Friday was Prince Charles’s birthday.  He was 60.  That shook me up a bit, because he was a young, eligible bachelor of 30 when I first came to England.  He reminds me (if I needed reminding) that I am getting old.  

Nevertheless, I quite like Prince Charles, mainly because he is the most famous guy in history who responded to his mid life crisis by ditching the young and beautiful trophy wife and finally marrying instead a menopausal old bat with a thickening waist, tinted hair and sensible shoes.

It positively makes my heart sing.

And since my heart was already in the mood, I had no trouble belting out the words to the national anthem (Americans will know the tune as My Country ‘Tis of Thee) just before 8 am, chiming in with the radio.  We get a chorus of the anthem on the radio at just that time on each of Her Majesty’s two birthdays (hey, when you are queen you can have two too), once a year for Charles, and, when it happens to fall on a slow news day, now and again even for the Duke of Edinburgh.

It may be a wee bit hard on the aging Prince to mark his birthday with all that God Save the Queen stuff. He has waited most of a lifetime to fulfill his destiny and may wait awhile yet, since his family is a long lived lot, but I don’t suppose even in yearning finally to be king he would wish his mother gone.

Meanwhile Charles is, by all accounts, happier than he has ever been with his second wife.

Middle aged love.  Frumpy and sweet.  A prince should set an example to his people, and I think Charles has done his princely job.

As in America, Britains have been remembering those who served in the conflicts of the 20th and 21st century. Here the focus is very much on “The Fallen”, “The Glorious Dead”, and the main ceremonies are broadly religious, performed on the Sunday closest to the 11th, Remembrance Sunday.

In the fortnight or so before Remembrance Sunday, at nearly every work place, in every pub and many restaurants, in almost every public place there are paper poppies for sale.  In villages like mine someone goes around door to door.  The Royal British Legion sells the poppies and all money goes to look after disabled and elderly servicemen (veterans).  

There is almost none of the kind of political awkwardness that I have sensed from reading about Veterans’ Day in the US. There is no left or right on this issue. The young (until recently mainly men) went to war when their government asked them to. Those who died left families. Those who survived wounded have needs. Those who have lived into old age command respect.

If you want people to think you are a decent member of society in the week before the 11th you had better be wearing your poppy to show you have made a contribution.  If a politician were to appear on the news without one, there would be uproar. Every television presenter and newsreader sports one. The exhortation is to “wear your poppy with pride” and that is how I wore mine.

Although the form of Remembrance is broadly Christian, because we don’t have separation of church and state here, I don’t sense any religious division either. The poppy is a symbol of death and rebirth, not of Christianity.  In the devastated fields of Europe, poisoned by gunpowder and gas, only poppies were robust enough to grow in the spring of 1918.

The radio schedule for one of the four BBC national stations changes on the Sunday morning so that the Act of Remembrance at the Cenotaph in London can be broadcast. Military bands play a traditional set of songs finishing with Nimrod from Elgar’s Enigma Variations. The Last Post is sounded by a team of buglers. The Queen lays a wreath of poppies, followed by senior royals, then the Prime Minister, then the Leader of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition lay their wreaths in turn.

At the going down of the sun, and in the morning, we will remember.

We will remember.

There is no left or right.  The only time I can think of when this was even remotely an issue was when Michael Foot, the most left wing leader of the Labour Party since the second World War, laid his wreath dressed in what has since been always referred to as a Donkey Jacket, a sartorial category previously unfamiliar to me, though I admit he looked a bit scruffy. The outrage was something dreadful, and it was mentioned for the next ten years or so.  Every Labour politician since has worn a dress coat.

The national ritual of remembrance is repeated all over the country. It is impossible to go to any long established school without hearing read the list of names of the dead from the First World War, or seeing them inscribed on a wall. An astonishing number of villages, like the one I live in, have a memorial at their centre. Not the smallest hamlet was spared the carnage of that war.

My second son was born on the 11th of November, and, as it happens, plays the trumpet.  That put him in great demand right around his birthday, as soon as he mastered the difficult bugle that is the Last Post.  For years I stood proudly with him outside in bitter November weather, watching him nervously warm his trumpet with his breath, waiting for the church clock to chime 11 when his notes would signal the beginning of the two minutes’ silence, while we remembered.

