Rainbow in Rock at The Cavern (13 Dec 24)

Rainbow in Rock are my favourite pub band by quite a large margin; my second favourite pub band is Memento which is the same musicians but with a different set list.

The Cavern in Raynes Park is regular venue for them and I get there to see them whenever I can, which is a few times a year things like health permitting. Raynes Park is a doddle to get to by bus and/or walking which helps. It also helps that they sell Wimbledon Brewery's Copper Leaf red ale.

I got their in good time and started the evening close to the band with a pillar behind me.  That position gave me an uninterrupted view allowing me to take this photo. I deliberately took it during one of the quieter moments, Catch the Rainbow from the 1975 album Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow by Rainbow - you can see where the band got their name from.

Rainbow in Rock play a wide range of Deep Purple and Rainbow songs nd they delight in choosing some of the more obscure ones while leaving out obvious songs like Smoke on the Water and Highway Star. Every Rainbow in Rock gig is different.

There is one ritual that they are keeping to, for the moment at least, and that is to end the first half with Child in Time and the second with Rainbow Rising. And long may they continue to do so.

A day of walking

I had little option other than to walk all day and so I chose a good way to do it.

I had to be at St George's Hospital in Tooting for 10:20 and at a bar in West Hampstead at 6pm which meant I either had to waste time getting home then going out again or I could simply walk an elongated route in the time available.

And getting to St George's meant two short walks of around half an hour first from home to Norbiton Station then from Wimbledon Station to the hospital. By the time I started the main walk I had done about 6km.

The walk from St George's to West Hampstead was dictated by CityStrides and was in two parts. Firstly it was long straight roads in areas I rarely walk south of the river then lots of meandering north of the river where I have walked many times and was looking to tick off as many new roads as possible.

I had no specific route in mind, other then to keep heading vaguely north but not to do so too quickly, and I used the CityStrides app to plan each 10 to 15 minute segment by looking at the roads ahead and seeing which ones I had not walked before, conveniently shown on the map as a series of red dots that I needed to walk through.

Choosing the route this way took me though some interesting places mostly, as you can probably guess from the map, quite well to do ones and I do like looking at grand buildings (even if the wealth they represent came from exploitation and theft, as all wealth does).

There was also plenty of other interesting things to see, particularly street art. I was walking not sight-seeing and the only thing I stopped to photograph was this stunning art. This is only part of the black and white drawing which extends a fair way to the left.

I had two breaks along the way, a superb brunch at Reyes a little north of Clapham Junction and a fair coffee and cake at Toast Cafe in Little Venice.

 

I kept an eye on the remaining distance to West Hampstead so I knew with some certainty how long it would take me to get there and I duly arrived just before 6pm for a well deserved pint in the recently refurbished The Railway. I had a further four pints later in Bohemia House at the monthly BCSA Get to Know You Social, my reason for going to West Hampstead in the first place.

The statistics do not really tell the story but, for the record, the walk was 35km and took me something over 7 hours, including breaks. I deserved those beers!

Parks and more

We had a rough plan for this walk, which we built on successfully.

The plan was my usual walking companion's idea and, not surprisingly, that included some parks; this time it was Holland, Hyde, Regents and Primrose.

Starting at Earls Court meant the ritual of waiting for the barriers to open at Richmond Station at 8:57 and joining the swarm of old people using our 60+ Oyster Cards at the earliest opportunity.

From Earls Court is was more or less straight north to Holland Park with a slight detour on the way to take in a new road for my CityStrides LifeMap.

I wanted to take in some new roads in Notting Hill on the way to Hyde Park but that would have meant more hills which my companions, quite reasonably, objected to.

We took an unusually simple route across the top of Hyde Park simply to avoid as much traffic as we could and also the Hyde Park Winter Wonderland!

The transition from Hyde Park to Regents Park is a confusion of choices with most of Fitzrovia laid out in a grid and with no clear best route. So we did the only sensible thing and hit as many new roads as we could! Of course these were all roads that we had walked only not when mapping the route.

Regents Park was something as a failure as Broad Walk Cafe was closed for substantial refurbishment. Luckily we had a Plan B.  

While avoiding hills is generally a good idea it is impossible to go to Regents Park and not climb Primrose Hill. The view their is always worth seeing because of all the notable landmarks but I was surprised to see so few cranes and the few that were there were all clustered in the Far East (Tower Hamlets?).

Plan B was to have coffee in cake in Alma jst to the north of Primrose Hill. We had discovered it on a previous walk and knew that it was good.

I had expected that to be more or less the end of the walk as, when he suggested the plan, my companion said he wanted a shortish walk but over coffee he said that he was good for another hour or so which meant that we could walk back all the way to Waterloo.

Overall we walked 19km in 4 hours (including the coffee break) which was a pretty fine start to the day.

National March for Palestine (30 Nov 24)

Four weeks after the last National March for Palestine I was back in Central London for yet another one.

This time we assembled in Park Lane before moving along Piccadilly to Eros, down Haymarket to Trafalgar Square then back along Whitehall for the final rally. A fairly short route but the roads were narrow in a couple of places and corners always slow things down and so it took me the best part of two hours to complete the route.

Another reason for the slowness is that I was marching with (or rather behind) a Socialist Workers Party group and they know how to maximise visibility of their banners through walking slowly and leaving a space in front of them, space for the people with the megaphones to lead the chanting from.

The good news was that in the intervening four weeks the the International Criminal Court (ICC) had issued arrest warrants for Israel’s prime minister (Benjamin Netanyahu) and former defence minister (Yoav Gallant) but the depressing news was that had made no difference to the UK Government which remained committed to supporting genocide and war crimes by, amongst other things, supplying Israel with weaponry.

That attitude of our Government means that I fully expect to be marching again before too long.

Parlour Song at Golden Goose Theatre

For various reasons, including not working in Central London anymore, I do not go to the theatre as much as I used to and it is always good to have a solid excuse to get back to one of the smaller theatres and that excuse came with a Jez Butterworth play at Golden Goose Theatre.

I am not necessarily a big Butterworth fan and the final push to see this came from having seen his The River recently (at Greenwich Theatre) and loving it.

It was also good to be able to go back to Golden Goose Theatre in Camberwell (probably) which I had only been to once before.

