Spring has sprung or so they say… and it was snowing yesterday, on the 31st of March! Global warming and climate change, I just wish the naysayers took both more seriously, but here we are.
We are still in Lent, which offers me a bit more spiritual space for meditating and yes, praying… and the reading adventures continue, which is good. Dr Amir Khan is a person familiar to many, after his foray (along with his colleagues) on telly–his practice was features in GP Behind Close Doors and he also commentates regularly on public health matters. I had purchased his book on ordinary GP life a while ago and have eventually read it. It brought me back to 2020, to that terrible spring when Covid had hit and we were all indoors. When the NHS staff made miracles literally. When we just tried to carry on, looking after children, home schooling them and holding down jobs while working from home… I still have vivid memories of spending late nights recording lectures with my husband’s MP3 voice recorder for my undergraduate and postgraduate students and of marking on screen for very long afternoons.
But we did make it to the summer, a brief window of liberty… til the next crisis in Dec 2020/Jan 2021.
The mask mandate is coming to an end, or so they say, on 18/4 in Scotland and I am still feeling very dicey and fragile. I can’t really imagine going around without masks outside or indoors in public places–I tried for a little while this afternoon, while waiting for my son to finish football practice and it felt distinctly weird and awkward.
Anyhow, back to Dr Khan. The page sang in so many chapters, and his passion for the job really shone through. I could imagine one by one his patients, so similar to my fellow patients whom I used to see in the waiting room of the GP practice I had registered with while in Liverpool–there is something heart-warming and lovely about the North of England, which I can’t quite forget and always miss!–and how the story of each of us intersects with those of others in these spaces and corridors… which we do not share any more. Dr Khan’s stories are the stories of humanity in many ways–people who suffer and yet try their best to carry on, who put others first because, ‘it is my Mum/husband/child. I am all they have.’ Dr Khan’s stories are those of fragility and yet immense resilience that come from forbearance and fortitude and yes, care and love.
This 1 April, I am in no mood for April Fools–the Spring Statement yesterday was way too much to behold, as it speaks of families ending up on the brink, whereas this can be avoided by something very unfashionable, like taxing where the taxable basis is capacious… I am in the mood for remembering 2 years ago and for holding in my head and heart all those who struggle and yet persevere, often unseen by many… but sometimes seen by an “ordinary GP”. Thank you, Dr Khan.
arigoesaround 