Sometimes he was called on to play again later in the day when his school gathered for Evensong.  Though I had children at that school for 17 years I never failed to be moved each time I heard the names of the dead read out as they did (and do) every Remembrance Sunday.  Such a small school in the first quarter of the century, so many dead, so sad to hear a surname repeated and know a family had lost two sons.

These solemn events take place, as I have said, on the nearest Sunday, but when the 11th falls on another day of the week, as it did this year (the 90th anniversary of the Armistice) the date is also marked, though less formally.  Today, just before 11, half a dozen or so of us gathered in an office I share and like many others all around the country we kept the silence together for two minutes.

The focus of the 11th of November is the First World War as long as there are still those who fought in the trenches and remember the 11th hour of the 11th day when guns fell silent. Three veterans, the youngest of whom is 108 years old, dined at Downing Street today. But we also remember, of course, the great sacrifice of the Second World War and other conflicts of the 20th century.  

And no one forgets that we have soldiers fighting today,

I’ve never asked my son whether he minded being born (at 11:21 am) on the 11th of the 11th. He was a gentle child and has grown to be a gentle man.  Like all American men his age he is registered for the draft. Like any mother I hope his country will not call on him. 

I know there are times when we must fight.  And part of celebrating Remembrance Sunday, or Armistice Day, or Veterans’ Day is celebrating those who were brave enough to fight so we might live as we do.  No properly indoctrinated American (as I was) can forget Patrick Henry’s ringing words

Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased with the price of chains and slavery?  Forbid it Almighty God!  I know not what course others may take, but give me liberty, or give me death!

Nevertheless, my sweet son, born in the hour of the anniversary of peace, yearly sounding his trumpet for the Glorious Dead reminds me (as if I needed it) that we need to be sure when we send our sons, and now daughters, to fight.  History has judged the First World War harshly: our soldiers were “lions led by donkeys”.  

When the slaughter had barely begun (1914) AE Housman wrote:

Here dead lie we because we did not choose 
To live and shame the land from which we sprung. 

Life to be sure, is nothing much to loose; 
But young men think it is, and we were young. 

That great imperial pugilist poet Rudyard Kipling bitterly regretted his part in securing an officer’s commission for his severely nearsighted only son, thrusting him to the front, where he lost his life within days of arriving in the trenches.

If any question why we died
Tell them, because our fathers lied.

Let us have no such thing to tell to our sons and daughters a generation hence.

When I was on my boat last week I found that Jamie was tied up on my mooring pin.  That meant his boat was so close to mine it actually overlapped and it didn’t do a lot for the view out my window either.

Jamie is not my favourite local boater, mainly because we compete for the best squatting site, which used to be right behind Purple Haired Emma.  (Purple Haired Emma could be called any number of other things, because she’s got a purple boat and multiple body piercings, including one through the lip, and she has a really tiny cat who goes in and out of a flap on her boat, and a dog-for-the-disabled puppy she’s breaking in before his formal training starts, but the purple hair is her most striking feature.  It’s heavy and straight and falls to her hips. Besides, the rule on this blog is one epithet per person, and Purple Haired is hers.)

While I was in the US I lent the boat to One R Piere and he drove it about as requested (because I’m not a squatter as long as my boat keeps moving) and when One R Piere brought it back, Jamie was in my usual illegal space. So Pangolin (that’s my 62 feet long, 6.5 feet wide midlife crisis) had to moor further back, closer to the lock, and where the bank is crumbling. I was thinking, as soon as Jamie moves, and he’s bound to sometime, because we all need water, I’ll slip into my old spot and hunker down for the winter.

Because of the arcane rules of British Waterways, and because I pay £700, I am not a squatter in the winter months, though the fee gives me nothing more than a higher claim to the best squatting spot. Jamie is a squatter year round (except since he doesn’t even license his boat it officially doesn’t exist, so technically it takes up no space at all).  

Last week Jamie had moved, giving me my chance, but now he was moored up on my pin which I would need to pull up if I slipped back in behind Purple Haired.  I couldn’t move my boat without setting his adrift.  I couldn’t leave his boat secure without leaving my pin behind, and without a spare pin, I couldn’t secure mine.  I was stuck.