Oddly, I have been to both Greenwich Theatre and Golden Goose Theatre just twice (so far!) and in both cases it was first to see a Philip Ridley play and then to see one by Jez Butterworth.

Small theatres are kind to the pocket and my (unallocated) seat cost just £17. I could actually have paid less but I declined the old person's concession to support the theatre.

First I had to get there and find somewhere to eat.

Getting there was the easy part with a bus to Norbiton Station, a train to Vauxhall and a pleasant walk of about half an hour down to the theatre.

A quick look at a map beforehand suggested there was an Indian restaurant a little further along the Camberwell New Road so I went for that. I arrived at New Dewaniam just as they were opening (6pm) and was ushered into a large comfortable room. This was something of a find as the food was excellent and a little unusual, e.g. I had a pumpkin dish, and the service was friendly and attentive. I do not often find myself in Camberwell but if it happens agaain I know where to go to eat.

Golen Goose Theatre is a little odd in that it is quite integrated into the pub of the same name and the waiting area for the theatre is, I presume, the former lounge bar of the pub.

It had been a couple of years since my last visit there and I was impressed that Executive Director Michael Kingsbury remembered me, admittedly I had also known him at the nearby White Bear Theatre and had spoken to him a few times before.

The theatre was laid out differently from how I remembered it, though that could have been a false memory, with three rows of raked seats on three sides of the performance area. I was one of the first in and was able to grab a seat towards the middle of the front row, always my preferred location in small venues.

The backdrop was a plain sheet and the prop looked like a couple of crates inside of which were two men. The crates were some sort of Ikea magic and they were reassembled as other things and moved several times during the performance. They were the sole prop which suited my love of simplicity.

This was the story of two men, neighbours in an estate on the edge of town (good views of the motorway) and the wife of one of them, One of the men, Ned, works in demolition and the play starts with him showing videos of some of his projects to his neighbour, Dale, who has seen them all before.

From there the play flows in several directions that include familiar domestic issues to the surreal disappearance of objects. Ned's wife, Joy, appears to lead the story to other places. Their relationships go through cycles of constructions and deconstructions echoed by the props. These cycles have no clear beginning or ending and so the play ends, just as it started, with a nondescript moment. And this is fine.

Parlour Song is an interesting and entertaining view inside three fairly ordinary lives that occasionally collide in unusual ways.

Trashfuture live (24 Nov 24)

Thanks to my sons' insistence, I have been listening to the Trashfuture podcast for a little while now and also thanks to them I went to see them live for a second time. And as with last November, the whole family was there to celebrate our eldest son's birthday.

But first we had to have a pizza and Franco Manca in The Cut did the job. It's far from the most exciting menu in the world but we have simple tastes and we went for options 1, 2 (twice) and 3. We are easy to please!

Between The Bridges is an odd venue, little more than a marquee with benches, and the being a liminal area between inside and outside meant that it was okay, and necessary, to keep your coat on. On a more positive note, they sold reasonable beer.

At the previous Trashfuture live event the main man, Riley (far left), was sick and November had to lead the show and this time she was ill and another podcast stalwart, Devon, had to fill in. In other words, the people in the poster were not those presenting the show but that is just a statement for the record, it made no material difference.

For almost ninety minutes Riley led us through the Boris Johnson magus opus Unleashed. The Trashfuture crowd are intelligent, which is rather the point of the podcast, and this was an analytical takedown of Johnson as well as a funny one. Two big points were that Johnson used the book to hit back at everyone who every slighted him and all the things that went wrong were someone else's fault even if that fault amounted to not stopping him from being stupid.

Of course there was a great deal more to the discussion than that and the observations and jokes came thick and fast, so much so that it warrants a second listen and I am hoping, as I did last year, that the live event comes out as a free episode.

Memento at The Cavern (23 Nov 24)

Fates had conspired against me for much of 2024 and I had missed a few Memento gigs through things like double-booking and illness so it was great to be able to see them again at, what has become. the usual venue, The Cavern in Raynes Park.

It was also great to get my timing right, for once, and to arrive at the pub just before the band started playing.

The pub had changed it beers since my last visit but that was okay as the beer that I went for was good and soI had a few of them. The new beer was complimented by old friends and acquaintances and the pub had a very welcoming and convivial atmosphere. 

Memento started playing just after 9 and finished soon after 11 with just a short break in the middle. Along the way they played their usual mix of rock (Kashmir) and heavier pop (Love Is Like Oxygen) songs, including a couple by Uriah Heep which is always a good idea.

Memento know both how to play these songs and how to put them together into a consistently exciting set, and that made for a great evening. Again.

The Forsyte Saga at Park Theatre

Like many people my age, The Forsyte Saga burst into my life with the late 60s serialisation on BBC 1 staring, amongst others, Eric Porter, Nyree Dawn Porter and Susan Hampshire. It made a big impression then and that was reinforced with another good adaptation on BBC Radio in 2017. I love the sweep of the drama over generations and the way that the many characters interact.

So when Park Theatre put on a version I was obviously interested.

There was a slight complication in that the saga was told over two separate plays, Part 1: Irene and Part 2: Fleur. It made sense, given the travel time to Finsbury Park, to see them on the same day which meant a Thursday or a Saturday and it was Thursday that won that battle.

The Forsyte Saga was selling very well limiting my options further and I settled for a seat in the Circle and got E12 for both performances. For some reason Part 1 cost £31.5 and Part 2 was £35.55.

First I had to get there and find somewhere for lunch, both of which proved to be very easy; National Rail and Victoria Line did the first part and Frame did the second. Frame was newish to the area and is now my designated pre-theatre restaurant for Park Theatre.

The view of the stage from my seat was good, i.e. I could easily see all of it.

The set at the start was promising too with just four chairs on stage, and that was about as far as it got. The story worked well on radio so there was no reason for it not to work well on a stage with very few props.

Depending on how you look at it (and I wish that I hadn't looked!), the story of the Forsytes is 3, 5 or 11 books, and the famous TV series was 26 episodes so a five hour adaptation had to leave an awful lot uncovered and unsaid. 

It did that by focussing on two characters, Irene and Fleur. These are from two generations with Fleur being Irene's step daughter (from her first husband, Soames', second marriage). That curtailed both the length and breadth of the story but you would only know that if you had heard the full story before, as two plays these were complete in themselves.

