty grievances and a growing sense of entitlement (albeit less likely to have been fuelled by lavish consumption of hallucinogens and weed). By the time of - I think - his fourth rebellion, Clarence had subscribed to the theory that his elder brother was the illegitimate product of an affair between their mother and an English archer during his father’s absence, and that Clarence himself was therefore the rightful king.

While it would be out of the question for Harry to traduce his sainted mother - the ‘grandma Diana’ who was allegedly (if somewhat implausibly) the subject of Archie’s first words - it is not impossible that, if he continues in his current irrational vein, we may yet see a narrative emerge from ‘sources’ not too distant from Montecito that Diana’s first child died at birth and William was smuggled in to preserve appearances, making Harry the legitimate heir to the Crown (and incidentally explaining his ‘special bond’ with his mother).  

Having himself benefited from the covering up of some of his more egregious activities, Harry would surely be willing to believe that even something of that magnitude could be hidden and, sadly, the social media generation seem bent on undoing centuries of education and Enlightenment and returning to the open-mouthed credulity of medieval yokels at a fair. With so much to gain for so many vested interests - particularly with a mixed-race heir in the next generation - it’s all too easy, in today’s climate, to imagine the idea gaining traction on the other side of the Atlantic.

Harry’s repeated broadsides looked at first like an extreme example of sour grapes but, as he continues to bombard his nearest relatives with metaphorical shit while still clinging to the rank and titles conferred on him by an institution he claims to hate, I am starting to wonder whether the ultimate aim is to manipulate public opinion in the UK, relentlessly besmirching and bespattering his family until his brother’s position becomes untenable - after all, Harry and Meghan must be well aware that it was the abdication of an older brother that made his great-grandfather king - or until some other factor comes into play which places Harry firmly at the head of the line of succession.

In which I mysteriously appear out of nowhere

It seems that we are, at last, to have all of our medical data collected in one place with the expansion of a new system to cover all NHS regions, meaning that -  at least until the next solar flare event/cyber hack/system failure - there is the hope that fewer pieces of important information will slip through the gaps.

For example, when one of the venerable ladies of Clan Macheath was recently bitten by her cat (little Sammy [or ‘Spawn of Satan’ to the rest of us] was decidedly miffed at having spent a week in the cattery), she phoned the surgery to check that her tetanus boosters were up to date. 

After trying several times to fob her off - “We don’t deal with cat bites in the surgery; you have to go to A&E” - the receptionist grudgingly agreed to look. “You haven’t had one,” she reported back,”There’s nothing in the file”, which is odd, given that Granny has travelled extensively and visited the same surgery many times for travel vaccinations, including tetanus. The record of these jabs seems to have disappeared into the ether, possibly forever. 

What is more disturbing is that my origins seem to have vanished in the same way. During a discussion with her GP, my mother discovered that her records said that she had never had children, despite our having been registered at the same surgery from early childhood. As the relevant section of her file was completely blank, the doctors had wrongly assumed that we were adopted and - with potentially dangerous consequences - made clinical decisions based on that assumption.

Now, it’s true that I made my entrance rather unexpectedly in the wild, as it were, and bypassed all the usual hospital formalities, but that’s not exactly unheard of and I suppose that someone must have made a note of the fact somewhere. A few decades on, however, as far as the NHS is concerned, I might as well have been found under a gooseberry bush.

It is to be hoped that this new record system, unlike its myriad mutually incompatible predecessors in the public sector, manages to coordinate information into a coherent - and accurate - whole. Unfortunately, I know from early temping experience that data input and filing, being neither well-paid nor prestigious, doesn’t always attract the most conscientious, competent or careful of workers. 

If it is set up and maintained efficiently, the new system could help to prevent some, at least, of the administrative mishaps I listed in ‘10 Ways the NHS is Killing People’. However, as long as information continues to be lost and the system equates absence of evidence with evidence of absence, mistakes will inevitably be made.

Perhaps this is the kind of thing that will be tackled by Midlands NHS trust’s £115k ‘Director of Lived Experience’, but I’m not holding out much hope.

Having the Last Wordle?

 A dilemma has presented itself to the good folk of the Tavern.

For some months, thanks to a bevy of obsessively competitive grandmothers and aunts, there has been fierce family rivalry over the online Wordle puzzle, with daily updates on the number of guesses as well as avid comparison of statistics at family gatherings.

We’ve been aware that it comes to us courtesy of the New York Times, an organ which hasn’t exactly endeared itself to the British through its insinuation that we - at least those of us whose ancestors have been in these islands a good few centuries - are a bunch of grubby imperialists eking out a miserable existence on boiled mutton and gruel in a cold and boggy hinterland.

While one would obviously prefer to be liked, the ill-informed prejudice of a few sniping activists isn’t particularly important in the grander scheme of things. However, the repeated falsehoods, distortions and anti-British propaganda are starting to grate. Latest in a series of Brit-bashing columns is the new opinion piece, which is being trailed with a startling bit of hyperbole:

'When Prince Harry met and married the American actress Meghan Markle, we saw, in real time, just how high a price the crown was willing to extract from an outsider, up to and including her life.’ 

