Just had three days that felt like five; not had 2 minutes to myself from Monday morning until now (Wednesday 22nd October - so I’m told) - 10pm on a long train from London to the north. 

Monday was a meeting about a potential upgrade to an NHS / PCT system - and ongoing. This is so complicated I can’t even begin to describe. Let’s just throw in - four ’strategic partners’ (we think), one(?) stand alone system, three possible new systems; a connection to N3 that will destroy all previous passwords, staff members that are so fed up they talk of walking out, the general back drop of the credit crunch and….the need to provide primary care to people all over London…EXCEPT….there doesn’t seem to be any agreement on what the core system might be. Confused? You will be.

So addled was my brain that the only solace I could seek was in a Kebabishi cafe just off Green Street…the most fragrant rice; a sublime biriyani; home made dal - mouth watering with fresh green chillies..AND ….freshly made Nan bread. I sat there for two hours answering email and ‘working’ while everyone else watched a large screen TV of the cricket match between India and (Australia?). It poured with rain. I drank water from a jug, all the elderly Asian men were drinking milky sweet tea and watching cricket. 

Tuesday - I was the last speaker at a Public Sector Forums conference in Woking on EDRMS. Woking…my two cultural references are The Jam and HG Wells. The War of the Worlds is a genuinely scary book….imagine if aliens did arrive ….and went to Woking first? Well why not? It was a good conference in the sense that i) the speakers were diverse and interesting and ii) I learned a whole lot of stuff.  

Wednesday - Hadleigh in Essex for a user testing workshop. Hadleigh itself, with a fantastic church, St James the Less, with a wooden steeple and absorbing grave yard. Fascinated by the aspe..

We came back to Liverpool Street and were greeted with a poster saying ‘Frustrated at Work? Within weeks you could be in IT’. 

And then I went to the British Museum to see the Hadrian exhibition but was told it was sold out.. (what no more people could go in at 4.30pm? So paradoxically while thousands of school kids have been dragged round this kicking and screaming when they would rather be in Oxford Street…ME..who would really like to see the darn thing….and who lies awake at night wondering about Hadrian’s Wall. .has been denied!!!)

So I walked to Marylebone High Street to go to the Golden Hind - definitely in the top five best fish and chip shops I’ve ever been in…but it doesn’t open until 6pm and I was anxious about missing my train. So I didn’t get that either. And I had two really big bags to haul around. 

And then I nearly got my hair cut but ran out of time….

So instead I went to Selfridges and bought a biography of Harry Gordon Selfridge. 

It was just *one of those days*

And suddenly I got that moment …of feeling human.