That story was a simple(!) one of a rich family with lots of members living the lives expected of them (country houses, operas, etc.) with those lives complicated by relationships.

I do now know if it was a deliberate feature of the adaptation or me completely misreading it but I felt that Soames came out of this quite well while both Irene and Fleur (particularly Fleur) came across as a bit flighty and fickle. Of course there was a major incident (no spoilers) which goes against this narrative but that was not dwelt on greatly and, while not forgiving Soames at all, was over a century ago when things were very different (it only became illegal in 1991).

With a large family and a modestly sized cast many actors played several roles and that worked very well, as it always does with good actors. Only checking the cast list now I realise that I had seen several of them on stage before, e.g. Flora Spencer-Longhurst (Fleur) was in The Real Thing at Rose Theatre and Nigel Hastings (James and Jo) was in  And Then Come the Nightjars  at Theatre503. Also Michael Lumsden (six roles) has been in The Archers for 25 years and it is always nice to catch one of them live.

The strength of the play was in its convoluted story and this was significantly enhanced by the very clever staging, particularly the intricate movement that let the story move from scene to scene smoothly to create a continuous narrative.

It is easy to say that I cannot find fault, not even the littlest, with The Forsyte Saga but it was far more than just faultless, it was excellent theatre and very easy to recommend to any one who likes theatre or stories.

Filumena at Richmond Theatre

This was one of those occasions where I knew nothing about the play or the playwright but the synopsis sounded fun and it starred two names, both of whom I had previously seen on stage a few times, so I was happy to book. Somebody beat me to my usual seats so I had to book at the other end of the front row of the Dress Circle where seat A2 cost a modest £35 with my ATG+ Opening Night Offer.

Going to Richmond Theatre is a habit and so is going to Wagamama beforehand to eat a tofu firecracker and drink a large positive juice.

 

The synopsis set the scene: "Filumena Marturano lies on her deathbed, waiting to marry the man who has kept her as his mistress for twenty-five years. No sooner than they are married, she makes a miraculous recovery, much to the surprise of her new, unwilling husband and his younger lover!" and at the start of the play that had already happened, the story went from there.

It was a gentle story that revealed more of the characters' past and their hopes for the future, with a few surprises along the way. A character driven drama like Filumena needs believable characters and good actors to bring them to life, and this had both.

Filumena was never going to be anything other than a BBC early evening drama, and it did not pretend to be. The production knew what the play is all about and how to make it work which made for an entertaining evening.

Walking 35km to West Hampstead

This was a variation on a theme but it has never worked so well before!

The simple aim was to get to West Hampstead around 6pm for the monthly BCSA Get to Know You social taking as many steps as possible. And as I had a reason to leave the house around 10:30 I had a lot of time to do that.

The first part of the journey, as far as Southall (north side of Osterley Park), was driven by PokemonGo and the few target gyms that I have in that area.

After that it was a simple (!) matter of finding new ways to walk to West Hampstead in the time available.

My CityStrides LifeMap shows the roads that I have walked previously and all I had to do was avoid those whenever possible. Of course that was not always easy, or possible, as the significant constraints like railways, major roads, rivers and canals, have limited crossing points and so I kept been drawn into familiar territory before crossing the obstruction and then picking a new route from there. 

For example, the little bulge in the top left of the route was me walking to Wembley Central station to cross the railway lines.

As always, one of the great joys of deliberately walking along new roads is you find new things and Alperton was something of a revelation in a couple of ways. The area by the station has become swamped with nondescript high-rise blocks (bad) and around the corner there is Shri Vallabh Nidhi Hindu Temple (good). 

I had walked to West Hampstead via Wembley a few times previously so had walked all the obvious west-east routes before and that forced me to walk north-south a few times to hit new territory. That was expected and it was good to find things like Wembley Brook.

Soon after crossing the North Circular, and setting a new record for the number of pedestrian lights I had to wait for to cross one road, I came across BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir, also known as Neasden Temple.

While walking, I was mostly following my LifeMap to find new roads but I was also checking Apple Maps to see how far away I was on foot from West Hampstead so that I could time my arrival, I walk at 6km/hour which makes the maths very simple. I made one final turn north towards Dollis Hill from where it was almost a straight line to the finish.

I arrived in West Hampstead just a few minutes before 6pm (seven hours after starting out) perfect timing.

I had objectives targets for this walk (steps, PokemonGo, new roads, arrival time) and I achieved every one of them. A perfect walk.

City of London churches and more

Over the years I have got very used to being the one who plans the regular walks that I do with a friend, either I plan absolutely everything or he comes up with a rough idea and I have to turn it in to a route with suitable start and end points and a reasonable walking distance. This was one of the later cases.

While I mostly worked in Central London he was in places like Libya and Angola so he likes walking in London to discover places he does not really know and where I seem to have been to every pub. His idea this time was to visit churches in City of London.

That meant joining the queue of old gits at Richmond Station waiting for the barriers to open at 8:57 to catch the tube. We went all the way to Tower Hill to start our exploration on the east side of the City.

This time I had not done a detailed route and it was just a question of looking for the nearest cluster of churches and heading that way, there being no obvious route between them.

Where possible, we went inside which is something I had never done before so I was discovering something new too.

I forgot to checking on to the first few churches on Swarm but I did do the final nine so I knew that we went to some places with great names, including St. Botolph without Aldersgate, St. Vedast-alias-Foster and St Sepulchre-without-Newgate.

We had a coffee break in the one below, St Mary Aldermary.

This is also one of the several places where either we got lost or the church did. The maps show that Saint Nicholas Moldavian Church is next door but we walked all away around the block and could not find it. The two churches may be sharing one building, as we found elsewhere but there was nothing obvious to show this.

I am nothing like an expert on churches but I was pleasantly surprised at how varied and interesting the interiors were. The stained glasses were my favourites and I also appreciate grand architecture. There were several surprises to, such as the statue by Damian Hirst of St Bartholomew being skinned alive in St Bartholomew the Great (we failed to find St Bartholomew the Less).

The mural below is in St Alban the Martyr, a somewhat hard to find church in Holborn.

Somewhere along the way, St Lawrence Jewry I think, a helpful guide gave us a paper copy of the map at the top, which would have been very helpful a couple of hours earlier!

