Yesterday in Oxford I came across a sign in Longwall Lane (or is it Street?) that announced, appropriately for this august city I felt: Advanced Warning ... this road will be closed ... Now, plebs like you and I have to make do with Advance Warnings but in the city of dreaming spires they are just that cut above! In the consulting room of one of Oxford's hospitals was a measuring scale for measuring people's heights ... vertical, attached to the wall ... but at the top, the slidey down bit was a child's plastic rule that was hanging on to the thing by a scabby piece of sellotape (Scotch tape if you must). I wish I'd had my camera. More seriously, the doctor began the consultation by having us sit in silence as he read Mrs W's notes (for the first time by the look of it) and then announced he'd like to have seen Mrs W's X ray plates to help with his consultation but they were "lost in the system" somewhere: she'd never seen this man before and since she's only weeks away from a major operation, we felt it was laughable that he tried to make such light work of such a major omission. That's Modern Britain for you and yet people are fighting Tony Blair's NHS reforms! DW