I'll Explain It All Then

Listening to I Often Dream Of Trains by Robyn Hitchcock

Black and White Frenzy this week - watched The Day The Earth Stood Still with my daughter and she was hooked despite it being not quite as full of CGI as she was imagining. She is most pleased with herself that she found out before me that it has been remade and is due to be released in May. It seems a bit sad to criticise Keanu Reeves (Klaatu in the new version) simply because he is not Michael Rennie. Like .. Barada Nikto Dude!Anyway we shall see. Looking forward to it. We watched Control the same night and bleak it was but then again I knew that - didn't you? The cast as band was uncanny - like being there or watching all those iconic shots of them - Hooky fiddling with his amp etc - suddenly start moving. Excellent Movie!

Whistled through In Stitches by Dr. Nick Edwards (another great book from The Friday Project - you should also read Reynolds' book as well - they are both online for free I think if you really want to do them out of the royalties). Everywhere we are defined by "targets" these days - arbitrary gifts to jobsworths, giving them both a reason for living and a get-out clause for any questioning that they might come up against. The four-hour target for A&E patients seems to be the beginning and then end of some politicians understanding of what goes on after a major trauma. If a medic is dragged away from the bleeding edge in order to explain why some patient went over the four-hour limit then that is wrong. Situations are complex as Dr. Edwards often observes in his book - and horror - some managers do actually know what they are doing and why they are doing it - but if your salary/bonus depends on a four hour target then somewhere along the line someone has died because of it. I'm not going to explain the complexities of my assertion but I know it is true and any decent five minutes of contemplation would clarify the truth of it to anyone. Read the book and understand more. I like to think I produce something that is useful in some way and though what I produce is nowhere near as important as diagnosing - on a hunch - the fact that someone has a brain tumour just because they say that playing the piano feels weird (Dr. Edwards' finest hour perhaps) I sometimes think that my line of work is just as limited by targets and documentation that no one ever reads as any public-sector operation.

I want to write another poem but I seem to be fresh out of verse. I am at last keeping a consistent and detailed notebook though most of it is absolute rubbish. I am contemplating scanning it as a rough guide to what goes on here but apart from the poetry, most of the scrawl is not related to this writing. It might be visually interesting I suppose - I love detailed notes even if they mean nothing. I would really like to be able to draw properly like my dad but I just can't - I was described as "a fair draughtsman" in the art section of my report card which was probably down to my obsession with technical drawings of bionic arms. I gave up TD before O Level and I was quite glad because even the best work for O-level looked v. poor to me - smudgy and inexact. Remember - Gurls hav difrent standards of behaviour in Klass.