We saw enough in our haphazard wanderings to tempt us back to look at more churches, we only saw around 15 of over 50.

Our walk took a more usual course after that and we headed more or less due west to Hyde Park and the ever so familiar Serpentine Cafe for lunch.

My friend had to leave at that point and I took the opportunity to tick off some more roads in Kensington and Chelsea.and I surprised myself by completing 40 new roads in under two hours. A great way to end a fun series of walks.

Hawklords at 100 Club (10 Nov 24)

I have absolutely no idea where time goes! I would have sworn blind that I last saw Hawklords in spring 24 but my calendar is pretty convinced that it was in October 23.

It also told me that the first time I saw them was at 100 Club in November 2014 so this was something of a tenth anniversary. It was also my fifth time of seeing them at 100 Club and the eighth time that I have seen them altogether.

I guess that makes me a fan, certainly enough of one to pay £25 to see them play live again.

Travel worked well and I got to 100 Club just before the 7:30 opening time and joined a couple of dozen of similarly aged people, mostly men.

Getting in early got me the place I wanted at the front next to one of the annoying pillars.

The support band, The Galileo 7, entertained mightily with a distinctly British but hard to categorise sound. They describe themselves as "psych-pop", which works.

This Hawklords was the same lineup as last time with Jerry Richards on guitar and vocals, Mr Dibs on bass and twiddly electronics, and Dave Pearce on percussion. Being a three-piece is not ideal for 100 Club which has an extremely wide stage so they were well spaced out and there was a notable gap in the middle where a front man would have been.

That gap was filled for some songs by Capt Rizz, also a former member of Hawkwind, who made quite a difference with his movement, outfit and singing. 

Hawklords had anew album to promote, Relativity (the appropriate sequel to "Time" and "Space") and I assume that most of the songs that I did not recognise, and there were a lot of them, came from this. I did recognise the occasional Hawkwind classic, e.g. Brainstorm, that made it into the set but these did not differ musically,

I enjoyed their previous gig, at The Forge in Camden, even though it seemed to lack something, perhaps the sound was not quite right or perhaps the venue was too bright, and at 100 Club those niggles were absent and the concert was truly excellent throughout. Even the audience, which can be problematic at times, were on top form.

Hawklords have settled into a nice rhythm with the current line-up and songs and I'll remain a fan for as long as that rhythm continues.

16km from Whitehall to Clapham

I was in London for another National March for Palestine and I combined that with some general walking and some new roads to add to my CityStrides LifeMap.

I love CityStrides but it is built on map data from Open Street Map (which I also love) and, for reasons, that does not distinguish between, say, High Street Kingston and High Street Richmond and so you have to walk every High Street in Greater London for it to count as a completed street. Of course there is no problem when streets have a unique name like Lennox Gardens Mews!

Despite that difficulty in completing roads in London I managed to add 31 roads to my total making it 6,022 London roads completed, which is 15%.

Most roads have several nodes, including the two at each end, and there were another 47 roads that I walked part of, most of which I do not ever expect to complete. But perhaps one day ...

CityStrides also keeps totals for each London Borough (where there are far fewer duplicated roads) and on this walk I pushed my completion rate for Wandsworth to 38% and Lambeth to 15%. I really need to go to those places more often.

The National March for Palestine explains the straight lines at the top of the map and the hunt for new roads explains the wiggles in the middle. For the final section I took a fairly direct route to Clapham Junction Station but still managed to find a couple of new roads.

Of course walking new roads is about far more than just ticking things off on a very long list, it is about discovering new things.

And this new things was a great discovery.

If I was not walking every part of every street in that area then I would never have walked around Carey Gardens Housing Estate and I would not have found this mural by local artist and activist Brian Barnes. Called "A Brief History of Time" it has lots of (mostly) local references, including Stephen Hawking in the top left.

There was other street art and interesting estates, some fine middle-class homes in Clapham Manor, some impressive Victorian schools, and a few green spaces.

It was a good walk.

National March for Palestine (2 Nov 24)

It is depressing that more than a year on it is still necessary to march in large numbers to try and get our government to understand that actively participating in Israel's genocide is a bad idea. I am prepared to keep marching for as long as it takes and I was joined by over 100,000 who think the same way.

The routes vary a little and this time we started in Whitehall crossed The Thames at Vauxhall and finished at the American Embassy at Nine Elms. As a simple walk (ignoring for the moment the purpose of the march) it was a good route with wide roads all the way and only one pinch point (by Vauxhall stations).

That meant passing Houses of Parliament which was good for the politics and also because we were seen by plenty of tourists and visitors too, these are public demonstrations for a reason and I prefer it when we march through busier areas.

The next march is scheduled for Saturday 30 November.

The Crazy World Of Arthur Brown at Dingwall's

I am neglectful and do not always get around to posting about converts that I go to but, even so, this is the fourteenth time that I have done so since this blog started in 2006.

Over those almost twenty (!) years I have seen him at many different venues and with many different musicians and this was the my first time at Dingwalls and the third time seeing him with this band.

Dingwalls is a pretty basic venue and while I am sure that it is fine for your standard no frills guitar band it was not great for a show as visual as this. That said, I soon got used to the heads hiding the lower part of the stage and I could hear the music perfectly.

The show, unsurprisingly, followed the format of the Eel Pie show in April bot musically and artistically though there were changes. If I ever took notes and if Setlist was a complete and faultless record then I could be more certain on the extent of the changes but I think that the back projection was more extensive (and the two statues downgraded as a result) and the formerly regular song "I put a spell on you" made a return as the final encore.

I think there was a change to the set order too and I liked the way that (new version) Time Captives ended the main part of the set. Not only is it my favourite Arthur Brown track, originally recorded as Kingdom Come, but the communal singing of the "La Da Da" ending is a perfect ending.

The only disappointment is that I do not have another Arthur Brown concert in my diary yet.

NHS appointments are a mess

There has been much discussion recently about fining people for missing NHS appointments and the consensus seems to be that people have no excuse for missing them and it is only fair that they should pay a fine when they do so. 

My experience suggests that it is quite easy to miss them, because the appointments system is a mess, and my situation is much simpler than many people's.

