Not applicable in the Cheerful News thread

It may be area dependent. When I had my episode last year the ambulance was there in about 30min, but that was 5am.

If there had been a major crash on the M40 then I suspect things might have been different.

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When my wife fell and had, quite obviously, broken her leg I was told there would be a six hour wait for an ambulance. After repeated phone calls, while she was lying on a cold tiled floor, the ambulance arrived after nearly four hours.

That’s appalling and really inexcusable, but for selfish reasons, I hope your wife’s accident didn’t happen in France…

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I’ve never known the Pompiers to take long to arrive… :+1:

The Pompiers have always arrived within half an hour for Fran’s 3 strokes, and spent even more time with loads of machines checking her out. She was taken to the football stadium for the first one, the helicopter arrived and was sitting there for another half an hour while the doctor it brought worked on her in the ambulance. It was then decided that she was stable enough to continue the 50 kms to hospital in the ambulance while the 'copter took off for another urgency at Brive.

I think I have told the tale before that during all that time a Collie dog was running all round everyone. when the 'copter was about to take off he was found to be inside waiting for his ride. :rofl:

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Prostate biopsy required :anguished:

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In France? Quick 10 min general anaesthetic, a little bit of discomfort afterwards. PM me if you want any other info.

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Can’t really ā€œlikeā€ your comment… :wink:

but fingers-crossed… all will be well… :crossed_fingers: :crossed_fingers: :crossed_fingers:

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It is, but first I need to check that I’ve booked the right appointment as it wasn’t entirely evident.

Thanks, I might take you up on that.

Apologies, Yes in the UK but I was following on from the posts above referring to the UK situation. .

She wasto be hospitalised for six weeks owing to the complicated fracture the knee joint. Then covid hit and in January 2020 the hospital cleared the wards and she returned home with a hospital bed which was, probably, quite fortunate!

Despite that we have had excellent service from the NHS over the years. We have a village surgery with pharmacy and an excellent hospital just 5 miles away.

I have visited 2 Ć  and e departments in the last two months. The Royal Free in Hampstead where my husband was given excellent involved treatment very quickly and secondly at the N Middlesex University Hospital where I was seen late on a Monday afternoon within 10 minutes . I couldn’t fault either hospital but as we left our heart went out to the staff at the N Mid hospital because every scrap of space was taken up by someone. The staff were heroes but no cleaning could be done in such a situation and presumably the GP’s were not giving a service to their patients. Perhaps if the GP’s worked as they should the hospitals would have a better chance of delivering the care they would like to give.

Welcome to the month of May in France again. Where I’ve been told by clients I’d earned my entire fee for the project for telling them Don’t Ever Count on Getting Anything Done in France in May & remove the month of May from your entire project schedule if the project is delivering in France or if any cooperation is required with France in May.

Received computer Notices of Delivery from La Poste that they will deliver 6 parcels Friday 10th May. And Notice of Delivery from GLS that they will deliver 1 item so I must wait for them 9am-6pm as they have too much forte affluence to issue the normal shorter crƩneau window when they will actually delivee.

Both La Poste and GLS are clearly working hard to impress me. As 5 of the 7 parcels were actually originally not due to be delivered till Monday 13th May.

Hahahaha Fiendish Laugh this is France in May. On an official working day.
A Friday after 2 Bank Holiday days and before a weekend.
What could possibly go wrong?

Have flushed GLS out by calling them and asking them to tell me the truth (hard to achieve with any delivery firm as the receiver of the parcel, in France generally impossible). GLS have fessed up the parcel is not near any van today, in fact the truth will be that GLS has no delivery van near any parcel today and nor does any other delivery company. I said thank you to GLS for giving me my life back today as I can now do other things this afternoon.

And our Post Office is en sourdine - without ever admitting it - implementing a 3-days-a-week schedule. But they will never actually publish which zones will be delivered when because this would harm the personal freedoms of their employees perhaps. I can imagine no circumstances under which any representative of La Poste will be delivering on working day today nor their other ā€˜normal’ delivery day (that they sĆØchent/ skip delivering on most of the time anyway) tomorrow Saturday.

Bienvenue en France en mai. At least I’ve been here long enough to no longer be surprised but I really wish more transparency was possible.

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Oh I so remember that one! But to be honest, sitting there in my office in London I didn’t really understand it myself, even when I got pathetic phone calls from our French office. One has to live here to understand the true awfulness of May, of course not helped by the fact that there is only really June to catch up, because not much happens in France in July and even less in August. Try explaining that to an American client who has two weeks leave. (Is that still true?)

It’s true, if they’re lucky and have long service

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I haven’t worked out July yet

And you got calls from France in May? You lucky girl ! The main tactic seems to be that people simply disappear. Either the person you deal with or a key person for the project or someone whose decision is needed.

I used to issue similar warnings to the French, Americans and other Continentals about trying to get anything done in the UK or find anyone, after about the 9th or 10th December until at least the second week in January and possibly not til the beginning of the 3rd week. Plus the traditional 2 week factory closure period in July, which often correspnds closely to the first 2 weeks of school holidays.

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I previously had no idea about this, but have now a little more experience. To continue the bathroom saga, it’s actually on pause. We had delivery dates of 3-7 May, so we hung around expectantly, put notes up when we went out (pouvez-vous mettrez sur la sous sol sol SVP) etc. afternoon of the 7th came and I got a call between my scant French and his bits of English I discovered the bath etc would not be delivered until Monday next week, 2 days after we are back in the UK.

Someone has been very kind to us, and will take delivery and then store it until September when we return. I am now a little wiser, and will not make plans that rely on other people here in May.

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I had a text from DPD first thing today saying they were delivering to me today, just had another text saying its now going to be Monday…we’ll see…:thinking:

They are on form today, we had a text saying delivered, dh went to the empty post box, then got a text saying Monday!

I was told my 15kg of dried mealworms (treats for my hens and the wild birds) would be arriving between the 6th and the 10th but they arrived on the 3rd!
I was Eeyorishly thinking I’d be lucky to get them before the 15th.

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Early birds deserve early worms.

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