A Fine Line

19 Replies

Great Tit feeding young

There’s a very fine line between getting arrested and not getting arrested when you speak to a strange woman on the phone and describe your genitalia, and its problems, to her. That fine line depends on whether she is a doctor or not. And even then you would be wise to ring during working hours. At 3am, for instance, it is less acceptable.

Even then I came off the phone wondering if I should have been quite as informative, as we had never been properly introduced.

Blue Tit

Yes, I rang the surgery this morning. At 8am I was Number 17 in the queue. It seems they have started opening at 7.30. I’d have tried earlier if I’d known. I was in the queue for 20 minutes and got through to a receptionist, who informed me that there were no more appointments available today. However, she did say, after listening to my story, that she would arrange for a phone appointment later that morning. So I went back to bed. A week of disturbed sleep had left me exhausted. Last night, for instance, I was up more than once an hour as my bladder sprang into action on a regular basis. I say “action” as it’s part of the expression. In truth there was just about enough action to stop me exploding but not enough to empty properly.

The doctor rang at 11ish and proved to be a very good doctor. She listened to the full story and quickly grasped the essentials (no that wasn’t meant to be a double entendre but I’ll leave it there as it seems too good to lose). I have another week off work as it is impractical to work in  a shop whilst having dodgy bladder control, so I no longer feel guilty about being absent. I also have a referral to Urology, albeit with a note about ringing them if I haven’t heard from them by 22nd December.

Great Tit at Rufford Abbey

To be fair, two months is pretty good compared to some of the old waiting lists we used to have.

In the 1920s, before the NHS, one of my Uncles was born with learning difficulties. The doctor’s bill for his early care was equivalent of two year’s wages for my grandfather. This, was the Land Fit for Heroes that Lloyd George had promised. Despite this start my uncle grew up to be a man much admired in the local community for his great good humour and work ethic.

Marsh Tit at Rufford Abbey

My mother, in the late 1960s, (the Golden Years, if you listen to people going on about the Good Old Days) came close to death as she waited patiently for an operation on  a goitre. It seems it had grown so large that it could have suffocated her in her sleep. This was, apparently her fault, though how she was supposed to know was never explained.

I’m obviously not happy about fifteen hours spent waiting in A&E, but compared to previous generations I’m not doing so bad.

Feeding tits at Budby Flash

It’s birds again today. Birds are calming, though they illustrate another fine line. I typed “tits” into the search box. I once got into serious trouble with Julia about doing that until I showed her the pictures. You would think they would either Americanise it, as with so many things, to chickadee or go back to titmouse, which was what they were called prior to the Great War.

19 thoughts on “A Fine Line”

  2. tootlepedal

    You have all my sympathy. I am pleased that you got to speak to a doctor even if you weren’t allowed to meet one.
    I occasionally use the speech to text facility offered by Microsoft when compiling the blog and it seems that I have a lot of t*** visiting my bird feeder. Considering they are quite happy to let unstable people wander around with machine guns, the Americans seem very squeamish sometimes.

    Reply ↓
    1. quercuscommunity Post author

      Yes, we had a similar censorship issue on the rugby club forum, which encouraged a lot of words like institute and destitute because it amused the forwards. At the risk of compromising my reputation for good manners, I have to note that this all came to a head when the U16s played Scunthorpe in the NLD Cup.

      Reply ↓
      1. quercuscommunity Post author

        That is the truth. I looked up President Biden today (I was interested in his Irishness and anti-British stance) and found his Irish ancestors landed in the USA 170 years before he became president. His grandmother, who formed his ideas with her stories of English repression, was the second generation of the family to be born in the USA.
        Just an example of how things filter down the generations and influence the modern world.

      2. Lavinia Ross

        I wasn’t aware he had one, but I try to avoid the news any more than what I feel I have to. My only hope is that whomever is in power is capable of governing for the general good. Don’t forget, it is the people that elect the politicians. Politics seems more like a gladiator sport these days.

      3. quercuscommunity Post author

        I’m not sure why anyone would want to be a politician these days with the way they get treated. The good ones leave an the ambitious and greedy seem to remain. No matter how bad Trump was, he was no worse, to be honest, than Boris Johnson, who was the worst politician, with the worst crew of cronies, we have ever had..

  4. arlingwoman

    You’re having a run of difficulties, it seems. I hope it looks up soon, and appreciate the discussion of the UK shorthand, tits, applied to birds that look nothing like titmice or chickadees here. Are they small, and do they have other common names?

    Reply ↓
    1. quercuscommunity Post author

      The long-tailed tits are also called bumbarrels in old country books but apart from that I hve some early books that favour titmouse and that seems to be all. I will look iy up.

      Reply ↓
      2. quercuscommunity Post author

        Thank you. That’s a great article. I did ctually remember a few of the other names when I saw them _ I’m just not firing on all cylinders. I think I have covered Clare in a post, probably in connection to Red Kites. He used a different name for them too and I an’t recall it. He was my local poet when I grew up and I was in Clare House when I was at school. A shepherd who gained great celebrity and died in a lunatic asylum.

      3. arlingwoman

        There was a big article on Clare once in the TLS–he wasn’t in my English Lit courses in school, but was very interesting to read about. As for the birds, they seem closer to what we’d call finches, warblers, or flycatchers–tiny birds that flit among the trees. Will check out your link.

      5. arlingwoman

        That’s what I needed! We don’t have those, though our chickadees and titmice are Parus (hudsonicus, atricapillus, and bicolor). Only Parus hudsonicus or Boreal Chickadee (maybe this is the grey headed one) populates across North America from Alaska to Newfoundland, thereby possibly getting close to Russia. It’s good to use the Latin names with plants and birds alike, I guess!!!

      6. quercuscommunity Post author

        Parus cinctus, now renamed as Poecile cinctus is the grey-headed chickadee – “the rarest and most poorly known of the chickadees” according to Audubon.
        https://www.audubon.org/field-guide/bird/gray-headed-chickadee
        Seems like you would have to be determined, lucky and probably trained by Special Forces to find one in Alaska.
        Probably made even harder to identify because it has no grey on its head.
        https://www.audubon.org/field-guide/bird/gray-headed-chickadee

        This is a good article too.
        https://www.audubon.org/news/birdist-rule-71-figure-out-what-kind-chickadees-youve-got

        So much more complicated in America than the UK!

Leave a Reply to quercuscommunityCancel reply