I am documenting my views here so that I can easily share them as and when required, starting with the hospital's Patient Advise Liaison Service.

My appointments cycle

I have one underlying condition that is being managed by one hospital. I continue to see my GP for other things like the recent flu and Covid booster jabs.

This condition means that I need to see one consultant every three months and another every six weeks with the second visit followed by a treatment session the following day. I also have two scans every other treatment cycle, i.e. once every twelve weeks, which are done at a separate site.

That means that at any one time I have five future appointments booked.

Different appointment systems

The big problem is that there is no consistency in how these are managed:

• For the two consultants appointments I get paper letters and they also appear in the NHS app, which means that I get automated reminders by text
• For the two scans I get paper letters but nothing else
• For the treatment sessions I have an appointment card (!) which gets updated by hand each visit.

The only place all these appointments are consolidated is on my fridge where I store all the letters and appointment card in date order. 

I also put them all in my online calendar manually which is prone to error (more on that later).

Other issues

There are several other niggles in the systems that while are not significant in themselves they all add to the friction in the system and increase the chances that errors will be made. One such niggle has already caused me to get one appointment wrong, luckily I arrived a day early so no really damage was done.

Where electronic communications are used, e.g. NHS app, this just points to a message that is in the form of a PDF file that contains an image of the letter, i.e. it is not possible to simply cut and paste the appointment details in to a personal calendar. 

Many apps that I use, e.g. MeetUp, have an "Add to Calendar" function and NHS app should be able to do this too.

There are inconsistencies in the naming of locations within the hospital, e.g. letters refer to "Oncology & Haematology Outpatients” whereas the signage in the hospital says Haematology & Oncology Outpatients (HOOP)", and the two letters for the scans 

The letters for the scans give the data (dd/mm/yy) but not the day of the week, which is how most people refer to dates most of the time, e.g. it says "31 October 2024" rather then "Thursday 31 October 2024".

The two letters for the scans have slightly different descriptions for the same address. They also use different sized fonts. which may be an attempt to keep all of the main information on the front page.

I sometimes get automated reminders to my landline! I did not know that the hospital even had this number much less intended to use it. I am not sure which appointments these are for as I never listen to the whole message once I know who it is from.

Summary

Three things should happen:

1. The NHS app should be used for all appointments
2.  The app this should link to personal online calendars
3. Appointment letters to patients should be reviewed for consistency and clarity.

Change NHS: A consultation

Introduction

The new Labour Government has said that "Our NHS is broken, but not beaten. Together we can fix it." and has launched a consultation to start the process (I would have gone with money first but that's another story). 

I wanted to respond to that consultation for several reasons, notably because I have worked with business change through IT for most of my career and also I am quite involved with the NHS as a patient at the moment. The NHS matters to me and I think that my views on it are relevant.

I am putting these views in my blog so that I have a record of what I said and I can also share them easily when I want to.

The consultation is online at change.nhs.uk.

The 3 shifts

The consultation covers the 3 shifts, widely trailed before, as"big changes to the way health and care services work – that doctors, nurses, patient charities, academics and politicians from all parties broadly agree are necessary to improve health and care services in England".

These are:

1. moving more care from hospitals to communities
2. making better use of technology in health and care
3. focussing on preventing sickness, not just treating it.

The consultation then asks questions on these. I quote these questions and give my answers.

Q5. In what ways, if any, do you think that delivering more care in the community could improve health and care?

There appears to no rationale behind this idea other than the slim possibility that because more appointments are more local then fewer will be missed. Specialised services are provided through large hospitals for several good reasons from economies of scale to the frequent need to treat patients will multiple conditions.

I see no health and care benefits in doing this.

Q6. What, if anything, concerns you about the idea of delivering more care in the community in the future?

Healthcare provisions is already fragmented, e.g. dentistry and optometry, and having separate centres for other services risks further fragmentation with the need to visit several centres for one condition.

Small units are likely to be inefficient, e.g. a surgery facility at a GP surgery will either be over staffed to ensure that it meets all demand or under staffed at some times leading to more waits.

People often have multiple needs and being co-located means it is easier to address them at the same time, for example, to get an unplanned x-ray for a patient. When working on Business Transformation we called this "one and done", i.e. fix everything on one visit.

Small specialist units will focus on the one thing that they do and will lack the patient's full context to provide the best service. This happened to me when a private surgery unit missed the possibility of skin cancer and this went undiagnosed for a few years. This fragmentation may kill me.

Q7. In what ways, if any, do you think that technology could be used to improve health and care?

Again, the described benefits of this are weak at best and they are all claims made about other large IT projects that spectacularly failed to deliver. I have worked on some of these and the example of Horizon at the Post Office is fresh in our memories.

The idea that patients need only tell their story once misses two very important points, each specialist needs to hear and questions a different part of that story and that story will change over time (do you smoke, what medications are you taking, how active are you, how stable is your weight etc. etc.) and so it must be retold for accuracy.

Using AI to review scans is an obvious thing to do but it is hardly transformational. The only way that this could help significantly would be if we took lots more scans but that would be an additional cost on the NHS.

Technology is too often portrayed as a magic wand, it is not.

Q8. What, if anything, concerns you about the idea of increased use of technology in the future?

I am concerned that the benefits are overstated and could not be delivered without substantial additional investment (beyond the basic hardware, software and networks) in things like data cleaning and ID cards.

The basic technology, e.g. exchanging packets of data between systems, is easy but does not help because the data quality is pretty low and inconsistent and so sharing it will only make things worse.

I have worked on large IT systems with simpler data, e.g. spare parts held in stockrooms, and every project had to start with a large data cleaning exercise and even that does not solve all of the problems as some of the answers are unknown, e.g. a supplier code does not match any code used by any supplier. Similarly in systems involving people you will often find several dates of birth of something like 01/01/1900 where people have made up data just to get past that screen. Or, even worse, used a special data as a code for something else that has been long forgotten but which is useful.

There will be significant inconsistencies in the data between systems. To pick another example I have direct experience of, there is not a standard list of Nationality codes so things like the Census and Schools (both part of UK Government!) use different lists. These lists also change over time so while a younger person may be identified as, say, Bangladeshi their parents may be just Asian. I picked this as a simple, easy to understand example, other parts of health data are far more complex and far more prone to inconsistency. Agreeing standard lists will help but will take time and will make the data cleaning longer.

