Hospital food

Hospital food is, like most things in the NHS, free at the point of service. You will not be presented with an itemised bill at the end of your stay. It is plentiful (usually) and the feat which the staff accomplish with what must be a small budget, getting so many meals delivered throughout a large building, is amazing. Canteen quantities but without a canteen to do it in!

Having spent a long time in two NHS hospitals during 2019 (on 6 different wards altogether), I had plenty of opportunity to try out most of the menu, which runs over a fortnight and starts again (this does begin to pall if many weeks go by). There are variations in how it is presented (whether you get to choose in advance, for instance) even within the same hospital, and some things seem to be more available on some wards than others.

Roughly, what you can expect is breakfast which is not cooked, apart from porridge, except at weekends when there are a couple of cooked options; a supply of tea and coffee throughout the day (sometimes with cake and/or biscuits); full meals at lunchtime and teatime; possibly a later snack or a fruit trolley (depending on the ward!).

I have heard people comment that the food is "like school dinners". All this really tells me is that they are not former pupils of my school, Priory Road County Primary School, the memory of whose tapioca still has the power to make me heave. There is an element of truth in it which I think comes from more general British catering habits, which go back beyond school dinners ca. 1950-1980 to the wartime British Restaurants and perhaps to workplace canteens, now largely gone, but otherwise it is an unfair comparison.

Here's a very quick summary of the things I liked: pork casserole, the vegetables which accompany the many roast dinners (the meat was less appetising - lamb probably the best), omelettes, soup made on the premises, Friday fish and chips, ice cream, a pasta dish, fruit pies and crumbles. The sponge puddings and cakes were also good but about twice the size of anything I would usually eat as a dessert. While I was there they introduced Glamorgan sausage, which was splendid (especially considering that there is not a great choice for vegetarians). Unfortunately none of the staff or other patients seemed to have heard of Glamorgan sausage, so there were some disappointed would-be sausage-eaters. (This is where seeing the menu, with an explanation, would have been useful).

The things I didn't like do, mostly, come back to those school dinner days: ubiquitous mashed potato (which, I know, most people do like, but I think a little goes a long way); sometimes you might get a strange mixture (omelette with gravy, mashed potato and Brussels sprouts, for instance); rather tasteless macaroni cheese; above all, that terrible British habit of drowning the pudding in custard and the meat and veg in gravy. I loathed school custard, but came round to custard eventually. Again, a little is enough for me, and I don't see the point of concealing the pudding so you have to go fishing for it. I never did come round to gravy, which people tip all over your food (not just in hospital) and in my view spoil it all, Asking for "just a little" custard doesn't work, though - you perhaps get it not quite up to the brim of the bowl but still too much. The actual custard and gravy in hospital are vastly superior to anything served at my school, but the memory lingers on.

The debate about funding all this has been raised as another area in which something at present free could be salami-sliced off in an attempt to reduce costs. Elderly people, who grew up before the NHS was born, are often afraid of the potential cost of their hospital stay, and difficult to reassure on the subject. I saw one lady constantly reject food (and be told off about it, as she was losing weight) - and when she had finally understood that there was to be no bill for it, seize the dish with both hands and eat the whole lot very quickly, obviously hungry. If you feel you should be paying for it, there's nothing to stop you making an appropriate quiet donation, surely, without making everyone else afraid by introducing charges.

On the whole, then, a big and grateful thumbs up to NHS hospital food. There are always going to be some things people don't like. The menus are a little old-fashioned (average age of an in-patient is 84, or so a poster on one of the wards told us - that age group certainly seemed quite enthusiastic about the traditional dishes), and occasionally you could see where little corners had been cut (rice pudding and jam on the online example of the menu, but no jam ever in evidence). It is a reasonably healthy balanced diet. All cheerfully served by kind and patient staff. Diolch!

Living within our means: or, Queen Mary goes shopping

Ever since the banking crash we have been subjected to a lot of propaganda aimed at persuading us to lower our expectations. We have been living beyond our means, we must not have things we can't afford, the deficit (I think this is what we used to call the National Debt - it's not new, by the way!) is all our fault. We must close libraries and children's playgrounds, must work for nothing, must work forever (for nothing, presumably), and must listen to our betters.

Anyone would think that in the past people always lived within their means. To be fair, most of us did. In the 1960s, HP (hire purchase), an early form of credit, was looked down on by many who continued to go without the consumer goods which were being heavily advertised. It's a vicious circle: businesses can't expand if nobody can afford their goods, so if everybody lives within their means it is difficult to expand business.

An acquaintance whose father was a GP before and during the transition to the NHS mentioned that he, like many doctors at the time, feared that the NHS would have a detrimental effect on his income, but that he soon realised that this was not the case: whereas in the past he had treated poor people for nothing, he now got paid for it; slightly less poor people who had very little used to try to pay even if it meant great sacrifices, or if they had no money would pay in kind (the doctor was never short of eggs); but rich people, I quote, "didn't pay their bills anyway". The doctor's bill was treated like the bills of other tradesmen and, largely, ignored.

This reminded me of some of the stories I'd heard from elderly relatives and acquaintances. Queen Victoria, for instance, would (according to my great grandmother) descend on a hotel on the French Riviera and occupy it for the summer with her retinue. Great for business? Not exactly - she never paid the bill. Everything free, essentially, for the whole summer - which would just about bankrupt the unfortunate hotelier.

Rumours abound - too many to mention - of the visits of Queen Mary to antique shops, stately homes, country houses, all culminating with the owners parting company with their possessions. I would love to know whether any of this can be verified: I have heard stories about it from so many unconnected people that it is hard to imagine that it is all untrue. I have even been told that shops in Union Street, Ryde (Isle of Wight) had an unofficial Queen Mary insurance scheme, with boys keeping a lookout and running up the street to warn shopkeepers if the Queen was on her way, so that by the time she landed the shutters would be up and the shops shut.

Only little people pay taxes - or, indeed, pay for anything. Something to bear in mind, when you are being lectured by people telling you to live wthin your means.