At the Rock of Gibraltar pub, a quarter mile muddy tramp up the tow path and over the bridge, I was trying to find out why this had happened.  I said, There’s a guy — Jamie — moored up on my pin and I can’t move.  

A stranger at the bar, drinking two pints of beer at the same time (which you have to admit is impressive) objected to my grumbling, said no one would moor on anyone else’s pin unless he were in trouble and he — the stranger — wasn’t staying to listen to my slagging off a boater in trouble. Then he grabbed both pints and the fag he’d just rolled (it’s all roll your own in the boaty world) and stormed off.  I think he probably just wanted a smoke anyway — since July 07 it has been illegal in the UK to smoke in a public place — but it was rather a dramatic exit.

Pat, who’s an engineer I’ve hired a couple of times to do work on my boat (and who always wants to be paid in cigarettes and bourbon) took great exception to the way the stranger spoke to me and was all in favour of getting Tad the Warden to move him on, except Pat said he knew Tad wouldn’t move him on because Tad never moved anyone on.  I pointed out that as I was a squatter myself more than half the year it was in my interest that Tad never moved anyone on.  Pat was having nothing of it.  He said the stranger was out of order and for all he knew Jamie was probably trying to steal my mooring pin.

During the week I had a text message from Purple Haired to say that she had heard I had complained about Jamie’s boat being on my pin.  My heart sank.  I had made a mistake by grumbling in the pub.  Everyone knew.  Purple Haired wanted to say she had tied Jamie’s boat to my pin because Jamie had gone off to run a pub on the Thames and was living in the pub with all his Jack Russels and his boat had come adrift.  

This Saturday the plot thickened while I stewed a half shoulder of lamb on the fire and baked little potatoes wrapped in foil. 

There was a rap on the window and I invited Ratty in. He said people were talking about me in the pub and he came by to see what was what. 

I fed him lamb, although he had already eaten.  The fact is,  I only bought that lamb hoping to lure someone in.  I miss cooking for people.  Ratty couldn’t resist because it smelled so good.  He’d had to wait three hours for a sandwich in the pub.  They close the kitchen at 3 and he got there a few minutes past.  I’ve been on the wrong side of kitchen closing too.

Ratty told me a couple of guys in the pub were saying they thought they had offended me.  I knew who one of them was (Kev) but didn’t have a clue who Brian was.

After we had eaten the lamb and polished off a bottle of wine Ratty and I thought we’d head to the pub, but it turned out Stematos, the landlord, had shut up about 9 pm, in a fit of pique, on a Saturday night.  We don’t know why he shut the pub. Pat and Ratty say, It is because he is a foreigner, no offence meant. 

I say, No offence taken. I am a Brit.  

Instead of going to the pub, Ratty and I crashed Pat’s boat and drank Jack Daniels where it emerged that Brian was the guy who got a bit abusive to me over Jamie being on my pin.  It turns out Brian is a mate of Kev who is illegally subletting Pete’s mooring. 

Kev met Tad the warden this summer on the Thames where Kev was a lock keeper. According to Kev, Tad said, Come up and we’ll see you right.

According to Pat that illegal mooring, somewhat less illegal than mine should have been offered to me.

Besides, Pat told Ratty that he doesn’t care what.  You don’t f and blind in front of a woman.

The next day I charged my batteries (no metaphor implied) and cooked risotto on the wood stove with leftover lamb.  I gave it to my son when I took him for a driving lesson.  He told me, again, to go to the doctor, because I’ve had a really bad cold and a horrible hacking cough and I know I sound terrible.  My son said he was a great believer in letting the body heal on its own.  He reminded me of when he had a chest infection when he was 18 years old and playing Lear.  He needed antibiotics then. Sometimes the body needs help, he said.

Then he parked his little red VW and prompted me to lock my door, and I said good bye and, as usual, loved him beyond anything in the world.

In case you have never been inside a British narrowboat, here’s mine, looking very cosy.  More pics to follow.

When I went to work today (late!) it was obvious that the Europeans thought last night’s result in America was good for the world.