And one key part of the data is missing, a unique identifier for each person. Who remember's their NHS number or carries a card with it on? A national ID card system could help (after a lot of time and money) but there will always be gaps, e.g. recent arrivals.

I would be very surprised if you could get the data at sufficient quality to share in less than eight years and employing thousands of people for that long is expensive.

Q9. In what ways, if any, could an increased focus on prevention help people stay healthy and independent for longer?

This is where the focus should be, though not necessarily for the reasons given. We should enable people to be healthier so that they can live more fulfilling lives, not just to save the NHS money. People play sports for fun not to keep out of hospital.

The consultation gives no idea of the scale or ambition of "tackling the causes of ill health" but these need to be bold to first address recent declines in population health (e.g. obesity) and then to significantly improve them.

That means being brutal with manufacturers and retailers over things like smoking, processed foods, alcohol, etc. We know many of the major causes of ill health and should address these seriously.

Going back to school lunches for all school pupils and breakfasts too for primary pupils would be a major boost to wellness and is probably the easiest and quickest option the Government can implement.

In 2023, there were 132,977 casualties on UK roads. We must do a lot more to address this, including stricter enforcement with harsher penalties and redesigning roads to manage out traffic.

Managing out traffic is a win-win as it reduces traffic accidents and also encourages people to use other and healthier means of travel. In the early 70s I went to an edge of town secondary school and hardly anyone went there by car, we need to get back to those days.

Q10. What, if anything, concerns you about the idea of an increased focus on prevention in the future?

My concern is that the Government will back away from the big necessary changes under pressure from lobby groups claiming that it is trying to implement a "nanny state". If these measures are to work then they must be bold.

Here in America at Orange Tree Theatre

I try to support Orange Tree Theatre as it is one of my nearest and while its programming is not always to my taste there was a lot going for Here in America, the phrase "multi award-winning plays for the RSC and National Theatre" as did the presence of Shaun Evans the star of Endeavour.

That said, Orange Tree Theatre is proving to be quite popular these days and when I finally got around to booking my options were limited and I had to settle for a high stool in the third row, Lower Floor C30, at £35. The late booking also meant I ended up with a distanced performance (first introduced immediately post-Covid) which was just as well as my third row seat would have had poor visibility if not for the spaces in the first two rows.

Here in America looks at McCarthyism through the eyes of playwright Arthur Miller and his frequent collaborator director Elia Kazan. Their discussions, and actions, were mostly around whether to give the names of other possible communist sympathisers when they were interrogated. 

And that was about it. The play was essentially a documentary on a specific part of the proceedings of The House Committee on Un-American Activities and while it was interesting to hear the views of Miller and Kazan it was a story with little drama.

I also felt that in setting the play wholly in America in 1952 the opportunity was missed to say something about the echos of McCarthyism in modern politics, such as the way that all criticism of Israel is called unpatriotic, despite the very obvious genocide and war crimes.

The lack of any real drama or message was a shame as the production was very good in all other aspects. I very much appreciated the theatre of the show and the skills of all those bringing it to the stage but I was left wondering what the point of it all was.

The River at Greenwich Theatre

There are certain things that I look for when selecting a theatre performance to see and the name Jez Butterworth is one of these. 

It helped that it starred Paul McGann and was on at Greenwich Theatre which I had liked on my first visit to see Vincent River in 2024 (yes, the two plays I have seen at Greenwich Theatre are Vincent River and The River). A front row seat (A27) for £21, thanks to concessions, was an offer that I was not going to refuse.

Greenwich is fairly central but it still took a mainline train, a Jubilee Line train and a DLR train to get there. Luckily the connections were good (though having to climb up the emergency escape steps at Cutty Sark was not great) and I got there in good time for bit of a mooch and a coffee with cake before heading to the theatre where I had a pint of local Meantime beer before the show.

The story to The River is superficially simple, a middle age man has short term relationships with multiple women that follow the same course but while the story is simple the storytelling is anything but and that is what makes The River rather special.

The main technique is to interweave the stories of two of the women so we see similar scenes played out with the two female leads, Kerri McLean and Amanda Ryan, with one leaving the set to be replaced by the other repeatedly. The stories are non-sequential so, for example, we see one woman ask about a drawing she has found and then we see him doing the drawing. This is all done very nicely so that it is not too complicated to follow nor too clever for its own sake.

Making sure that everything was perfect, the stage was very effective as were the sounds (mostly of a river) and the lighting. Greenwich is quite a small theatre and it was punching above its weight here.

I said that the story was superficially simple and some time later I am still thinking through some of the deliberate loose ends and uncertainties. A play that makes you think afterwards is a good thing.

The River was a thoroughly engrossing and stimulating production which I enjoyed greatly.

Goldrush at The Half Moon (6 Oct 24)

Once upon a time Goldrush were called The Honeyslides and I saw them whenever they played at The Half Moon in Putney (which was every six months or so) and I have been carrying on that tradition under their new name. The only difference over the years of seeing them is that they had a new dummer this night and the occasional female backing singer has not been at any of the recent concerts.

There have been other small changes, Luke (on the left) now plays piano too, some of the songs have changed and the music technology has had several upgrades but their concerts essential remain Neil Young and Crazy Horse playing Live Rust, and that is all I could ever ask for.

NT Live: Prima Facie at Olympic Cinema

Like many people I was tempted when I saw that Jodie Comer would be appearing on stage but the pricing quickly put me off.  This happens quite a lot and I though no more of it until it was broadcast in cinemas as part of National Theatre Live where paying £20 was a much more attractive prospect, as was a comfortable and wide seat in Olympic Cinema Barnes.

My almost non-existant research told me that Jodie Cromer was staring in the play but I had missed that she was the only actor in it. I had also avoided any clues as to the story.

Jodie Cromer plays a young rising barrister who understand well how to get witnesses to say what she wants them to say to get the outcome she wants. She narrates her story directly to us and while there is quite a bit of movement and a few props there is little need for either other than to lift it from a story to a play.

All is going well in her life until she is raped which gives her the role of victim in a judicial system she knew so well. The play makes the good point that victims have a hard time in rapes cases as there are usually no witnesses and the victim's sex life can be used to suggest that the incident was consensual. A good point but one which I think is well understood and it did not need a play to make it.

