This image is one of wanton destruction – I know it, you know it BUT it’s for a good reason – it’s to illustrate my point about wasting money and this $1 bill is the smallest amount of the folding stuff I can lay my hands on from any country. Before ticking me off, note that I promise to make up for it by donating some bigger denomination bills to a US charity when I get there in a few short weeks time. Yes, it’s wrong of me to burn money but no more wrong than many of the things we all do every day. (You know the sort of thing – buying food then letting it rot in the fridge, buying a ticket for something then not turning up, eating for the sake of eating etc etc.)

The shot looks slightly weird, that’s because a straightforward flash shot burned out the flame and a non-flash shot gave too much handshake. So, I combined flash and a long exposure to achieve this (reasonably) crisp shot but with a ghostly edge….that’s my hand waving around!!! I am a pyromaniac as some will already have seen – this is another demonstration of that tendency. I also have a complete irreverence for things that often other people think of as ‘precious’.

So, to the reason for this analogy…..I am really fed-up today. I’ve had a health problem hanging over me since late last year, which has resulted in damage to my nervous system. It’s been very uncomfortable and quite worrying. It’s cost me a great deal of my precious time and caused me a great deal of anguish as I’ve been trooping back and forth to the doctor’s surgery and latterly to the hospital.

I finally got to see a specialist at the hospital today (hurrah??!!??) who clearly felt that his own time was much more valuable than mine as he kept me waiting for hours (yes, plural) after my official appointment time with no apology or even explanation given – I wonder how he would have felt if he’d been kept waiting as long by his bank manager or some other professional whose time he needed?

When I got into his surgery, he glanced at me and observed with a smirk on his face that I must be younger than him……not to mention his other ‘banter’ which was pretty much all equally patronising.

He asked me one question only…..do I eat a ‘normal’ diet, to which I responded no, I’m a vegetarian and have been for 25 years or more. His reply was that human beings were not designed to eat a vegetarian diet and that red meat would cure me just fine. Now there’s a real charmer – talk about pouring scorn on another person’s moral code. I wonder if he’d have done it had I been a vegetarian for religious reasons?

He then, a little more helpfully, suggested that I take vitamin supplements to treat this condition, which incidentally has been caused by a deficiency in vitamin B12. Now I knew this was a problem for veggies, but the literature I have read on the subject has suggested that deficiency is rare unless you are a vegan. Most of the information I have seen suggests that milk, eggs and cheese consumption should be adequate to combat the problem. Apparently not.

Anyway, my body’s ‘bank’ of B12 has finally run dry (it can be stored in the liver for many years) and I am suffering as a result of that.

So, for a total of six months I have had a condition that at best is uncomfortable and at worst downright sore and six months of worrying about what might be causing it. I have now had to take four separate ‘bits’ of time off work, today’s a whole afternoon virtually by the time I eventually got home. I have sat around and wasted hours of my own time in waiting rooms and ‘wasted’ oh, what must be all of a few minutes of the time of the three doctors and three nurses I have seen. The last blood test I had was accompanied by a monologue from a nurse moaning about the fact that an earlier patient had shouted at her for being behind schedule – I wonder if they have any clue about working in a commercial environment, where poor timekeeping = money down the drain?

My own GP knows well that I am a veggie and knew of the B12 deficiency months ago yet I had to wait until today to be told to go away and take a B Complex supplement. I had to go to the hospital to get told this earth-shattering bit of news and take another afternoon off work.

What this does for me is makes me see red. Why couldn’t a simple letter have been sent to my GP saying that the B12 deficiency could be treated by taking a supplement. This would have saved so much of my own precious time and quite a bit of this supposedly more precious NHS resource. Every personal encounter I have with our health service leaves me feeling dissatisfied and angry at waste and inefficiency. A bit of streamlining wouldn’t come amiss.

Safety was on my mind last year.

I've been doing a lot of work in my 'capturing songs' gallery recently too.