A hospital visit yesterday for 90 minutes of tests on my eyes. Actually most of the time was spent in the waiting room between tests, where I sat with a dozen elderly patients watching the TV provided for us.
First programme: "Doctors" - a medical soap-opera, which is to say a soap opera set among doctors who are too busy having complex lovelives to practice medicine.
Followed by: "Diagnosis Murder" - a medical detective show, which is to say a murder mystery where the detective is a medical doctor. He's too busy finding criminals - in this case a murdering writer of bad medical murder mysteries - to practice medicine.
I was all set for an episode of "The Young Doctors", "Doctor Killdare", "Saint Elsewhere", "Doogie Howser MD" or even "Quincy" next, but disappointingly it was "The Chuckle Brothers". Though one of the patients in the room was a Mrs "House".
Anyway, the good news is I don't have glaucoma. The bad news is my astigmatism is getting worse. So if I walk into a lamppost, it'll be because of blurred vision, not floating black spots.
In one of those odd coincidences, I found my long lost spectacles later.
In the evening, I dropped into a meeting of PCAN - Portsmouth Climate Action Network - a group of 25+ people of various ecological stripes, discussing ways ordinary people can reduce their impact on the environment.
There was a powerpoint presentation from someone promoting a voluntary scheme whereby each household is paid to reduce it's carbon footprint, or pays to increase it. There was much appreciative nodding at this from those members who live in houses with good insulation and double glazing. Apparantly poor people who live in rotten houses don't understand how irresponsible they're being.
There was one lady who expressed her fury that electricity was being used to run the laptop and projector for the presentation. She didn't seem to mind the lights or heating. Or the pollution produced by the industry that made the laptop.
Much of the discussion was over a proposal to attract more members by holding a public barbeque. The vegan members insisted it be a meatless barbeque, while everyone else said only vegans would come if there was no meat - and the point was to attract everyone. The argument was long, and is still unresolved. And they didn't get around to discussing a date and venue.
I suppose if we're going to change the world we'll need the help of the idiots. But only if we can stop them behaving like idiots.
Waking at six in the morning, I spent 2 hours writing a Valentine's Day short story. More on that, plus the story itself, in the next post.
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Couldn't the BBQ feature both vegan and other fare?
ReplyDeleteOy. Small steps people.
That was the compromise suggested several times. But it seems some of the vegans wanted it to be a completely meat free zone.
ReplyDeleteThey remind me of those revolutionaries who don't want to campaign (say) against racism, preferring to somehow jump to uniting the entire working class against the capitalists.
They want to be part of a movement without having to build the movement first.