Nurses Strike

Lots of humans are exercising their right to withdraw their labour to draw attention to the fact of how integral their work is to the smooth running of civilized society, and to make the argument that their contribution to said society is not being rewarded appropriately.

Nurses are among them.

They may have a point. We don't know what nurses get paid but whatever it is, it probably isn't an appropriate compensation for years of training, weird hours, unreasonable demands, challenges of dealing with sick and injured people, and then there is the emotional stuff.  I like my V-E-T nurses to be caring and empathetic, which they can probably achieve on regular work hours and nights of regular sleep, and they don't have to put up with me throwing food on the floor, or being abusive.

One of my human sisters is training to be a nurse.

On a more personal note, nurses being on strike meant Aunty B is still at her home, so we visited her in York. One lung is full of fluid and other stuff is going wrong in her insides space. (Perhaps better she doesn't know what exactly.)

She was sitting up in bed (watched over by two of the blackest cats I have ever seen), smiling and joking, and discussing illness art with my humans (don't go there, it involves the colours of drained out stuff....yuck, yuck and double yuck), while I kept a wary eye on a k9 called a 'something powder-puff'.

Raymond the powder-puff is a fluffy animal with only half a brain, and you can never predict what such creatures are going to do with the remaining half.  Fortunately the resident felines have already beaten him into shape and he backs away when they glance at him.

York... I didn't get a walking tour; something about flying visit. We weren't flying either. It took about 6 or 7 hours of driving each way from our home in The South, but i did see rows of brick houses more interesting than the rows in our neighbouring Leigh Park estate. Pretty houses. Someone in York was using their head when they planned new houses because they seem to have plenty of off-street parking for their cars. There is a huge park in the middle of town (close to where Aunty B lives in Holgate) that I am told is a race course. Horses apparently chase one another around in that park. 

Holgate - the gate part doesn't mean a door in a fence, it is from Scandi languages in which Gade means street. York famously has Viking heritage and some of the language used thereabouts and further north still bears the evidence. I think we should go back and let me see more of the place. 

Two days of being driven - I saw a lot of this sort of view.  That smeary stuff on the windscreen is salt.  We ran out of screen-wash before we got home and everywhere seemed to have sold out of it.  Mr B topped it up with water but that simply froze on the window and in the nozzle things.