Day 45 of Lockdown

Day 45 and we are all agog to see what plans Mr Johnson will reveal on Sunday.  The little game on the right might help you predict.   Other news:

• Free access to your history until Sunday,
• Local NHS Chief wants you to be confident in attending hospital if you need to,
• Last night’s Supermoon, and
• A bit of a wind-down before the bank holiday weekend with Vera Lynn.

Last Few Days of Free Access at Ancestry

Linked to the VE day 75th-anniversary, Ancestry has been offering free access to their website – this expires on Sunday so if you are keen to track your roots this is the weekend to do it!

I (webmaster) have been impressed to finally get close to the truth of the paternal grandfather I never met, it seems he was one of 7 children (6 boys & 1 girl).  Great-grandma must have been a very patient woman.  He died the year before I was born and I have got until Sunday to find out how.

“Help us to help you” – says the Chief Exec of Colchester Hospital

Nick Hulme, Chief Executive of the largest NHS Trust in East Anglia, is urging all of our communities not to be afraid of coming to the hospital if people need treatment and care.

Help us to help you is our very clear message. We know that many people who need urgent or immediate help are not coming into hospital or visiting their family doctors. I completely understand the fear and apprehension everyone may be feeling, but we really do need to give people confidence so that people get the care they need.

I know that we are seeing a 69% decrease in the number of referrals that we are receiving for patients suspected of having cancer, and that we are only seeing a very limited number of people who need urgent and immediate help for strokes and cardiac care.

We Need To Change

We need to change this and we need to do this quickly. What we are doing now is to continue to plan the care of our patients who need urgent and essential treatment. We are reviewing the plans we made with our patients waiting for surgery and are working hard to offer new dates for all those whose operation is urgent.

We will only bring you into hospital for a test or to see a specialist when a face to face meeting is needed. Wherever possible, we will carry out virtual appointments so that you do not have to leave your home and come to the hospital. This will be by telephone or by a video link.

There is a great deal of work going on to make our hospitals and services safe and clean.  This includes extra cleaning in all areas. It also involves having specific and dedicated areas throughout our services which are known as ‘green areas’ – places where no-one being cared for with COVID-19 has been treated.

And we are very clear about the importance of social distancing – staying at least two metres away from one another.

Last Night’s Supermoon

Did anybody catch a picture of last night’s Super Flower Moon.  This was the last one until April next year; hopefully, we’ll be out of lockdown by then.  If you do have a picture taken from West Bergholt, please share it & we’ll post it here in place of this picture which was taken a few years ago in Canary Wharf:

Own work by mattbuck.

And Wind Down

Dame Vera Lynn, now 103, is probably most famous for her song “We’ll meet again”.  This section has two different renditions.  In the first, she performs herself with stars of the West End.  This is a message of assurance that UK Theatre shall once more rise and thrive – ‘some sunny day’. Dedicated to the theatre audiences and theatrical professionals of yesterday, today … and tomorrow.

The second is more a sign of our times and is a political (don’t hit play unless you are prepared for that) COVID-19 Parody