AWOOGAH! Attention shoppers! There are only 10 days remaining until Christmas eve! If, like me, you like to leave things to the last minute (well, I don’t really LIKE leaving things, but it just sorta happens all the time anyway) you’ll be happy to know the Bullring is now open late during the weekdays! I did all my shopping last night after work, and it was actually almost FUN to do it without having to push through the hordes of people that assault the city centre shops during the weekend. There are also some pretty good deals to be found… for instance, the other day Currys was selling Gamecubes for just

So the Sandwell binmen turned down

Well here I am at last, figured as I’d been to the meet up I should try and make a post.

Before I get onto the main event I must mention something that made me chuckle.
The new Natwest bank on Broad Street has had those big “Opening in ‘x’ Days” adverts in the window.
On Saturday it said 2 days
At 7am today it said 3 days
At 8am it said 7 days
Next thing you know it was open and there was a band playing.

I hope they can calculate interest payments better than they can count days on a calendar

anyway, sadly the last six months have mostly been taken up with family and friends suffering terminal illnesses so I’ve spent a fair bit of time in hospitals around the country, and thought I’d just give a glowing report to the staff at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital as lately all you ever hear is doom and gloom.

My grandmother was diagnosed with bowel cancer that sadly was incurable. but the staff there were amazing.
They treated her with such respect and dignity that when she was required to move to a different hospital (this was a regular ward, not a specialist one so couldnt handle it) she was really upset about not seeing the doctors and nurses again.
Well, they promised they would come and visit her but they all say that and you know they wont.

When we arrived at the new hospital we found one of the nurses from the QE leaving.
After asking around we discovered that she had been transferred several hours earlier than originally planed and the nurses didn’t want Nan to be on her own and so those that were off duty took it in turns to travel across town so she would have a familiar face around until we could arrive.

Then, over the next week they continued to visit her, always making sure she had a friendly smile, fresh flowers and a nice cup of tea.

When she finally passed away, several of the QE staff attended the funeral, some even taking a days holiday just so they could be there and of those that couldn

When I met up with Stephen and Tony last night one of the topics of conversation was muggings. This reminded me of a website, Crimestoppers-uk.org, that was launched recently “to provide a comprehensive record of current police appeals across the UK.” So popular was the launch of the site that it received over 200,000 hits within hours of opening, resulting in several hours of downtime as the operators struggled to cope with the traffic.

Anyway, so I decided to use this website to search for appeals in the Birmingham area… thus far there is only ONE hit within 25 miles of the Birmingham city centre area. So either the crime rate around here is INCREDIBLY low, or the website doesn’t have very much data yet. I’m guessing it’s the latter. Hopefully as more people become aware of the site and start to use it, it could become a valuable tool for both the police and citizens alike, but right now it still has a long way to go.