An excellent hospital, but medics upset by surgery plan

THIS week’s column will be short and mainly sweet.

Why short? Because I can only type with my left hand. And I’m right-handed.

Why sweet? Because it takes the form of a thank you-to all the lovely staff I encountered at Salisbury District Hospital last week.

Why only mainly sweet? Because I subsequently – and quite separately -  learned of an issue at the hospital that deserves a wider public airing.

I went in on Friday for day surgery to remove a large lump from my finger. Not a pleasant prospect, but lots of people have far worse things to contend with.

The nurses on C Ward, though extremely busy, were kind and jolly, and consultant plastic surgeon Kerstin Oestreich and her team were the perfect combination of efficiency and sensitivity.

Being a bit squeamish I couldn’t watch what they were up to, though I wanted to be told.

They put on some music – a bizarre selection ranging from Nessun Dorma to one of those silly but very catchy Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep tunes that haunt people on package holidays - and kept me chatting (not difficult, my husband would say) to distract me.

The lump turned out to be one of those that’s definitely better out than in, and with luck that will be the end of it. It certainly wasn’t a ganglion, which I’d been told previously.

So I’m glad I persevered in getting it looked at again. Pestering overworked doctors can make us feel guilty and apologetic, but we have to trust our instincts.

On the day, 10 out of 10, SDH. And thank you.

Thanks also from my husband, who went to casualty straight after dropping me off, having injured a finger playing volleyball the night before.

It’s now in a splint for eight weeks, leaving us with one undamaged left hand and one right hand between us!

Of course things sometimes go wrong, but overall we are lucky to have such a good hospital, offering such a wide range of expertise, on our doorstep.

I hope that the service received by vascular patients who will have to travel to Bournemouth for major procedures in future will be just as good.

I understand that some medical staff are deeply unhappy about the change, but don’t expect any hint of that to emerge in official statements.    

Wiltshire Council leaders' pay rockets as a fortnight of fireworks distract us

FIREWORKS were ruined for me the day we adopted our first dog.

November 5 and  New Year’s Eve reduced him to a shivering, dribbling wreck, hiding under one of the dresses hanging in my wardrobe.

Thirty-four years later we’re onto our third border collie, and things are even worse.

The poor little fellow is so terrified of the random explosions that plague our parks for a fortnight either side of November 5 that I don’t really like to go out at night and leave him. Fellow pet-owners tell me they have the same problem.

The inability of our police force to actually police our public open spaces during the hours of darkness is disappointing.

And the fact that this yobfest occurs at the same time of year as a great deal of shooting on the estates surrounding the city compounds the problem.

The pops and bangs echoing across the hillsides some days make me reluctant to walk Glen off the lead in case he bolts for home.

Unfortunately we’re in for another dose of (officially sanctioned) pyrotechnics tonight, to mark the switching on of the Christmas lights.

This is a pity, since as an avid Strictly fan I’d rather like to watch Craig Revel Horwood - what a coup for the city council - perform the ceremony.

I hope it launches a super whizz-bang festive season for our traders.

And I hope the investment of their own hard-earned cash in the Business Improvement District (BID) project, starting in the spring, will help to counter the deterrent effect of our parking charges.

Actually, I can think of somewhere I’d like to set off a rocket or two tonight, and that’s up the backsides of the Wiltshire Council leaders who are responsible for those charges and who have just awarded themselves whacking great increases in their own allowances, weeks after voting to make 252 staff redundant.

This selfless devotion to the public interest even raised eyebrows on the Conservative Home website - hardly a hotbed of revolutionary sentiment.

Its blogger Harry Phibbs quoted the Taxpayers' Alliance as saying: "Wiltshire residents have every right to feel badly let down."

If you agree, you might like to know that there's a petition calling on the Trowbridge elite to resign at www.38degrees.org.uk.

Time for a shoppers' revolt in the bagging area

PITY the poor shop assistants who have to man the tills next to those automated checkouts.

Imagine being forced to listen to the phrase “Unauthorised item in bagging area”, delivered in a robotic tone, a hundred times a day. It would drive you demented.

It can only be a matter of time before some hapless employee sues a supermarket, claiming it’s a new form of repetitive strain injury.

These maddening machines are all about the stores saving money by employing fewer people.

As is their kind offer of allowing you to pay at the pump after filling up the car, thereby saving you the huge exertion of walking a dozen steps to the kiosk where you might help keep an attendant in work.

While it might boost the big chains’ profits, this culling of cashiers is bad news for society.

With fewer jobs for unskilled workers, more people on zero-hours or rolling short-term contracts, wages frozen except for the bigwigs (Wiltshire Council, leading by example as usual), and public services such as our hospital laundry flogged off to firms that the unions say will drive down pay and conditions, who do we imagine will be earning enough money to keep our businesses in business in the future?

I try to avoid being bossed about by a machine if there’s an alternative of dealing with a human being.

But I’m aware of subtle ways in which this is being made more awkward.

For instance, the spaces allotted to ‘baskets only’ in our superstores are now so narrow that you can only just fit the basket in lengthways.

And there’s only room for one carrier bag by the till. You have to dump any others on the floor while you rummage for your purse.

Not forgetting your loyalty card, of course. So you feel you’re getting some reward for your trouble, even though you know they’re not really giving anything away, it’s all factored in to their prices.

Most of us put up with being treated like this, but one of the joys of writing this column is that I can grumble if I want to. And increasingly, I do. It must be my age.

I’d like to place an unauthorised item right in the centre of every bagging area in the land. A sledgehammer, wielded by a champion weightlifter.

anneriddle36@gmail.com

Another old-fashioned pub gets an unwanted revamp

MY husband and I rarely go out for a drink.

Without doubt, we consume more wine than is good for us, but mostly at home.

As a result, recycling day is always something of an embarrassment, listening to the clinking and smashing of bottles being tipped into the dustcart. I remember a binman asking me once: “Been having a party?” Sadly, we hadn’t.

Yet I can’t remember the last time the pair of us walked in to a pub without the primary intention of ordering a meal.

When we were younger we often popped in to our local to socialise over a glass or two, and maybe play darts. Not any more.

I think it was having a family that scuppered it. Paying a babysitter made no sense when you could stick the kids in bed and collapse on the sofa with a cheap supermarket plonk. And we didn’t have to argue about whose turn it was to drive.

Nowadays, being middle-aged and boring, we’re more likely to head out to a restaurant, and maybe take a taxi home.

The occasional girls’ night out is a different matter. We do still like to find a civilised pub where we can set up a tab and natter nonstop until they chuck us out.

Sounds like the Anchor and Hope in Winchester Street would have suited us perfectly, had we discovered it in time.

It was touching to read about how much the place meant to its regulars, and how sad they are to lose the landlord and landlady who made it the heart of their little community.

What they are mourning is one of the vanishing breed of no-frills drinkers’ pubs that didn’t mess about with hideously misspelt ‘Pub Fayre’ straight out of the cash-and-carry, but simply offered a genuine, personal welcome.

The owners, Enterprise Inns, say it will be revamped and reopened. They are looking for someone to take on the “business opportunity”.

That’s the trouble, say the regulars. The bean-counters regard it as “just another asset”, and it will lose its soul.

In our increasingly corporate world things seem to go that way, whether it’s ‘cloned’ High Streets, Tesco buying up corner shops, or the plethora of chain restaurants.

Sometimes, I confess, I’m as guilty as the next man of failing to value what we’ve got till it’s gone.