Obama came as something of a surprise over here as well as over there. The Labour Government courted Hillary, and, hell, under her Presidency the Special Relationship, which defines US/UK diplomacy was all in the bag, since Bill was a known commodity, and she was sure to be his gal.

Meanwhile the Conservatives cautiously, and I suspect somewhat reluctantly, plumped for McCain, though they were probably secretly hoping for Hillary too. In British eyes McCain has always seemed a wee bit unbalanced, though undoubtedly brave. Palin, I am afraid, looked simply like the Europeans worst nightmare of the American Dream: Anybody (anybody, italics meant to cite the Saturday Night Live sketch) could grow up to be President. Palin only reinforced what has been Republican, courtesy of Bush 2, laughing stock. I’m sorry to be so blunt, but I assure you this was not the way out media. This was day to day BBC.

But as of last night both Labour and Conservative are loving Obama. That is, the Prime Minister is barely capable of looking you in the eye, and there are rumours that he is in Asperger’s Syndrome Ecstasy over all those lovely numbers in the Credit Crunch. So his loving Obama is kind of a relative term. Meanwhile the Tories (= Conservatives) have dropped McCain like a stone. What? Did we like him? Just now the Tory leader, who is just the teensiest bit inexperienced because Labour has been in power a long time, is shouting about Obama’s victory as proof positive that the Brits need a new guy too, never mind the PM saying this is no time for learning on the job.

Nevertheless, for every one of us, right or left, there was one bit of last night’s speech that really was a problem. That was the part where everyone chanted “Yes we can!”  The new President even finished with the slogan.   

Never mind that in Europe we are especially nervous, for good reason, about a quarter of a million — or more — people repeating a chant, right on cue, because once upon a time Fascism had a real hold here and we are sensitive to anything that sounds like that.

In this case, fortunately, it only makes us giggle. And that was even before Joe the Plumber came on the scene.  

When Barack has his reelection campaign I hope he will assign his sweet daughters to check out European children’s television and vet his slogans better.  (All through the campaign I kept expecting the slogan to be quietly dropped — and apologies if this is old news. I didn’t post on it before because I thought it must be.)

Okay, in case you have missed it and haven’t a clue what I am talking about, I give you Bob the Builder. Keep listening til the singing starts. And if you keep it going after that for more than about thirty seconds, you will know why “Yes we can!” makes us want to scream.

(in the morning) and I haven’t been to bed yet.

I wanted to stay up and watch until it was all over, even after the outcome was clear.  

I’m so glad I stayed up.  I’ll try to remember how glad I am in a couple of hours.

I know there is an historic election going on.  And I have voted, that is I have authorised my mother to forge my signature on a postal vote.  And I do care who wins.  But I also believe that the US will survive either way, because we have a constitution that has sustained probably the most liberal (in the old fashioned sense of the word) society in the history of the world, and I think it will keep on doing its job.

Only right now instead of feeling historic I am feeling anxious about my daughter, who is working for the VSO (the British equivalent of the American Peace Corps) in Southwestern Uganda, right on the border of the DRC and Rwanda.  She keeps telling me she is okay, and I know there is no fighting where she is, but there are constant reports in the middle of the night on the World Service about conflicts and mass movements in that area.  

In her world it probably means nothing more than a refugee camp opening up.  But if it opens up I am afraid she will go in to assess the children there, and then I am afraid she will catch something.

This kind of fear for your children has nothing to do with right or wrong or what you have raised them to do.  My daughter has been in Uganda for more than a year because there are people there who need her help.  I am proud of her for that, but I am also counting the weeks (not so many now) until she is home again.  And hoping this new conflict doesn’t mean she puts herself at risk before she comes safely back to me.

I’ve been pretty lucky with my children (touch wood, because I am also superstitious), but this kind of anxiety inevitably reminds me of old anxieties.  You never stop worrying about your kids.  When the Uganda daughter was about 3, and was meant to be taking a nap, instead she got into the flouride tablets that I (wrongly) was giving her to compensate for what wasn’t being added to our water.

I found her with the pills everywhere around her, a few smeared on her mouth.  I had no idea how toxic an overdose might be.  I took her to the emergency room and not long afterwards her father arrived to join me.