I thought that sort of thing went out with Anne Boleyn and Katherine Howard, but clearly the NYT knows better (although if she is one of the undead, it might explain a lot...*) While such over-dramatic metaphors are straight out of the attention-seeker’s handbook and thus beneath contempt, it’s still part of a spectacularly vicious attack on the Royal Family and, by extension, the people of Britain, who are yet again portrayed as overt racists. 

So the dilemma: do we continue to pop in to the New York Times for a Wordle while ignoring the rest of its content or do we desist on principle? I await Mother-in-Law’s final decree on the matter but, in the meantime, I’m taking inspiration from the first Earl of Birkenhead who, when challenged on his daily morning visit to the lavatory at the Athenaeum Club (of which he was not a member), responded with a surprised, "Oh, is it a club as well?"

*Kipling, as he so often does, has just the right poem:

“A fool there was, and he made his prayer

 (even as you or I!)

To a rag and a bone and a hank of hair,

(We called her the woman who did not care)

But the fool he called her his lady fair - 

(even as you or I!)”

The Vampire

https://poets.org/poem/vampire-0

Joining the Dots...

Like one of those shifting optical illusions, interpretation of the Lady Hussey affair depends on whether you see a hostile racist mercilessly interrogating her hapless victim or a rather deaf elderly lady, in a noisy gathering of many nationalities, asking impertinent questions about the background of a woman whose name, clothing and hairstyle clearly suggest overseas origins.*

Many journalists were quick to point out that this incident, having no apparent connection with the Sussexes, served as independent corroboration of their tales of unacceptable prejudice pervading the Palace; headlines on both sides of the Atlantic were fraught with terms such as ‘validates’, ‘vindicates’ or ‘gives credence to’ the couple’s accusations.

The timing, coinciding as it did with the Wales’ official visit to the USA as well as the imminent launch of the Netflix ‘documentary’, ensured maximum media exposure for those expressing their outrage. One of the most vocal of these was the photographer whose portraits of Ms Fulani accompanied Vogue magazine’s 2021 feature on her domestic abuse charity: ‘They should have known who she was’, he posted on Instagram, ‘A GIANT [sic] in her field’.

If his name sounds familiar, then you probably read coverage of - depending on your choice of news source - the Sussex couple’s thwarted attempt to bring their own photographer into the Queen’s presence or the select group of guests at Lilibet’s first birthday party. Ms Fulani’s vocal defender just happens to be a long-standing close friend of the couple and was in regular contact with them when he met Ms Fulani, who clearly made a big impact on him and runs exactly the sort of organisation likely to interest the Duchess.

Small world, isn’t it?

Update: there’s a brilliant take on this story at Eccles is saved.

*I have, in the past, met a number of elderly dowagers in various social contexts and been subjected to similar brusque inquisition at first hand, including questions about my ‘people’, a term which, while something of a hot potato in today’s ethnicity-conscious USA, has long been interchangeable with ‘family’ in British landed gentry and public school circles. 

My antecedents being more Baldrick than Blackadder, it usually takes them multiple questions to sort out where I fit into their mental map. It’s a bruising experience, certainly (think of Lady Catherine de Burgh rudely quizzing Elizabeth Bennet in ‘Pride and Prejudice’), but it’s how they and their forebears have behaved towards younger people for countless generations - their ‘culture’, if you will - regardless of colour, creed or orientation.

A Winter’s Tale

This blog has long documented my family’s experience of the shortcomings of the NHS, on the part of both the institution and individual staff members. I have not mentioned this incident before, but it is perhaps, worth recounting in the current situation.

It was in the depths of winter in hill country some years ago. Drifting snow had filled the narrow local lanes to the tops of the banks and hedges, cutting off a number of houses, among them the isolated home of an elderly relative of mine in the advanced stages of terminal cancer. For the best part of a week, the only vehicle to pass the house was a high-clearance tractor driven by the local farmer.

This is not an unusual state of affairs in a hard winter, so there was plenty of food in the house (and gas cylinders to cope with the inevitable power cuts), but, with over a mile to the nearest clear road, getting to the surgery or pharmacy for routine medical care and drugs was clearly not an option.

On the Sunday - her day off - the local pharmacist arrived on the doorstep, bringing repeat prescriptions and offering to do some basic health checks. She had loaded the morphine and essential drugs into a backpack and, leaving her car at the main road, walked several miles through the snow to deliver them to the homes of three patients who would otherwise have run out.

What makes this worthy of comment - apart from the altruism of the conscientious pharmacist - was that one of the GPs from the local surgery lived nearby and was also cut off by the snow. Several times during that week, she and her husband were seen (and heard) out on their cross-country skis, following the tractor ruts in an extensive circuit of the blocked country lanes with much vocal hilarity.

While the doctor was in no way obliged to knock on the door en route and enquire about the patients, it seems less than neighbourly, under the circumstances, to ski cheerfully past the doors of sick people trapped with no access to medical supplies or care - in a relatively small community, there was no question of her being unaware of their predicament. 

