“A test of a people is how it behaves toward the old." - Abraham J Heschel

It has been a very difficult few days. On Sunday lunchtime I had a frantic phone call from my step father, my mum had blacked out and fallen on the kitchen floor badly cutting head open - I have never seen so much blood! He had already called an ambulance and I dashed to their house (in a village about 6 miles away) to be with my mum. As I ran down the lane to their house I realised that there was no ambulance there and I assumed that my mum must be already on her way to hospital. When I opened the front door I realised that I was wrong, my mum was sitting on the floor propped against the kitchen units holding a blood soaked towel against her head. The kitchen floor was covered in blood and my step father (who is terminally ill) was standing there ashen faced looking totally helpless.

I did my best to make my mum comfortable and then I rushed around getting everything ready for a trip to the hospital. The ambulance control had told them to leave mum on the floor and to leave the blood as it was. We waited and waited but no ambulance came. After an hour I spoke to the ambulance control they still insisted that I should not move her and they said they would make mum a high priority and an ambulance would be there soon. I told them that I needed to clean up the blood as it was making it impossible to move around the kitchen to look after mum, and when I got off the phone I cleaned the floor. Still no ambulance came and I was very worried about my mum's condition, so I called my brother (who lives in a different county) he came with his car and between us we got mum up (she was very wobbly) put her into the car and took her to the hospital. By the time we left her house we had waited two and a half hours for an ambulance!

At the hospital her condition was taken very seriously, they said her pulse was dangerously low and she was kept on close observation in the resuscitation area. She is still in hospital, they think she may need a pacemaker, but they are still doing tests. I am disgusted that a woman who is over 80 can be left to wait so long for emergency medical care. We will be making a formal complaint, but our first priority is to look after mum.

A Railway Rant

Robbie has been really struggling mobility wise recently, in fact at the end of last week he was so bad that he simply couldn't make it to work and he had to work from home. This week it has been a real struggle for him but he has got himself to work. At times like this he has to plan his journey even more carefully than usual, making sure that he travels on a train that gives him more leg room and planning his return journey so that it works well with his bus connections and does not involve an excessive amount of standing around in the the cold. 


Yesterday his train home was running on time, but it was delayed at Rugby to allow a freight train that was running late to go ahead of the passenger train. This caused great inconvenience to the passengers as the train arrived at Northampton 12 minutes late. Meaning that Robbie missed his bus - and at that time in the evening buses are not very frequent. He was forced to walk to the bus station, a long walk when you are in pain, all up hill, and just to make matters worse it was freezing cold and raining heavily. By this time he had missed his connecting bus too, so he had a long cold wait at the bus station. It was passed 9.30pm when he eventually got home, and by then he was in agony.


Unfortunately this issue of a passenger train being delayed at Rugby in favour of a late freight train is a frequent problem for passengers. Robbie expressed his frustration (rather mildly in the circumstances) on facebook. He was met with a barrage of criticism from one person who works for a company which until now I have trusted and respected. Among his various unhelpful comments was a suggestion that Robbie should just put up with it and that he detested passengers claiming compensation because it takes money out of the railways. He also said 'thats the joy of public transport' and 'if you don't like it get a car' I was staggered by his attitude, it makes me wonder how many other people think like that. It certainly makes me wonder if the company he works for shares his lack of respect for passengers! Passengers have paid for a service and they should complain when things go wrong, especially if the same problem happens often. It is the only way to make rail operators understand how much inconvenience it causes and hopefully this in turn will lead to better service. It really isn't about compensation, nothing could compensate for such a miserable end to Robbie's day. If a train is delayed by a tragedy or by problems arising from bad weather that's one thing, and most passengers would be understanding about that, but to deliberately delay a passenger train that was running on time to accommodate a late running freight train has to be wrong. 


I understand that the railway has many customers and freight companies need to make a living too, but whatever the rules say, it is not unreasonable for passengers to expect their trains to be punctual and to expect that consideration will be given to their needs.  

Unbelieveable!

Just when I think I understand Robbie he does something totally weird and it leaves me feeling that I will never really see the world through his eyes. Yesterday as we were relaxing on the train, he announced that he'd had to make a serious complaint and he was very annoyed that he hadn't had a reply yet. I thought that he was perhaps talking about a railway safety issue or something like that but I was wrong. His complaint was about McDonalds in Birmingham, apparently they are not building their sausage and egg bagels to the correct specification! It wouldn't bother me a jot because I don't like McDonalds food, but apparently Robbie has provided them with a list of times and dates when he was sold incorrectly built breakfast bagels! Surely he must have more important things to worry about, in fact surely he could find better things to spend his money on!

Fighting a Losing Battle

Sometimes I feel that I am fighting a losing battle, every day I do several loads of washing but we appear to have a self filling laundry basket and however much I do there is still more waiting. There is an unwritten rule that any money that turns up in the washing pile goes into my money jar. Usually it is the odd coin from Sam's pocket (why do boys trousers have so many pockets these days?) but on Sunday I found that Robbie had decided to go one step further in the money laundering stakes. He had left a £5 note in his shirt pocket and it emerged from the washing machine damp but intact, I wasn't allowed to keep it for my jar, but at least it didn't stain the shirt.

On the subject of laundry, Robbie hasn't adapted well to doing his own ironing, in fact on several occasions I have come down to be confronted by a vision of Homer Simpson in his pants busy ironing a shirt – it is not the best start to the day! I think a week of doing his own shirts has made him more appreciative. I spoke to him about it at the weekend and he squirmed when I reminded him what he had said the week before. I decided to give him another chance as far as the ironing is concerned, but if he complains again I will starch his smalls!

Bureaucracy gone mad! 29.08.07

I have spent the evening writing a strong letter to the Mutual Society that provided the savings plans we have paid into over the years so that the children would have a little money to help them through university. One of Emily's plans has matured and I have had to wage war with the company because they are insisting that they will only deal with my late husband as he was the first named adult on the policy. They have been happy enough to take my money all this time but they need him to sign on the dotted line, provide proof identity and have the money paid into his account. Despite various letters and phone calls we are no further forward, hence the stroppy letter. I have provided his death certificate twice, I would have thought that was fairly conclusive evidence of death but they are not convinced. It is so frustrating!!

It is not the first time that I have struggled to get things altered. Having had proof of death the tax office addressed a letter to The Late Mr J...., insisting that he had to complete and sign his tax return before they could finalise his tax affairs. My solicitor wrote to them in a rather more animated letter than the usual dull legal jargon! It took me over 3 years to get the TV licence transferred into my name, I can't understand why it is so complicated, after all it is a situation that they must come across quite frequently. I couldn't help laughing when our telephone provider had been especially helpful in sorting everything out and then spoiled it by writing to my late husband to thank him for informing them of his death and inviting him to view his bill online in future!

Back to the present, Robbie was back at work today after the holiday, he had to get up at 5.15am as there was no direct rail route to Birmingham today. He had worked out a contorted route in order to avoid the replacement coaches which take forever to get there. I was not at my best at 5.15am and I think Robbie was rather glad to escape! He was a bit late home because of ongoing travel complications and he was a bit disheartened because his MD has 'gone over to the dark side'. I can't blame him, I think given the choice most employees would rather work for Virgin than Arriva even if that means working for Virgin West Coast. A couple of other senior managers are leaving too, Robbie will be sad to see them go and he is worried about the loss of knowledge and leadership when the CrossCountry franchise transfers to Arriva in November.