Spiky seedpod

A macro of one of last year's Nigella Damascena/ Love-In-A-Mist seedpods with all their spiky tendrils and other protrusions. For Tiny Tuesday with thanks for Mindful_Life who is taking over the hosting in February. She has set today's theme as 'Spiky'.

Feeling a bit spiky myself and I'm a bit perplexed (it's to do with still finding out how things are done in The Netherlands after 17 years of not having lived there, and things have really changed meanwhile). After last week's visit to the optician I had to go to my GP for the eye specialist referral. Weird enough that we do have to  go see the GP to get the referral,  when there has been a serious examination, but if that's the way things go over here, then fine. In the one year I'm a patient of his I've only been once to introduce myself and go over my medical history. So here I am  today at the GP with the findings of the optician. I then get a whole inquisition of why I went to the optician in the first place, after which he looks at my eyes with his own little lamp and declares he can't see anything wrong with the cornea and the differences in test results of the two eyes aren't that spectacular! So I tell him that there are certainly differences in how I see things when I cover the best eye and he finally decides after minutes and with some shrugging he'll give me the referral. This is not the NHS. Everybody in The Netherlands pays monthly for the basic health insurance and if the income is above modal you pay more and you have to pay for additional insurance. There are no private hospitals, at least not for regular health conditions. As I've not been to the GP for the whole of last year besides that first visit or had any other health issue which meant costing money to society, there is no reason whatsoever to be hesitant about sending me to the eye specialist, whose costs we'll probably have to pay for ourselves because there's an own risk of  a hundred or more of Euros before the health security starts to pay, so what's going on here? I can understand hesitation if I would be at the GPs every week with vague symptoms of all kinds, but that's not the case. And now I'll have to wait until the hospital will call me in the following weeks with an appointment  (it used to be the patient called the hospital and could immediately pick a time suitable to both) ... The world is going topsy-turvy.

Thanks very much for your kind comments, stars and even hearts for my snowdrop ode !