The medics all seemed, as I suspected, completely casual about the potential flouride overdose, but a doctor came in and examined her and lingered in a way that surprised me.

When she left I said to my husband, do you think that doctor seemed unusually interested in listening to her heart?

He assured me I was imagining things and we waited.  Nurses brought ipecac and the poor child vomited what turned out to be 3 flouride tablets.  Still we weren’t discharged.

After a while the doctor came back and looked very sober and said,  “Has anyone mentioned that your daughter has a heart murmur?”

I noted, without any satisfaction, that my mother’s instinct wasn’t wrong. The doctor said they weren’t worried at all about the flouride, but they needed to x ray my daughter’s heart. Suddenly we were there for an entirely different reason.  

We waited another hour or two and then the x rays were available.  My husband, who had quit smoking, took it up again in the mean time.  

Finally the doctor said the x rays showed her heart was not enlarged.  That meant there was no immediate danger.  She would be put on a waiting list to see a heart specialist.

We waited three months.  Further tests revealed that the heart murmur was “harmless” and that was the end of that drama.

I’m waiting again now.

Meanwhile the rest of you guys are probably thinking about trivial stuff like who might be the next President of the United States.

I guess my last post doesn’t make a lot of sense if you have never heard the shipping forecast, that lovely litany that sends me to sleep and then wakes me up again long before I am ready. 

So here’s the latest.  These are the exact words read out on BBC radio at times when only insomniacs and the young have ears to hear:

And now the Shipping Forecast issued by the Met Office, on behalf of the Maritime and Coastguard Agency, at 1725 on Wednesday 29 October 2008.

There are warnings of gales in Plymouth Biscay Fitzroy Sole Lundy Fastnet Irish Sea Shannon Rockall and Malin.

The general synopsis at midday:
Low Malin 992 expected northwest france 987 by 1200 tomorrow. Low Forties 992 moving slowly east and losing its identity by same time. new high expected just west of Iceland 1031 by that time.

The area forecasts for the next 24 hours:

Viking North Utsire:
North or northeast 4 or 5 increasing 5 to 7, perhaps gale 8 later. moderate or rough. Wintry showers. Good.

South Utsire Forties:
Cyclonic 5 to 7 becoming north 4 or 5, occasionally 6 later. Rough or very rough becoming moderate or rough. Wintry showers. Good.

Cromarty Forth Tyne:
Variable 3 or 4 becoming north or northeast 5 or 6. Moderate or rough. showers. Good.

Dogger Fisher German Bight:
Southwest veering north, becoming cyclonic for a time in Fisher, 5 or 6, occasionally 7 at first. Rough or very rough becoming moderate or rough. Showers. Good.

Humber:
Southwest 3 or 4 backing northeast 5 or 6. Moderate occasionally rough. Showers. Good.

Thames Dover Wight:
Variable 3 becoming south 4 or 5, backing northeast 5 to 7 later. slight or moderate, occasionally rough later in Wight. Showers. mainly good.

Portland:
South or southwest, becoming cyclonic then northeast, 4 or 5 increasing 5 to 7, perhaps gale 8 later. Slight or moderate increasing rough. Rain. Moderate or good.

Plymouth Biscay:
South or southwest, becoming cyclonic then northeast, 5 to 7, occasionally gale 8, decreasing 4 for a time. Moderate increasing rough or very rough. Rain then showers. Moderate or good.

Fitzroy Sole:
Northwest veering north 6 to gale 8, perhaps severe gale 9 later. rough or very rough, occasionally high later. Rain or squally showers. moderate or good, occasionally poor at first.

Lundy Fastnet Irish Sea:
Cyclonic 6 to gale 8, perhaps severe gale 9 later in Fastnet. Slight to rough, occasionally very rough in Fastnet. Rain then showers. moderate or good, occasionally poor at first.

Shannon Rockall:
Northwest veering north or northeast 6 to gale 8, occasionally severe gale 9 at first, decreasing 5 at times later. Very rough or high, decreasing rough at times later. Squally showers. Good.

