Yesterday I went out to lunch with an old friend. We usually celebrate each other’s birthdays with lunch in a local restaurant. Neither of us can manage my actual birthday this year for various reason so we did it a couple of days early. The restaurant is only a hundred yards or so from my house so I didn’t have far to go. Nonetheless I was almost blown away and washed away as Storm Isha lashed down on us.
Overnight, Storm Jocelyn woke me up several times howling round the top of the house. If storms follow so closely on one another, can they really be considered separate storms? Is Jocelyn not simply a continuation of Isha, a second wave as it were? I look back at the recent spell of icy cold, but bright and clear, weather almost with nostalgia. It seems as if it were a brief interlude of calm between sets of storms. When we walked out on the snowy footpaths on those bright days at least there was always the chance of feeling the sunshine on our backs and a bit of warmth in sheltered places. This stormy weather is almost permanently grey - in a variety of shades!
Having said all that, I have hung washing on the line in the garden today to get blown around a little, rather than draping it all over the house. The weather app promises a 0% chance of rain so I reckon it’s worth giving the wind a chance to dry my sheets, even if only partially.
We have recently filled in forms and handed them in at our GP’s surgery, requesting access to our medical records. These records have all been digitised, apparently, but unless you fill in a form you can’t have automatic access. There might be details in your records that could upset you!
Now, on the subject of medical records, patients’ data cannot be disclosed without their consent by law. Healthcare workers can breach confidentiality rules to give information to the police about possible crimes only if it is deemed to be in the public interest. However, since 2022, I read that at least six women have been taken to court and dozens have been investigated for allegedly ending their pregnancy outside the legal requirements covering abortion. In the previous 20 years, three women were prosecuted.
But it seems that new guidance from the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG) will say it is never in the public interest to report women who have abortions to law enforcement agencies, and medical staff in the UK are being advised that they should should not report women to the police if they believe their patients may have illegally ended their own pregnancy. Some of those women investigated will have had a miscarriage, others may have misjudged how far advanced their unplanned, unwanted pregnancy was and gone beyond the legal limit. All will have been traumatised to a greater or lesser extent by the whole procedure. It seems right to me that busybodies should not be reporting them to the police; we do not live in the Republic of Gilead!
Here’s a link to an odd tale about automatic, digitised checking going wrong. The 85 year old retired teacher in question was asked not once but three times to let her pension provider know she was still alive, and then found that her pension had not been paid just before Christmas. Her details had been matched to a genuinely deceased person, presumably of the same name. Fortunately she had savings and so was not left penniless while it was sorted out. Hers must not be the only such case though - keep checking your bank accounts, people!
Such are the vagaries of modern life.
Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!
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