NHS

Just back from my second visit to an endoscopy unit, this one at Epsom Hospital. The first was at Frimley Park Hospital and was noticed on February 16th 2012 at the other place.

I should like to record that both places are a credit to the NHS. The staff were all very kind and supportive and Epsom had the added advantage of a recent refurbishment - to the extent of there being a phone in one of the holding rooms on which I was able to leave BH an important message about where to find the keys needed to access the freezer when she came back from Tesco's. Both places managed to get me through what can be an anxious and uncomfortable time with remarkably little of either.

While at Epsom Hospital today, I had the time to examine the large pot plant in the discharge waiting room; a very plant like affair standing maybe four feet high in its plant pot. Quite handsome looking and something to rest the eyes on if you did not fancy the house makeover program offered by the telly. The trick seems to be to have real woody stems, complete with enough knobbly bits to trick the brain into thinking that the whole thing is real, into which you stick plastic leafy branches, the thick leaves of warm country evergreens being a lot easier to fake that the knobbly bits of the stems or the usually thin and fragile leaves of our own deciduous trees and bushes. The only giveaway was the fact that some of the leafy branches had been stuck all the way through the woody stems, with the pointy bit sticking out the other side; otherwise I might have been wondering about fake or not fake for a little longer than I in fact was. All in all a rather fancy version of a plastic Christmas tree, the one we had for many years being made in much the same way, albeit with a plastic but largely invisible trunk.

One wonders how the things get cleaned? Do you just stand them outside in the rain for a bit or do you mist them with dilute detergent? Does the hospital employ a indoor garden contractor to look after them? I remember that in one of the buildings in which I used to work back in the early eighties, the pot plants which broke up the open plan areas were looked after by a contractor at so much a foot a month. I don't think plastic was as good then as it is now and the plants actually were plants which needed watering. Maybe even a bit of TLC from time to time.