Pam Ayres. JOANNA LUMLEY

⇐ ПредыдущаяСтр 14 из 95Следующая ⇒

Pam Ayres

I’ve been to other countries where you pray you don’t get sick,

Where if you’re taken ill, no kindly ambulance comes quick,

No motorbiking paramedic roaring through the rubble,

Where if you have no cash to pay then mister, you’re in trouble.

We have a gentler system, which is comforting to all,

It strives for our wellbeing, be we elderly or small.

With expertise, professional, extended countrywide,

So, in an emergency, a world is at our side:

Consultants and anaesthetists and those who man the door,

Specialists and surgeons and the folk who mop the floor,

The porters and the nursing staff who labour night and day,

And never ask the patient if they have the means to pay.

A plague has come, a plague that’s new, yet old, as old as time,

Fomented out of suffering, and cruelty, and grime,

With unimagined images which linger in the head,

Refrigerated trailers for the storage of the dead.

With calm and regulated care, staff with one accord,

Though fearing for their families, are working on the ward,

Where end-of-life care nurses, in their strange protective dress,

Hold a fading hand to dull the pain of loneliness.

Thanks to every doctor, every midwife, every nurse,

Every single worker in the fight for life immersed

Whatever God you recognise, may your endeavours bless,

Sending love and gratitude to you. The NHS.

JOANNA LUMLEY

I am in an awful hole here. Being as fit as a flea and virtually unsinkable, I have no NHS experience AT ALL. (Well, I do; when I had my appendix taken out when I was twelve and was put on an old people’s ward, but that was sixty years ago and times and the NHS have changed mightily.)

So, I haven’t got a story to tell but I LOVE the NHS with all my heart, and love paying my taxes in full because I know it will benefit. I am tear-streaked not to be able to send more than a HUGE virtual hug for the whole of the NHS, and the deepest curtsey, and the most colossal gratitude and admiration.

In fact, if I heaped up all my admiration and affection for the NHS and pushed it towards this fantastic organisation’s feet it would simply disappear from view.

⇐ Предыдущая 9 10 11 12 131415 16 17 18 Следующая ⇒