I have been experimenting with paint flow improvers and retarders this morning but I made the mistake of trying it out with a new to me paint. 

I ended up adding a few drops of Tamiya acrylic paint to the Mig Ammo paint and it is now left to dry out. For me this particular model is a test bed for the new paints but I added too much water to the mix and the flow was akin to Niagara falls! Paint lesson no 1 learned.

I am currently reading Ghostland by Edward Parnell which has been on my to buy book list for a couple of years now and it was reading a review of another book on a website I frequent for the weird and wonderful that prompted me to buy a copy. I am absolutely entranced by it and can thoroughly recommend it. I remember back in the seventies doing a project for English Literature about myths, ghost stories and time and again a similar project at university in1990 but also incorporating dreams so this book is right up my street. I mentioned it to a friend who again suggested I should write about my nursing experiences and I thought that could form the basis for a series of short stories at a future date. I am taken with the idea and once this year and hopefully some of the housing work has been completed I could look at doing this. It would be broader than just nursing and could incorporate many of those themes that come back time and time again. I do have a general dissatisfaction with my job but have to work at it for at least another year, possibly two, so a future plan is forming in my head. I had planned to go back to studying but the current nonsense that is destroying education is something I would rather not be involved in and it is now too expensive. Well done Blair, Clegg and others for destroying the underlying philosophy of the Open University as envisaged in the sixties. You can't just pin the blame on the Tories for this. 

I also have a sense of time slipping by and it might be that the last two years where simultaneously there is a sense of time standing still and yet also rushing by. Part of that is the repeated lockdowns but also the crammed in nature of the work we did during that time. I have also seen several colleagues now retire and another leaves next week having decided she would rather enjoy life on a smaller budget whilst she can. What astonishes me is that she was one of my students twenty years ago although she is a couple of years older than me. Another aspect is that my mum came close to dying last year and although she is now better and pottering about, she is also realistic and stated she has perhaps a couple of years left to her.  I am planning a couple of trips down this year and to spend some quality time with her but she no longer goes out very much. I also realise when listening to the new members of another team that shares our office that I am very much older than them. They are all in their twenties and thirties and sadly I find them all very superficial.Perhaps that says more than me but I have no interest in them as I listen to them make the mistakes we made thirty years ago. I think of those older nurses I worked with thirty years ago and perhaps they regarded me with the same jaundiced eye!  Finally, the response of management who were prepared to throw me out and that trust and sense of belonging was broken. I bluntly told my senior manager I found more support and camaraderie from some of the patients than I did from her and her colleagues. The NHS ethos is a business, not care and not concern for patients. The rose coloured spectacles finally slipped from my eyes and I see it for what it is...a badly run business. I have had few illusions about the NHS for many years but the last two years have removed any remaining ones. 

I don't want to end this post on a bit of a downer but I don't think it is that, more of an acceptance of the reality of society currently and the mess we are in. I am heartened by the public response by ordinary people to the Ukrainian refugees and the help being offered. Prior to the 'pandemic' I used to be able to predict what I would be doing in six months or a years time but that changed and now with the war in Ukraine I still can't say what things will be like in a few weeks time let alone a years time. Oddly enough I do remain optimistic and plan for the future as should we all. I still have this model to complete...

TTFN.