To make that point, and to contrast her role as barrister then victim, this case went to court but, as is also well known, the vast majority of cases do not and there was not enough evidence in this case to justify a court hearing.

With the story compromised, the play relied on the performance of Jodie Comer and while this was good it was severely constrained by the narrative style which took a lot of the emotion and drama out of the story.

I though that Prima Facie was good but not great and I was glad that I had not paid West End prices to see it.

The Band Back Together at Arcola Theatre

I do not get to Arcola Theatre in Dalston as much as I did when I worked within walking distance but it is still something of a favourite and I welcome any reasonable excuse to go there. The very reasonable excuse this time was a new play by Barney Norris. My first exposure to his work was also at Arcola, Visitors in 2014, and since then I have seen productions of his at Bush and Bridge theatres as well as Arcola again.

It was very early in the run and my preview ticket for front row seat A11 was just £20. 

Dalston may be gentrifying but my pre-theatre eating operations have reduced over the years, e.g. I had been to Farr's before and their website was promising but on that night they were not doing food. Not for the first time I was forced into The Speakeasy, a semi-outdoor space, where the food and beer did the job nicely. It is really time that I started thinking of this place as a proper option for eating rather than a fall-back.

The play was downstairs in Studio 2 which has a nice cosy feel in which the front row seat added to the intimacy.

The simple premise behind the play was that three people who had been in a band eighteen years ago (half their lives) were coming back for a once-off performance having had no contact in the meantime. 

The eighteen years of catch-up provided a lot of rich material. They had parted as little more than children and had become adults in the meantime with adult jobs and adult families. Their experiences had been mixed and there were both light and dark stories.

It was a touching story of three people leading three separate lives each with their own joys and frustrations. The way those stories were told was intelligent which kept me engaged and natural so it felt real. That realness helped to hide the clever things going on in the script, which only reinforced its cleverness.

The play was set in their rehearsal sessions and we got a reasonable amount of music which was a bit punky and interesting lyrically and musically. It was a far step from the standard fare delivered by most musicals. I liked it.

Barney Norris was there to see how things went and it was good to be able to share a few words about this and his other shows. The chance to speak to a creative is one of the joys of smaller theatres.

The Band Back Together was my sort of play in my sort of theatre. A wonderful evening!

Walking from Becton to Crystal Palace (37km)

One of the reasons that I wanted to walk Capital Ring again was that I had not always mapped my walk (using, er, MapMyWalk) the first time so sections of it did not appear in my City Strides Life Map leaving a lot of white space in the Lewisham area.

Another reason was that I would not have gone to Woolwich if not for walking Capital Ring and I liked what I saw there, enough to want to see it again.

Capital Ring is 15 sections and 126km and my rough plan was four days of 30km each but that was a hard square to circle as the sections are of uneven lengths and SE London has two long sections (over 12km) which brought the four Sections 15 to 3 up to 37km.

I suspect that the sections are longer in SE London because of the relative lack of public transport for convenient start/end points and that certainly made this day harder than the others, it took me best part of two hours to get to the start point and more than that to get home.

Woolwich was again my highlight of the walk and I would have liked more time to explore (the app actually made me walk further than I needed to, which was a bonus!).

Woolwich is one the up and there is no greater proof of that than this collection of sculptures, Assembly by Peter Burke. There was also a trendy cafe next to it where I had a coffee and cake break.

After that it was a succession of parks and hills, none of which were particularly remarkable.

This is Oxleas Wood and, to be honest, is not the sort of view I go walk for; give me buildings any day.

The relentless stream of parks and suburban roads meant no pubs for several hours and I finally got a much needed pint in a Wetherspoons in Brixton; why Brixton and why a Spoons is a story that does not need to be told.

That only leaves three sections of Capital Ring to go and, while that is essentially home turf, I am quite looking forward to it.

The Biba Story at Fashion and Textile Museum

I was only vaguely aware of Biba at the time though the pull of its brand was enough to entice my sister up from Weymouth when she was still in her teens. Most of my awareness was to do with the branding and little to do with the fashion but the Fashion and Textile Museum has a good habit of telling interesting stories about fashion so I was keen to see this exhibition.

The simple plan for the day stumbled a little at the start as I was going to have lunch at their cafe but I forgot that it had been closed and the space converted to something else. Luckily there was plenty of choice nearby and I settled on Al’s Cafe where I rejected the option of a veggie breakfast because it came with chips and, instead went for Al's Breakfast which was much the same but without chips. It was very much a working person's cafe but the knew to do poached eggs and smashed avocado. It hit the spot perfectly and I would go there again.

As usual, Fashion and Textile Museum crammed quite a lot into a fairly small space and it was a slow walk around the exhibition looking at all of the garments (it was mostly garments) and reading the stories behind them.

The fashion exhibitions that I usually see, mostly at V&A, are on high-end fashion, e.g. Alexander McQueen, and in contrast to that I found most of the fashion uninspiring, though it was interesting to see some very period outfits. A lot looked like they could have come from M&S but that probably tells you more about what I know about fashion than it does about Biba.

Amongst the fairly average dresses and suits were a few stunning outfits. My favourite was a unisex trouser suit which a psychedelic pattern and widely flared trousers. I like to think that I have the courage to wear something like that. There was also a spider dress, so called because it looked as though it was covered in webbing, that was distinctly glamorous.

Biba's style changed quite a bit over the years and the texts listen all sorts of influences so there was little commonality across the outfits other than they were designed for tall thin women with few curves.

It was a fashion exhibition so while it mentioned the designs of the various shops there was only one photo of one and I do not recall reading anything about the production process, other than the sourcing of fabrics. The high turn-over of designs suggests something like today's fast fashion but that was an untold story.

On nice thing about the exhibition was that many people had clearly dressed for the occasion and the visitors were almost as interesting as the exhibits. One was even wearing a Biba trouser suit and I took the opportunity to say how much I admired it.

My simple metric for exhibitions is how long I spend there and this one occupied me for all but an hour which, given the size of the venue, was quite an achievement.

Walking from Hendon to Becton (33km)

My aim of walking Capital Ring for a second time took a good step forward with another four sections, 11 to 14, taking me from Hendon to Becton.

