Welcome home Rhys

This morning at St Catherine's Fr Rhys Jenkins presided and baptised at the Parish Eucharist. It's his first Sunday as NSM Associate Priest in the Benefice, a welcome addition to the team, as he lives in the community and is already well known and loved. Although this was a Sunday off for Emma, she took part in the celebration, welcoming Rhys at the start and administering Communion with him.

After an early lunch, I went to the wound clinic in St David's. Only on my way back did I realise that I had no appointment booked for tomorrow. I called the nursing helpline, but they were unable to fix one for me, as this team doesn't have access to the clinic's booking diary. I found St David's hospital reception number on-line, however, and was able to contact the clinic and obtain a date. It seems to me that the NHS suffers greatly from not having an computer data management system handling all the information of every department in an integrated way. It's not an impossible thing to achieve. 

The problem is, that the use of computer systems in hospital medicine evolved at different rates in different departments over decades. And each is a law unto itself. Many existing systems are out of date. Also they are not as secure as they need to be against malicious hackers. In other countries it seems, integrated information systems have been the norm for decades. Attempts to do the same in the UK have so far been expensive failures. To what extent, I wonder, does this reflect lack of shared vision about the future of the service offered? A bit like the failure of the brexit process to declare unequivocally what kind of future the UK wants, as opposed to what brexiteers are clear they don't want in future. 'Without a vision people perish' as the saying goes, as we spiral into chaos.

We didn't go out together in the afternoon. It rained. After a siesta, Clare had a school meeting from four until six with her eurythmy colleague Jacquie, so Russell came over with her, to drink coffee and chat for the duration. It was good to welcome him here for a change. 

After supper I watched the last episode of ITV's Inspector Morse prequel 'Endeavour', and very good it was too, telling a story of police corruption in the seventies. Before and after I watched on iPlayer the two episodes of the Icelandic crimmie 'Trapped', missed last night. It continues to develop interestingly, touching on current themes of multinational industry colonialism, environmental pollution, homophobia and political corruption, xenophobia and nationalist extremism. So many themes, tightly played out in a constricted social setting with awesome landscapes. Very much a modern Icelandic saga.