Strange things
Are
you wearing a mask again? Some people are our doctors cover up but patients do
not seem to. It was the same at the hospital where I went for an X-ray
recently.
The X-ray
was to see if my operation was going well (it was). There was a volunteer to
guide the way he was old like me and said by way of being jolly that he did not
need X-rays anymore he just had to stand near the window and the doctor could
see right through him to his bones!
My elderly
sister recently had a health emergency and was rushed to A&E (not in Shropshire)
she was given urgent attention and a bed. But the hours dragged on and went
into the next day and then she was transferred to a seat in a corridor where
she waited five hours. In the end, it was decided that she could go home. Of
course, she was upset and cold. This happened elsewhere to a friend’s elderly
mother too, sitting in a corridor for hours waiting for treatment. This, it
seems can be expected and we need to get used to it.
I
never get used to the kestrel flying over our fields. He seems to have taken
the electricity pole in Oak Meadow as a look out perch in case an unaware vole
scurries by. It is a special sight to me now because kestrels are on the amber
list as their numbers have dropped over the years. Late yesterday when I was on
our lane, I saw one swoop over our field, Goose Bottom, and onto the pole and
then through the open window into our old bird hide cum summer house in the corner.
I saw his gingery back and his sharp pointed wings. Then today Mr T found a
small pellet on the window ledge. The kestrel must have been roosting here at
night and regurgitated the pellet. It is full of the remains of creatures it
has eaten. This one has fur and a lot of little white bones.
We
went again to the nature reserve near Welshpool just over the Shropshire border
to see the wildlife there. To my surprise the water level has risen and the
little island in front of the hide is completely submerged. It was dusk and I
had gone to see the birds roosting safely on the island. But there were no
lapwings swooping in with their distinctive blunt wings. There were instead murmurings
of starlings dramatically changing shape like whisps of dark smoke in the wind.
And there were warnings of bird flu which hasn’t gone away just like our COVID.
(Taken from my column in the Shropshire Star)
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