Whether it was a lack of imagination, a fear of breaking rules or callous indifference, we’ll never know, but it’s an interesting illustration of how some GPs see their role within the community. As my relative pointed out, it highlights the unpalatable truth that, leaving aside community spirit and common humanity, the pharmacist had a far greater incentive than the GP to keep her regular customers alive and kicking.

Tradition has it that the ancient Chinese paid their doctors only when they were well. We aren’t going to turn careless indifference into altruistic concern but perhaps, among the much-needed changes to the NHS, we could incorporate some kind of motivation to preserve the health of patients in situations like this rather than picking up the pieces when things are allowed to go wrong.

Where’s a butt of Malmsey when you need one?

Given the latest volley of toys being thrown out of the pram in Montecito, perhaps this is a good time to remember that disgruntled younger siblings are something of an occupational hazard for England’s monarchy and that, thanks in part to Margaret Beaufort, they have thus been clearly provided for within the establishment for centuries.

I am far from being a paid-up monarchist, but I am all in favour of an institution that forestalls the possibility of President Blair (and First Lady Cherie). If we are to have a figurehead at the top of the tree, then far better for it to be someone reared in the expectation of a lifetime of public service rather than habitually motivated by self-aggrandisement.

British royal protocol, like the strict behavioural code of the Samurai, performs a vital function in bypassing the personal and separating the rank from its holder, preserving the peace on an official level and in public whatever the personal feelings of those involved. When it broke down, in less enlightened times, at least, the result was frequently bloodshed  - enough to incentivise subsequent generations to stick to the script as laid out in detail by the mother of Henry VII.

This, of course, was the problem with Meghan Markle. Her stated frame of reference - fairy tales, Disney films and ‘Medieval Times’ fancy-dress themed entertainments - implies a complete failure to grasp the real-life significance of the titles and roles of the royal family or the time-honoured rules governing precedence and behaviour and, by all accounts, she wasn’t exactly open to instruction.  

It is even possible that, ignorant of the rules governing royal succession and coming from a country with no history or tradition of primogeniture, she initially misunderstood the phrase ‘in line to the throne’ to mean that Harry had a realistic expectation of becoming king after - or instead of - William. (It is worth noting that, while an English dictionary defines ‘in line for’ as ‘in a position to receive’, a US one has it as ‘likely to receive’.) Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned - or cheated of a perceived entitlement.

One could argue that the foundations for the current fracas were laid by Diana’s naive insistence on Harry always being treated in the same way as his older brother and by his own lack of insight or understanding of the role and duties assigned to him but, whatever the root cause, the answer is never going to be walking out on the family and setting up, in effect, a rival court, complete with queen, courtiers and hangers-on.

It certainly didn’t ensure a happy outcome for George, Duke of Clarence, habitual drunkard, serial whiner to anyone who would listen and ultimately found guilty of ‘unnatural, loathly treasons’ against his older brother.

Worst Remake Ever...

TOTAL  RECALL  2022: 

 RECOLLECTIONS MAY VARY

“Howdy, Stranger! If things have gone wrong, I’m talking to myself and you’ve got a wet towel wrapped round your head. 

Now, get your ass to Canada!”

The National Heartless Service

As regular readers may recall, the Tavern inmates have more than a few reservations about the NHS (see the 2009 post ‘10 ways the NHS is killing people’), so I suppose we should not have been surprised at what happened this week to an 80-year-old relative.

While out walking a couple of days ago, she fell and badly twisted her ankle. It swelled up immediately and was too painful to bear any weight, so she called a taxi to take her directly to the nearest injury clinic.

On arrival, in considerable pain and still wearing her coat, she had her temperature taken with a forehead scanner. It was - unsurprisingly - ‘slightly above normal’; based on this single reading, she was immediately told that she was a Covid-19 risk and shunted into an ‘isolation room’, where she was left alone for twenty minutes without any medication or ice to relieve the pain - this despite the fact that even government sources admit that temperature testing is unreliable as a method of identifying the disease.

Finally a nurse appeared and, rather than taking a second temperature reading, gave the ankle a cursory look and announced that, because of the Covid risk, it could not be fully examined or treated. The patient should ‘go home immediately, self isolate and order a test online’. The hospital would check to make sure she had done the test; as long as the result was negative, she could return for an x-ray in a week’s time if the swelling had not gone down.

The word she used on the phone to describe the clinic staff was ‘heartless’, without the slightest warmth or compassion; how else could you describe refusing treatment to a woman of 80, in severe pain and unable to walk unaided, and sending her back to an empty house to embark on the complicated process of ordering a Covid test online? To add to the frustration, she took her own temperature after arriving home and found it was quite normal - as a second reading in the clinic would doubtless have shown.

Fortunately she has back-up - not that the nurses bothered to find out; a friend was able to lend her crutches (since the clinic would not) and the Spouse, having ordered the test on her behalf, drove 150 miles to help out and join her in isolation as long as necessary. Now we just have to hope that her ankle is not broken and that it will heal without complications.

And if, in the future, anyone asks this well-mannered and respectable lady whether she will join in applauding our wonderful NHS, I suspect the answer will be unrepeatable.