Day: December 29, 2022

The scandal of social care in the UK

A

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/dec/15/health-expert-jeremy-hunt-fix-social-care

It’s not just beds: many sitting in hospitals needlessly await care packages at home, but domiciliary care services are collapsing. Many wait for NHS services in the community, but the number of district nurses halved in the last decade. The IFS this week produced an alarming report on declining productivity in the NHS. One key reason, it said, was the failure to “discharge patients into the community or social care, which further clogs up the system and acts as a drain on staff resources”. Far from integration, there’s a tug of war, or tug of blame, between the NHS and councils.

Eden for 1-hour

I remember everything you said

As we lay together in our bed

The light of joy lit up my heart and soul

I remember everything we did

On the happy night that we were wed

Fulfilment in our very bones is bred

And from our minds the devils have all fled

As we’re taken back into the fold.

For one small hour in Eden we were glad.

The hatred and the pain for now are shed

With love and hope our lives can be more bold.

Even now when you have gone from sight

Rondeau | Poetry Foundation

“Originating in France, a mainly octosyllabic poem consisting of between 10 and 15 lines and three stanzas. It has only two rhymes, with the opening words used twice as an unrhyming refrain at the end of the second and third stanzas.” https://www.poetryfoundation.org/learn/glossary-terms/rondeau#:~:text=Originating%20in%20France%2C%20a%20mainly,the%20second%20and%20third%20stanzas.

I miss

I miss the cat that slept upon my bed.

I miss my husbands presence in the night

I miss the words of Love from him who’s dead.

I miss the cat that slept upon my bed

For God is dead unless I find new light

The lonely darkness fills my soul with dread.

I missed the man that slept with me in bed

I miss his presence in the dead of night

Triolet | Academy of American Poets

https://poets.org/glossary/triolet

Image by Katherine

The requirements of this fixed form are straightforward: the first line is repeated in the fourth and seventh lines; the second line is repeated in the final line; and only the first two end-words are used to complete the tight rhyme scheme. Thus, the poet writes only five original lines, giving the triolet a deceptively simple appearance: ABaAabAB, where capital letters indicate repeated lines.

History of the Triolet Form

French in origin, and likely dating to the thirteenth century, the triolet is a close cousin of the rondeau, another French verse form emphasizing repetition and rhyme. The earliest triolets were devotionals written by Patrick Carey, a seventeenth-century Benedictine monk. Brit

How to look after your mental health

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/7105a1c4-504f-11eb-ad71-ea6bb4a570af?shareToken=eb3e273a2b79f19cc4ff6f5923df374f

Some people can get lost in movies, reading or baking — a task that gets your mind to another place,” Woolgar says. “When you stop [that activity], your problems may not have gone away, but you’ve given your mind a break — and the opportunity to reset and have a fresher perspective. Be proud of that little bit of change