A fast blues for a blue Monday.

This week turned out a disappointment – after last week too, which was a candidate for the Hall of Fame of all-time great weeks. I was getting greedy – and the great Soul Cat in the sky decided to take me down a peg.

I spotted that ‘The James Taylor Quartet’ were down to play a nightclub in Brighton on Saturday night and he doesn’t tour much these days so it was probably my last chance to see the  king of kool, one last time.

Hey, that’s not so very far, really it isn’t. It was clearly time for a roadtrip.

Hey, he’s so cool they serve anti-freeze in the bar.

L Mmmm, that’s nice.

All planned out like a military operation; all the daily grind sorted out by the afternoon then a sharp drive down to the coast. Park up on the seafront, a lungful of fresh air, a cough and then an evening showing all the young folks how it really should be done….MOD Night.

Then;

           SHOW CANCELLED

It’s gone over to next month but that’s too far ahead for me. Plans are too much of a luxury these days.

And it’s gone over to another club which looks a lot bigger. Glowering bouncers and not a lot of patience for an old guy with attitude and an Ian Dury Walking stick.

Monday saw me down at my very own Jazz Club, The Red Lion, Isleworth. Not quite the same excitement, not the same kind of buzz but fairly good – really packed out this week because the line-up was about a third of the late, great and irreplaceable Ronnie Scott’s Band.

And they were good.

Dick Pearce’s trumpet and flugel horn and Mornington Lockett’s (yes that really is his name) Sax tore apart the melody of any number of standards, shredded them up and then pulled them all back together again – just in time, with John Critchinson playing some very fine piano, Tim Wells on Bass and Trevor Tomkins on Drums – the glue holding it all together.

 

No photo of Dick Pearce – he disgraced himself by playing a big fat Tuber some of the time. He tried to call it a ‘Baritone Horn’ as if that was ever going to help. It didn’t. I think he ‘borrowed’ it from a Salvation Army hall.

But between them all they were very good indeed. It was one of those couple of hours that flew past in a few minutes. Good hard Bop and ending up on a fast blues for a blue Monday.

But it was never going to be as good as a raid on Brighton.

Then again, I have spotted the chance of a little (ahem) Adventure  on Sunday.

 

`SPIDERMAN SAYS

   HELPMESORTOUTSTPETERS.BLOGSPOT.COM
 

 

Neil Harris

(a don’t stop till you drop production)

Home: helpmesortoutstpeters.blogspot.com

Contact:  neilwithpromisestokeep@gmail.com

More news on the 48 suspicious deaths at heatherwood and Wexham Park NHS Trust Hospitals.

Here’s a more detailed report on the new scandal at Heatherwood and Wexham Park NHS Trust although it isn’t much more detailed. We won’t be hearing much more about it either.

I’ve removed the name published by the Telegraph because I don’t think it is right to name someone without evidence – that’s just bullying.

Of course the real story is that we’ve gone 14 years without being told any of this and ‘we’ as patients should have some knowledge and say in what is going on;

Telegraph.co.uk  Wednesday 02 October 2013

 

Heatherwood and Wexham Park Foundation Trust has ordered a review of all its surgeons to establish their death and complication rates.

It acted after an internal review found a series of unresolved concerns about possible harm to patients and soured personal relationships between clinicians, dating back to 1999.

A summary of the report shows that concerns were raised about the safety of one surgeon’s performance 14 years ago, the Health Service Journal has reported.

@#£$?&%#@ was later found to have a 40 per cent mortality rate for a high-risk operation, a “radical” gastrectonomy procedure, which he subsequently agreed to stop performing.

However, it is reported that colleagues continued to complain about previous patient deaths. The review details how, over following years, concerns were raised about other members of the team and some surgeons were referred to mediation to address their differences.

 

The acrimony, and allegations of poor practice, continued despite six internal audits, eight internal investigations, three reviews by the Royal College of Surgeons and several other assessments and reports. The trust has now commissioned Dr Foster, a health analytics company, to produce performance scorecards for every surgeon, showing their mortality and complication rates and the types of patients being treated.

All the surgeons are now operating safely, the trust said yesterday.

The report by InPractice, a consultancy firm, found 48 cases where concerns were raised over possible harm to patients which were not investigated.

One consultant who raised numerous concerns was labelled “vexatious” and lost an employment tribunal alleging discrimination by the trust.

Phillippa Slinger, who took over as chief executive in 2011, said: “The impact of those few, dysfunctional relationships has been felt widely across departments.” She said “more often than not, actions were taken in good faith on the basis of a series of inadequate investigations”.

Notice the ambition, envy and backbiting that seems to characterise consultants who should be co-operating together to build a team that supports each other through a mutual learning process.

Or is that being naïve and foolish of me. I hope not.

Neil Harris

(a don’t stop till you drop production)

Home:  helpmesortoutstpeters.blogspot.com
Contact: neilwithpromisestokeep+gmail.com