Malin Hebrides:
Cyclonic 5 to 7, occasionally gale 8 in Malin at first, becoming north or northeast 5 or 6 later. Rough to high decreasing moderate or rough later. Rain then showers. Moderate or good, occasionally poor at first in Malin.

Bailey Fair Isle Faeroes Southeast Iceland:
North or northeast 5 or 6, occasionally 7 later. Rough occasionally very rough at first. Squally showers. Good.

There is nothing, it’s true, about rising or falling more slowly (think barometers), but I promise there often is.

But honestly, if you were snuggled under several quilts wouldn’t you love to hear the words “Bailey Fair Isle Faeroes Southeast Iceland: North or northeast 5 or 6, occasionally 7 later. Rough occasionally very rough at first. Squally showers. Good.”

Good? Bloody brilliant. Zzzzzzz.

I don’t sleep all that well, and since I know that it is mostly because I don’t live all that well, I live with it, in my stoicly Puritan way.  

My way is I wake up between 4 and 5 and begin to sneeze.  I have, in my life, slept with men, children, and pets (sometimes all three).  Now I sleep with a box of Kleenex.  

After awhile, when I have tossed and turned and blown my nose (repeatedly) and tossed and turned some more and stuffed a wad of kleenex up my nose (it’s the preemptive strike theory of sniffling), I turn on the World Service.  That’s on a bad night.  

BBC radio runs until about a quarter to one and then kicks back in at around quarter past five.  In between the World Service takes over.

The BBC starts and finishes each day with the deeply reassuring Shipping Forecast.  There are usually warnings of gales, but the litany of names makes all good Brits feel island safe:  “Faeroes, Fair Isle, Viking, North Utsire, South Utsire, Cromarty, Forth, Forties, Tyne, Dogger, German Bite, Humber…” and on round the coast to the more familiar “Thames, Dover, Wight, Portland”, then back through the Irish Sea and north to Scotland again.  I don’t know how to explain it except to say that it is like a spell.  If we chant those maritime syllables three times a day we’ll keep safe from all harm.  It’s a hymn not just for those in peril on the sea. 

When they stopped broadcasting the Shipping Forecast at 5.50 pm each evening on the main radio station there was a (minor) outcry: programme planners said most of their audience had never been aboard a ship and had no idea what the words might mean; protestors said we were being denied our heritage if we didn’t hear those words recited: Forties, Tyne, Dogger. 

I think what they really thought was some Euro bogey man might come and build a Channel Tunnel, connecting us with The Continent and making us a Different Sort of People.

Once the Shipping Forecast has moved on from all the Rising and Falling more slowly, and the deeply inscrutable gales varying from 8 to 10, and the Unnamed that I have always taken to be visibility, moderate or poor, occasionally very poor, there’s the News Briefing followed by Prayer for Today.  No separation of church and state here, but now that we are all good friends together we have all sorts of prayers.  This morning it was Hindu, because October means Diwali.  

After Prayer for Today there’s Farming Today and that’s usually when I go back to sleep because there is not a lot in this world more soporific than GM modification, porcine husbandry, crop circles, mad cow disease, foot and mouth disease, or even (today’s story) the anti oxidant benefits of new fangled purple tomatoes.  

On a really bad night, however, I wake after we have invoked Almighty blessings on the Queen (last thing before BBC shutdown) and before that nice bucolic dawn comfort comes on, and then I have to listen to the hard stuff — World Service the sun never goes down on the empire instead of BBC we know you are sleepy. On the whole, I don’t like the World Service. Where the BBC is cosy and sedate, the World Service is shouty and insistent.  They have jingles.  They have accents  They have news from unfamiliar places.

This morning they had news form southeastern Congo and I stopped blowing my nose and listened.  The fighting has intensified there, and though it has not been reported on the main news anywhere I know, refugees are on the move.

I woke up because my daughter works in southwestern Uganda right over the border from the DRC and Rwanda.  She works with children maimed and blinded in the Rwanda genocide and with children orphaned by HIV/Aids, the scourge of the area. For awhile Uganda had the highest rate of Aids infection in the world. Some of the orphans probably have the disease too, and one of the things my daughter has been working towards is to get these kids tested so they can get the drugs they need.

When the fighting gets bad sometimes armed rebels cross the border, but mainly the only change is refugees fleeing the violence spilling over into her corner of Uganda.

