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Southampton General Hospital

Well the Cayman Islands bound daughter boarded her flight and zoomed off across the atlantic on wednesday, so the blog reverts to being also news from the UK for her. Well the first piece of news is that the weather has turned. Tonight it is only 9pm but freezing fog is already dancing down upon our road. This morning we were greeted by frost all over the fields behind us. Yesterday was spent mostly in or near Southampton. a visit to Southampton General hospital is always a curious affair. Firstly one is greeted by a queue to get into an exhorbitantly priced car park, that proudly states just where you enter that if you are stopped here there is a 60 minute wait. Also unusual but necessary is that on the very top floor of the car park is an air ambulance in bright yellow. As one walks into the main entrance the first thing to notice is that there are more shops than in many high streets. Not only newsagents and the suchlike, but clothes shops. The first shop however is a solicitors and the NHS wonders why it has so many claims against them? Healthy eating? No sign of that. Burger King, Costa Coffee ( cost a lot 1.90 for a really inedible cup of black coffee ) and some sandwich type shop. But the most curious thing was a queue of young parents mainly, all with children in prams or pushchairs all queueing to get into the childrens orthopaedic outpatients. The queue stretched almost 50 yards and was creating chaos in the corridors.

I had a decent meeting there with a rheumatologist with whom it would be good to do work, then a drive back to Hartney Wintney, a little Hampshire village just off the M3, where a dinner with my colleagues was held in an Italian restaurant called Mama Mia. Nice dinner and nice food. The place was packed, not bad for a thursday evening.