Points of light

It turned into a frustrating day. J's morning orthotics appointment was fine, but caused us to miss a hospital phone call from an admissions secretary. The voice mail asked me to ring back. I tried, repeatedly - for over three hours. I tried the number given, and every time heard that the system was busy. I tried through the switchboard and managed to leave a voice mail.  I emailed the departmental secretaries' number given on the website, and received a helpful reply this morning giving me three further numbers. One took me to the voice mail where I had already left a message. I left another, begging them to ring us again. The second rang for a long time, then cut off, every time. The third gave me a "number unavailable message". A second email to the secretary produced a further number, which I tried a lot of times. Sometimes it just rang. On several occasions it sounded as though the phone was picked up and then immediately put down. Perhaps the staff are hopelessly overloaded and don't have time to answer the phone. Perhaps they are off sick - but I need to know what the missed call was about, and now, nearly thirty hours later, we are starting a three day weekend with no prospect of learning anything before Tuesday, when I can start the whole time-wasting repeat dialling process again. It is so frustrating and stressful, and we have been waiting to hear from them for a very long time.

During a brief pre-lunch foray into the garden to hang out laundry, I admired the vividness of the berberis against the dark leaves and bokeh; and J and I watched Working Girl (1988, with a vey young Harrison Ford) for our movie night. We have the DVD and know it well, but were both in the mood for something undemanding and familiar; I heard a lot of the soundtrack when P was watching it a few days ago, and was reminded how good it is.