At my first session in the Strength and Balance class last week I made several discoveries. One was that I am very deaf even with my hearing aids in and on. 

There were ten in the class which takes place in a large studio on the second floor of the Castle Centre. One long wall is all glass windows with a view of St Mary’s churchyard – now a small park. The opposite wall is all mirrors. In between is the studio. 

There were five chairs in a line in front, ten behind. We each stood behind our chairs our backs to the mirrors. Our instructor, Jeff, a young Yul Brynner look alike, shaved head, faced us with his back to the windows. I was in the back row to the left. He began the class and I couldn’t hear. I put my hand to my ear to help my hearing. Jeff noticed. A helpful friend, centre in the front row, offered to change places. We did. I was now centre front and could see and hear.

My second discovery was that I don’t like being in the front row. Now that I think about it I didn’t like it when I was at school. I now understand why people don’t like being in the front row in church. I felt very exposed, probably because I was. I was very aware that my friend, now back left, could observe every move I made. So could everyone else. Not that they were looking or particularly interested. Nevertheless I didn’t like the exposure.

We began with ‘warm up’ then ‘cardio’. There was a lot of marching on the spot arms moving in time. My arms didn’t seem to coordinate in time with my legs. I remembered cadets at boarding school on Fridays, ‘Right Dress’, and marching on the Quad. My arms and legs didn’t coordinate then either. Some things never change.

I did not enjoy this not least because I couldn’t see how I was doing in comparison with everyone else. I could only see Jeff who could do everything of course – he was the instructor. However I didn’t do too badly. When we moved on to exercises and were doing ‘squats’ Jeff said, “Well done, Simon.” 

I was pleased. I discovered then that the schoolboy in me still enjoys approval. I had hated gym at school and all these years later I was pleased that I was doing something right in the gym. Well, not in the gym exactly, in the studio on the second floor of the Castle Centre at a session for those older persons with strength and balance problems referred within the National Health Service.

And the next discovery was that there are still discoveries to be made.  I think that’s the great discovery.

It is not that I stopped thinking. I stopped writing. Then a friend said she missed my ‘Thoughts’ and that I should start writing again. So here goes.

To some extent the silence has been a matter of health rather than laziness. I could write about my Deep Vein Thrombosis in Bangkok and the wonderful Bangkok Christian Hospital.

Then there’s my Heart and Harley Street and being transferred from there to the NHS and St Thomas’s Hospital where both my grandparents practised, one as a Gynaecological Surgeon the other as a nurse. But that was in the late 1800s and Florence Nightingale was still around.

Then again I could choose to write about my x-ray, my Lungs, and the Chest Clinic in the Lambeth Wing at St Thomas’s.

There has also been my appointment at Guy’s Hospital at the Older Persons Assessment Unit (Cardiology). At the end of my late afternoon appointment the Consultant told me that I was the fittest patient he had seen all day. I replied that having observed the other patients in the waiting room his comment was hardly a compliment.

And there’s the Strength and Balance class at the Castle Centre at Elephant and Castle. It’s on the NHS. The first session was on Tuesday. It was hard work and I ended up exhausted and ready to fall over – unbalanced and weak. There are only twenty nine more sessions to go. Perhaps strength and balance will come.

I remember someone saying to me when I was talking about matters of health, “The organ recital will be limited to four minutes.” I think I’ve had my four minutes.

Through all of this I have experienced Britain’s National Health Service as never before. Of course my experience has been limited to my local area, local GP surgery and local hospitals Guy’s and Thomas’s. I’ve been to Accident and Emergency, not in an ambulance but in the 159 bus having been sent there by my GP for blood tests.

Without exception I have been treated by professionals with respect and efficiency. There have been delays but these haven’t affected me too much. I was less upset at the wait at A & E on Good Friday afternoon than the young woman who had hurt her foot and was wanting to go to a party. She was dressed up and ready to go and made her displeasure at the delay known. But there were others before her and the staff were remarkably patient.

The only news I get is from the television. My mistake I’m sure. The NHS had largely positive coverage during Covid. Now it’s the deficiencies, the rogue doctors and bad nursing, poor systems and inadequate funding that get a lot of attention on the television news. And I’m sure there are mistakes and poor judgements made and unsatisfactory practice from time to time.

The King’s Fund is an independent charitable organisation working to improve health and care in England. I discover in a report from the Fund that, ‘In 2021/22 there were an estimated 570 million patient interactions with GP, community, hospital, mental health and ambulance services – 1.6 million contacts every day‘. That’s for the NHS in England. I understand the number is increasing. Not surprising when I consider the number of contacts I’ve made with the NHS over the past six months.

There’s a thought.

It was somewhere in America in the eighties that they did this experiment. But neither the date nor the place matters at all. I probably read about it in the eighties.

A production line was set up. Chairs were before the conveyor belt of the production line. Behind each chair stood a man in a white coat. Items moved along the conveyor belt. A simple assembly task was set. The volunteers were called in and each sat on a chair to perform the simple task.

In the first instance each man in a white coat commented to each volunteer, always accurately, whenever the volunteer made a mistake. ‘No,’ ‘Incorrect,’ ‘Wrong,’ And so on.

In the second instance the set up was the same but this time the feedback, always accurately, whenever the volunteer got it right, was positive. ‘Yes,’ ‘Correct,’ And so on.

When the results were analysed the number of items correctly assembled by the first group decreased as time went on, the conveyor belt slowed and two of the volunteers burst into tears. For the second group the reverse happened, many more items were correctly assembled and there were happy volunteers apart from one who said, “This is the most boring thing I’ve done in my life. Don’t you realise that if you did this and this and this the whole process would be speeded up and you’d get far more done!”

