Prescription

My best beloved was running out of the stuff that holds her together so, judging where we'd be and when, we rang our doctor's practice. They've been very good at faxing repeat prescriptions through to the pharmacy of our choice.

Around lunch-time today we moored up just above the Glascote locks in Tamworth, judging that to be the point offering the shortest (well, the least long) walk into the town. As small shopping centres go, the Ankerside is rather mediocre inside, but it has a very nice location beside, would you believe, the River Anker.

The park in front was being planted up with bedding to flower in February, though some of the violet primroses or primulas were currently in bloom. Crossing over the river to get there, we had a nice view of an older bridge.

We also had to pass the castle.

The park has some interesting information boards about what it would have liked to be here in the heyday of the Saxon settlement, and once the Normans had built their fortress.

One of them explained the herringbone structure to a wall as being to offer strength when subsidence is a possibility.

Well, that was enough history for one day. We were concerned to complete the present task. We found Boots, and the people behind the pharmacy counter were extremely helpful, located the faxed prescription and put it together. That was when we found that two items were missing.

We rang the doctor's, and figured out that the prescription had been two pages long (yes, I know, but some of them have very long names), and they seemed to have faxed through only the first page. They promised to send the rest, and we sat down to wait. Twenty minutes later I rang again to make sure I hadn't misunderstood – that they really were going to fax them through that afternoon. A hour later I rang again, and found that they had had to print off the second page again, which needed a doctor's signature, but it really would be sent when the interview with the current patient was over. Ten minutes later, the receptionist rang me to ask for the fax number again. Ten minutes later again, we finally had all the little capsules.

I learned today that, with the computerisation of the NHS, it ought to be possible to do all this electronically (I think, in this day and age, fax doesn't count as electronic communication). We'll have to make sure both we and our doctor's practice are properly signed up for it before next year's travels!