Sometimes the way this country works leaves me baffled. While many things in the UK are clearly better than they used to be; Measles outbreaks, Cooking programs on TV (anyone for Fanny Cradock – a dry bird?) and Chelsea FC, many things have carried on exactly as before.
And anything that is free or involves a form simply hasn’t changed at all.
This week found me at my local Doctors surgery to obtain a repeat prescription. Apparently to stop my head falling off or something similar its important that I have some medicine. And since I left the UK the process has improved no end; now you can have a repeat prescription automatically filled by a pharmacist. Simple really. You get your prescription, log it at the chemist and the go along at the appropriate time and pick up the drugs. Its funny that even a sentence with the word drugs in it sounds naughty – I must be really getting old.
Anyhow as with all good systems it works by a combination of electronics and forms. Tghe pharmacy sends a request to the doctor and they authorise it. Simple. Except it isn’t.
Normally the pharmacy text me when they have the prescription but in this case having received nothing I went to the surgery and then onto the pharmacy. The surgery confirmed they had done what they needed to and I should go to the pharmacist. Which I did.
The pharmacy confirmed that the drugs (cue shiver again) had been approved but they didn’t have the ‘form’.
‘So that’s good its been approved’
‘yes’
‘So I can have the drugs?’
‘No – we haven’t got the form’
‘What form?’
‘The one the surgery printed off – they need to send it to us.’
‘But you have it approved on the system?’
‘yes but now the surgery have printed off a the form we actually need to see it – even though we can see its been approved on the system’
So we go round this a couple more times and of course I give up. There is nothing quite like a process in the UK for being both designed to withstand a nuclear war and completely useless if you need it to work. Which brings me back to biscuits.
My first run in with officialdom and processes that make no sense came in the early 80’s on a British Rail train. This was a time when a tea trolley still made its way up and down the train and it was from such a trolley that I ordered a cup of something warm and brown that claimed to be tea and asked for some bourbon creams.
‘Oh I am sorry sir you see their free so you can’t have them’
‘pardon’
‘you see their free sir – so obviously I can’t give them to you’
‘if I paid for them would that make a difference?’
‘well no sir, as i said they’re free’
Which after a while I realised meant that they were free in business class but not for me. I can see why we British Rail never made any money. And so I sat back drank my tea and dreamed of free biscuits. I think it was this incident that led me to try that little bit harder to travel in business as much as I can. Eventually the tea trolley came back down the train and I saw that the bourbons remained unclaimed. Surely now they would be mine.
No apparently they were still free and thus not available, even if I wanted to pay for them.
You can be sure of something in the UK. You cannot beat either a form or a process. And some things never change…
And I know the picture has nothing to do with the blog but as its cold and dark you can never beat a picture form Koh Samui.
The Burble 