I’ve been looking at the BBC News website. The BBC claims to present us with ‘balanced’ news. There are usually between ten and twelve general news items at any one time on the website. The great majority of news items are negative. There are stories of disaster, murder, stabbing, attacking – physical or verbal, warnings of economic downturn, higher prices for utilities, there are items about war and forest fires. And in one story “One quarter of people on the scheme do not wish to continue.” But what about the three quarters who do wish to continue with the scheme? The news seems to suggest the scheme is a failure. Is it? Three quarters are continuing. But the news item is the quarter who are not. The news does not, to me, seem balanced between positive and negative.

As a whole society we are being given negative feedback about ourselves on the hour every hour. It’s not healthy.

Don’t believe me? Try this:

‘Positive Feedback and Performance
Feedback can be defined as the “provision of information regarding some aspect(s) of one’s task performance” (Kluger and DeNisi, 1996, p. 255). Meta-analyses show impressive effects of feedback on increased performance, with average effect sizes of d = 0.40 (Kluger and DeNisi, 1996) and d = 0.79 (Hattie and Timperley, 2007). Research has identified moderators of the feedback-performance relationship, with findings suggesting that positive feedback is more efficient than negative feedback. For example, Arbel et al. (2014) found that positive feedback improved learning performance more than negative feedback. Furthermore, it has been found that feedback after good trials enhanced learning in comparison to feedback after poor trials (Chiviacowsky and Wulf, 2007). In line with these findings, the meta-analysis of Kluger and DeNisi (1996) found that feedback following correct results, that is, positive feedback, was more effective than feedback following incorrect results. Furthermore, feedback was more effective when it was provided by a computer (d = 0.41) vs. not (d = 0.23; Kluger and DeNisi, 1996).’

P.S. But perhaps I shouldn’t worry because I understand that viewing/listening figures for the BBC have been going steadily down for years. Thank goodness the BBC is about more than the news. The BBC Proms have been wonderful and the reviews (feedback?) have been great.

Not so much from the pool as from the changing room. A very English discussion about the weather. It has been very hot. And the talk went on from the temperature to the brown grass in the parks.

“Burgess Park is even more brown than Kennington Park.”

“Kennington Park is really brown. I’ve never seen it like this before.”

“It’s the same everywhere. It’s really brown.”

“Clapham Common is brown.”

And then, “It’s a total disgrace. The government has done nothing about it. The government’s a disgrace!”

There was a pause. Then, from the corner, a voice, quite quietly, “I don’t think even Boris doing a rain dance could make it rain.” And from another, “Or Jeremy Corbyn.”

It used to be an ‘Act of God’ and God could take it. It’s a bit tricky if you don’t have God to blame.

“Wasn’t it great,” one of my fellow swimmers said as we waited in the changing room for our 11.00am Public Swimming session to begin.
“What?” I said.
“You mean you didn’t watch it!” he said in disbelief.
“Watch what?” I asked, realising that any credibility I might have had as a fellow human being was rapidly disappearing.
“The football! Last night! At Wembley! The women’s football! We won!”
And I said, with as much enthusiasm as I could, “Yes of course,” and “It was great.”
I don’t think he was convinced.

And that win by a team of women included him and me, two elderly men who have never played football in our lives, and the whole nation. It included me even though I hadn’t watched it on television. Over 17 million people had watched it on television. That ‘We won!’ was repeated across the country and brought smiles to people’s faces and lifted their spirits. It was a fact. The Lionesses won and we all won and we all rejoiced.

Of course the win was covered repeatedly by the media and the aftermath is still being covered and people are still buoyed up by it.

So why do the editors of the news choose, on the hour every hour, to present us, almost exclusively, with the negatives, with news of murder, death, distress and disaster? And what does that news do to us as people?

THANK YOU

I have tried to send this email to Sainsbury’s.

‘Please pass on this information to the appropriate management.
Near me where I live in Kennington is a ‘Payless’ and a Tesco Express. Over the years I have used both. Recently I discovered, at Elephant and Castle, a Sainsbury’s Local. It is much further away. The shop is well designed and uncrowded and it seems to have much of what I need. I have now shopped there frequently not least because all the staff, the security guard, the check out staff and other staff have been unfailingly pleasant, polite and helpful. For an older person such as myself this makes all the difference.
Thank you.
Simon Acland’

I sent it to customer.service@sainsburys.co.uk. It was returned with the information that this mailbox is no longer in use and referred me to the ‘Help Centre’. Nowhere on the Help Centre website is there a contact by email. There’s Twitter and Facebook and there’s a phone number with recorded options none of which remotely fit what I was trying to do. Even the option for Instore shopping gives a list, not in any order I could see, of every London Sainsbury’s store – and there are a lot – and I couldn’t find Elephant and Castle. All this investigating and tapping on the iPad and even telephoning Sainsbury’s Head Office – another recording giving phone numbers I’d already tried, that had more recorded options – took three quarters of an hour
Eventually, by pretending I had an issue with an order, I had a person on the end of the line. For the first time a real human being not a recording. He was in India and was most helpful. He gave me an email address. It was customer.service@sainsburys.co.uk.

I’m still trying to say thank you.

P.S. I succeeded. Well, partly. I was able to send it as a complaint to the complaints department. I had an acknowledgement – an automatic reply telling me that my ‘complaint’ had been received and that I would receive a response within five working days. I await the response.