She wrote to ask whether we had received news of the increased conflict. 

Doesn’t really affect us.  Just prices go up, can’t get milk, there are a lot of people selling stolen UN tents in the market, and every now and then we see big military tanks drive past the office.

Ah, just the every day inconveniences of living in a war zone.  I’ll be so glad when she is safely back on an island.

I had a mammogram today.  

I’m three and a half months short of my 55th birthday and this is my second mammogram.  In England you don’t ordinarily get on the National Health Service list to have one until after your 50th birthday and then you get one every 3 years.  You are not allowed to “top up” by paying for intervening years.  (It’s the same with cervical smears which also are only available every 3 years.)

Once you hit 50 you will be invited to attend (as they say) the next time the breast screening unit comes to your area.  In my case that didn’t happen until I was 51 and a bit because I live in the middle of nowhere. I got a letter telling me that an appointment had been made for me at the mobile unit which would be parked outside my local GP’s office.  (My GP is practice is determined by where I live.) 

I telephoned and asked if I could please have my appointment at the main hospital instead, in the city where I work, so I didn’t have to take almost half a day off to drive the 45 minutes back home in the middle of the afternoon.  Or perhaps I could have an appointment first thing in the morning or last thing in the afternoon?  None of that was possible, it seems. Breast screening is linked to GPs and GPs are linked to where you live.  (I’m not allowed to have a doctor in the city, because that is too far away.)

Last month, almost three and a half years after my first mammogram, because that was when they got around to me, I got a second letter.  This time I did have to change the appointment because I wasn’t even in the UK, but I took the only alternative they offered me.  I knew it was no good actually trying to find a time or place that was convenient.

You do not see a doctor when you have a mammogram.  A technician takes the films.  As before, the technician — not the same person I saw last time — explained to me that the films could not be read on the spot, so I might be recalled if the pictures were bad and I shouldn’t be alarmed if that were the case.  I do not know who actually reads the films.  I think it is a specialist technician, but not a doctor.

The receptionist checked to see if I was planning to go away in the next few weeks because the results will come by post in about a fortnight, and they wouldn’t want me to miss such an important letter.  I am not sure what would have happened if I had said, yes, I’m planning to be away.

In case you think women are discriminated against I can tell you that my ex husband (who is 60) does not get offered a regular PSA test for prostate cancer and neither of us has ever had a colonoscopy. (Some of you may be applying for visas right now.)  Only one of my four children ever saw a paediatrician throughout their childhood — why she was so singled out is probably the topic for another post — and no child in the UK gets a routine check up after the age of five.  There was never a doctor, let alone an obstetrician, present at the birth of any of my children.  My blood pressure has only been checked twice in the last 7 years and I have never had a cholesterol test.

Our system in England is certainly fairer.  No family goes bankrupt because of a sick child they are desperately trying to save.  If my mammogram shows I have cancer I will be treated without worrying about paying for that treatment.  It is true that I will have almost no choice about who treats me, nor will I necessarily have access to drugs that are routinely prescribed in the US or even in continental Europe, but I will get what care works for most people and is statistically most effective.  

No one in this country has to fight cancer, or any other disease, and the insurance company at the same time, the way Obama’s mother did.  If you are not a typical case, though, like anywhere else in the world you might have to fight bureaucracy.  

It is possible that it is statistically true, as they tell us, that mammograms and cervical smears are really only required once every three years and that PSA tests are pretty unnecessary.  The government is beginning to accept that colonoscopies might be a good plan (cancel that visa application) and there has lately been some movement towards more preventative medicine, but none of this is patient led.

My family and I get care that an uninsured family in the US could only dream about.

My family and I get care that an insured family in the US would consider completely unacceptable.

And just so we’re clear, I pay a lot more taxes than you do (if you are an American).

I don’t know the answer.  I am guessing that to spread decent care to all, some of you are going to have to accept less than you are used to.