The walk was something of a mixed bag for me as I have walked parts of this several times, including the somewhat long and dull section starting south of Olympic Park.

I also took a different route through Highgate Woods from the last time and I failed to find the nice cafe there. I took the easy option and made up for this my going to the cafe in Finsbury Park and having their all-day veggie breakfast, not for the first time.

There were some highlights and I liked walking through the new development on the lakes at Woodberry Down. I also enjoyed the slight detour through Middlesex Filer Beds Nature Reserve thanks to the industrial remains. Previously I had always continued along River Lee and I do not know how official the detour is regarding Capital Ring but I am glad I took it.

The stop for the veggie breakfast through y schedule and after almost six and a half hours I called it a day; I was tempted to do Section 15 too but I had to get home and leave it for another day, another day soon.

Grayson Perry: The Vanity of Small Differences

While I have enjoyed all of the Grayson Perry art that I have stumbled across at places like V&A I had never gone to one of his exhibitions before but this one was so easy to get to, just a simple 65 bus ride, so it would have been strange not to go. The extensive research I did beforehand told me that the exhibition was six large-scale tapestries, which was enough to get me to part with £6.60 (thanks to the Art Fund discount).

The venue was Pitzhanger Manor Ealing, a place I know well because I spend a lot of time in Walpole Park and the several other parks in that area. I had even been to the cafe there but that was the only place inside that I had been to; another good reason for going.

If I had done even the slightly bit more research I would have been even keener to go as The Vanity of Small Differences was inspired by William Hogarth’s A Rake’s Progress and the original paintings were bought by the wife of the architect of Pitzhanger, Sir John Soane, to be displayed at Pitzhanger. 

opens at Pitzhanger Manor & Gallery this July–December 2024. For the first time, this exhibition brings the Turner-Prize-winning artist’s six large-scale tapestries to a building where William Hogarth’s A Rake’s Progress, the inspiration behind Perry’s tapestries, were purchased for and displayed. The tapestries were most definitely at home.

For a description of the exhibition, I can do better than quote from the "Taking Hogarth’s famed series as a starting point, Perry’s tapestries depict a corresponding fable of class, taste and social mobility. Weaving the complex ‘class journey’ of the fictional protagonist, Tim Rakewell.".

This is just part of one of the tapestries and you can see how rich the picture is in symbolism; they make a big impact at a distance because of their size and colours and then as you get closer there is more and more to see. Each tapestry takes a little time to study and enjoy.

No spoilers, but the last tapestry is in a darkened room on its own with a content warning at the entrance.

I really enjoyed the exhibition and, as my sister wants to see it too, I will be seeing it again soon.

Walking from Richmond to Hendon (34km)

I walked Capital Ring a few years ago and I wanted to walk it again for various reasons including just for the enjoyment of the route and to record all of the route on MapMyWalk so that it would be in my CityStrides LifeMap. It annoyed me that I had not always mapped the route when I did it before leaving some notable orbital gaps in my LifeMap.

I got a nudge when Go Jauntly created a challenge to complete Capital Ring on their app. I like the Go Jauntly app and have done a few of their challenges and this gave me the opportunity to try it out on some routes, which is the main point of it.

The final nudge came from the monthly British Czech and Slovak Association social in West Hampstead. I usually walk to this and have taken ad hoc routes via Greenford before so it was easy to pick a route that followed Capital Ring most of the way.

My original, possibly overly ambitious plan, was to walk Sections 7 to 10 of Capital Ring, Richmond to Osterley Lock to Greenford to South Kenton to Hendon Park, and then walk on to West Hampstead. On the day I left home later than hoped so having done the four sections I took public transport the last few miles. 

In the end I was only half an hour late for the start of the social which I celebrated with a very quick pint of Pilsner Urquell.

The point of trying Go Jauntly is that it has a map that you can easily follow on your phone. The first time I did Capital Ring I was reading the text instructions on a PDF file on my iPad while also trying to follow a map on Google Maps that someone else had created. It was cumbersome work checking both and they did not always agree. We got off track regularly. 

Google Maps should have worked but it kept forgetting that I was using the Capital Ring map and I was constantly reloading it and then zooming back to the section I was on. Useful in case of emergencies but not really good enough for constant use.

The Go Jauntly maps worked very well.

This is the map of Section 8 and you can see how clear it is. I usually worked around this level of zoom but in the few more complex areas, such as crossing a major road, I zoomed right in to check that I was in the correct place.

At all times the familiar blue dot showed where I was so there was never any question of wandering too far off the route and any errors I made were quickly corrected.

The one thing I did have to get used to is that the map is a series of straight lines between waypoints and the paths sometimes wiggled quite a way from those lines. That was never a big problem as all I was doing was following an obvious path as it curved towards the next waypoint. 

Again, any confusion was quickly resolved by zooming right in to confirm that the path (shown on the map) did indeed head towards the desired waypoint.

One nice surprise was that Go Jauntly recognised when I had finished a section and automatically updated the challenge.

The walk gave me the first four of the fifteen badges needed to complete this challenge.

The big bonus was that following the route was easy and so I spent much less time looking at my phone and more looking at the scenery. 

I did not bother looking out for Capital Ring signs either, relying solely on the digital map. On previous walks that had been a bit of an issue as the uncertainty over the PDFs and Google Maps meant that I was often looking for the reassurance of an official sign.

Og course I only have Go Jauntly's word that their version of Capital Ring is the same as the official one but I was deliberately doing the Go Jauntly version so I was not worried about any differences or discrepancies

The walk itself was fun, even though the first half of the route, as far as Greenford, was very familiar. It had been (mostly) dry for some time and so all the paths were easy to walk; a few brambles here and there but very little mud.

I did have to take a detour around Paradise Fields in Greenford as that was heavily fenced off to protect the recently reintroduced beavers.

Across the road from there was Horsenden Hill and the first steep climb of the day. I do most of my walking in inner London where hills are almost non-existant and it is always something of a shock to the system when I venture further afield and have to climb. I still haven't quite got used to the fact that place names that contain "hill" are clues to be respected.

The 34km took me almost 6.5 hours, which is just over 5km/hour; not bad considering the hills and the condition of some of the paths.

Overall I call that a success and I plan to continue the Capital Ring challenge with Go Jauntly.