London sights seen

It has been a beautiful day today and we've enjoyed it without straying very far from home.

Here are few more sights we saw in London the day we went to visit Lords cricket ground. Can you recognise them all?

ERrrrr...?

A couple of months ago the Boy had a bit of a medical emergency and ended up in the ER of a local hospital.

Now, in the UK in similar circumstances you would turn up at your nearest casualty unit, get treated, and all being well go home and get better. End of story.

Over here things are a little different.

For one thing, of the dozen or so hospital people you have to speak to on admission, one of the most important is the one who takes down your insurance details. If you are poor enough to qualify for Medicaid you will get treated for free. If you aren't sufficiently poor, but are uninsured or under-insured, look out - it's gonna cost you.

We have good insurance, arranged by the Man's company, so no worries there. Our son received excellent service and had all the necessary tests etc over the course of the night. We had to pay a standard emergency treatment "co-pay" of $50 and we knew that insurance would cover the rest.

A week or so later we received a "This is not a bill" notice from the insurer, letting us know that the hospital had submitted a claim for a four figure sum, they (the insurers) would be paying out a three-figure sum (and how that works to everyone's satisfaction I can't understand) and all was settled.

Or so we thought. Today we received a bill for nearly $500 from an organisation representing the emergency physician. They claim that although the hospital, the nurses, the radiographer etc.. are on our insurance plan, she is not. She is employed by a totally separate organisation - some sort of sub-contractor arrangement - that doesn't participate in our insurance network. Kindly pay up please, maybe your insurer will pay you back...

Were we supposed to know, as the Man drove up to the hospital in the middle of the night with a kid in a bad way that even though the building was on our plan the doctor wasn't? He wasn't told this was the case - but if he had known, was he then supposed to rush off and find another hospital?

Conceivably our insurer will cover the services of the off-plan doctor in these circumstances, though there may have to be some silly process of payment and repayment. So, though I was shocked when I first opened the bill, it may all turn out just to be an annoyance. But what if this happened to someone in a different, less favourable situation? Suddenly being slapped with a hefty charge two months after the event could be seriously stressful - definitely not good for anyone's health.

The healthcare system in this country is bafflingly complex, even if you are insured to the hilt. At its worst, it fails to serve a great many of the people who need it most, and can leave people in crippling debt. Maybe Obama's reforms, making health insurance obligatory (like car insurance), will mean more people have access to healthcare - a good thing. But I fear it will go nowhere towards making the system less complicated.

The British NHS undoubtedly has its faults, but if healthcare free at the point of use is available to you be grateful and know how lucky you are.

On yer bikes

We happened to be in London (was it only seven days ago?) in the launch week of the "Boris bikes" - the new cheap short-term bike-loan scheme named after the Mayor of London. We'd seen the racks standing ready when we made our US Embassy trip at the start of our visit. It was quite exciting to see them full of shiny blue bikes less than a week later. The kids were very intrigued. When we came out of the theatre after seeing WarHorse it was also good to see that most of the bikes were off being ridden somewhere.

I hope the scheme works, because it seems like a great idea. I wonder if any US cities will take the cue - someone over here has taken notice, at least.

Stick with me, kids

Back in the spring, after the last of the snow, I cleared the lawn of a lot of fallen sticks and twigs. To the Man's dismay I stowed them all in the garage in a brown paper bag. But I knew one day they'd come in handy...

Cruise control

Some of us ventured out to the Jericho Drive-In this evening, not to watch a movie but to see a "cruise-by" of classic cars which happens there every second and fourth Tuesday during the summer. Not that I have any particular interest in cars, classic or otherwise, but we thought it might be worth a look.

It turned out to be a fairly low-key event. The classic car owners show up, park their vehicles and recline next to them on lawn chairs. Some of them pop the hoods up so you can admire the classic engines. The ice-cream bar broadcasts '50s and '60s music, and visitors stroll up and down. And that's about it really. Without the people it would have been a lot like dropping in on the denizens of Radiator Springs on a really quiet day.


Possibly there is actual cruising by if you stay late enough - if you waited until the 8 o'clock finish time you'd get to see them all cruising home at least. We had to leave earlier though. We hope to be back there soon, however, for the drive-in movie experience...

Baked good-enoughs

Kids up at 5:30am. A friend came to visit late morning and they all played outside for hours and hours in the 90F heat. Tonight they have put themselves to bed without being told.

A librarian asked me the other day what proper scones are meant to taste like, figuring that with my accent I ought to know. Surprisingly I resisted telling him that I was once (just the once) a prize-winning scone baker (my finest hour: First Prize for my six cheese scones, Linton & District Gardening Club Show 2006). But his question had put me in a baking mood. My scones today were not brilliant (they certainly wouldn't have won any prizes) but at least they weren't "cakey" like the ones the librarian had recently experienced in a local cafe.

I'll give you a little longer to work on yesterday's fluffernutter sandwich challenge. I do actually know the real answer (oh, the wonders of Google), and suspect you won't be able to come with anything nearly as revolting.

Fluff and stuff

The kids were up at 5am - an improvement on yesterday, but not by much. So it felt like midday when we set out to Indian Ladder Farms around 9:30.

We tried to pick blueberries, but only managed to fill half a punnet as the ripe fruit had all been picked yesterday. However we still had fun renewing friendships with the farm animals and enjoying snacks from the shop.


It has been a hot afternoon, and the kids spent a lot of it in the pool. I went off in search of airtight containers to store dry goods in - while we were away moths got into a whole cupboard's worth of rice, pasta, crackers etc and I've had to evict about a million caterpillars, yeurgh.

On the cafe menu at the farm this morning I noticed this item: "Fluffernutter Sandwich - Does this childhood favorite need any explanation?"

Yes!! Suggestions, anyone?