The Rock of Gibraltar pub is a quarter of a mile lurch up the tow path from my boat and then just over the canal bridge. When I come in, the landlord, Stematos, Greek with a heavy accent, greets me extravagantly and almost gets my name right. He’s the optimist in the family. His wife, British and apple checked, has taken my measure more carefully and knows my custom isn’t worth bothering about. If I arrive for a late lunch and ask tentatively if they are still serving the wife will throw her hands on her hips and say, Well I won’t do baguettes at this time of day!

Which is code for saying that at 3 o’clock she will not do new fangled foreign yuppie sandwiches. She will only do the kind of good honest British sandwiches she’s used to from the days when a ham sandwich was a ham sandwich — meaning two slices of nice British squashy supermarket bread, buttered, with a single, thin slice of ham in the middle and if you look kind of hopeful and ask in a quizzical way mustard? tomato? lettuce? mayonnaise? she might be tempted to report you to MI6 or at least Customs and Excise for subversive tendencies.

The food at the Rock is usually not bad, though, and on Greek Nights it is positively good. There have been cold Saturday evenings when I have wandered in late and been hit at the door with rich smells of roasting meat and cumin and garlic and I don’t know what and found Stematos and Apple-cheeked, not behind the bar, but at a small table in a dark corner, making eyes at each other while they sucked the left over lamb bones from some eastern stew.

I’m not sure where the diners for Greek Night usually come from or how close to the edge of profit or ruin this pub hangs. The boaty people generally lurk at the bar grumbling because Stematos won’t let them order a side of chips without a main course. They tell me it is because he is Greek and doesn’t understand British ways.

Last night I had a very different sort of dinner. I am back, temporarily at least, working for one of the Colleges in the University of Oxford. Like all the undergraduate Colleges we have a High Table reserved for members of the Senior Common Room and their guests. The food eaten at High Table is not very different from that eaten below on formal evenings (though far from the every day cafeteria flow). On High Table there is sometimes an extra course. And there is wine.

In case you are wondering, High Table really is elevated a step higher than the rest of the hall. The students, graduate and undergraduate, book in advance and queue up outside the hall clutching their bottles of wine. The door they enter by is next to the door we enter by, but a step below.  A team of staff members checks them in, urges them to fill up one table at a time, and opens their bottles.

Meanwhile the grownups gather in the Senior Common Room and drink, beginning as they mean to go on. When all the students are settled and the chef is ready, an announcement is made in the SCR: Ladies and Gentlemen, dinner is served. Unless there are Peers of the Realm present, in which case it is, of course, My Lords, Ladies and Gentlemen, dinner is served.

In the College where I now work the Principal sits at the centre, like Jesus at the Last Supper. All the students stand as she enters and all continue to stand as she bangs her gavel and pronounces grace: two Latin words (the seating layout and grace traditions vary from College to College).

There is a good deal of bustle as everyone is served. You can talk to whom you like for the first two courses, but it is very bad manners not to turn at the pudding course (not to be confused with dessert which is another matter, and room, altogether and only takes place on alternate evenings) to talk to the person on your other side. You must at all times hold both fork and knife in your hand during the main courses, and your fork and spoon during pudding. It is wise to keep an eye on the Principal during the final course, because when she has decided that you have had plenty of time to finish, whether or not you have, she will bang her gavel, everyone will stand, she will pronounce two more Latin words (the closing grace) and every one, ready or not, will file out.

But what I want to tell you is the really big difference between this whole carry on (to use a British term) and any dinner down the pub is not really the food.  Almost all the food I was served yesterday could have turned up in any institution in the country, including Her Majesty’s Prisons (okay, the first course was special, but the rest was basically sliced chicken, soggy stuffing, soggy potatoes, overcooked peas and worse).

But the words! The menu! Now that had class.  That was really, really grand. So I give you last night’s dinner. I nicked the menu to copy, just for you. Not chips down the pub but:

Parma Ham, Ricotta Cheese and Asparagus Rosettes with a Light Watercress Dressing. Served with Montana Marlborough 2006.

Apple and Chervil Sorbet

Ballotine of Poussin with an Artichoke, Borad Bean and Cumin Farcie, Fondant Potatoes, Corgettes, and Fresh Peas in Chervil Butter served with Cornas Noel Verset 1990.

Mixed Berries set in a Sauterne Jelly

Petits fours

You could just eat those words, couldn’t you?