Rain

In typical British style the weather over the bank holiday weekend was atrocious. We had our heating on and were pretty much house-bound for Sunday and Monday (prompting 2 days of serious Lord of the Rings Online gaming sessions... So not all bad!)

The downside is two wall to wall cracks have appeared in the lounge. Looks like somewhere the water has got in and now it means finding yet another tradesman to come and look at the place, suck air through their teeth and say "It's gonna cost ya." Ah the joys of house ownership. Still, maybe this tradesman might actually come back to us with a quote unlike these people Applewood who came around, spent over an hour measuring up the two rooms we needed done and have never called us back with a quote. How nice it must be to be that busy that you can turn down 10k's worth of work eh. Don't mind us, we loved having you around disrupting our day and never really wanted the work done anyway. We much prefer just using leaning tower of Pisa style hanging rails for all our clothes and were never really serious.

W**kers.

Scotland pics

As promised...

The weather we 'enjoyed'...
Rain
Hail
More Hail

Flora...
Big Tree
Boat in a forest
Raindrops on Rhody's
Lichen

Fauna...
Baa Ram Ewe
A popular resting spot
Isn't that supposed to be lucky?

Traquire House / Peebles
The House
Peacock
Dark sky

Edinburgh
Buildings
Stained Glass
Lion
View

Just a sampling because as usual I took far too many.

Pretty in pink

I heard this story on Radio 2 this morning and it tickled me pink.

Enjoy... Slimbridge adoption

The Monster

So, I'm sitting here nursing the 'free souvenir' I brought back from Scotland *sneezes*. While slurping my lemsip I caught up on blogs. This one by JD struck a cord.

I work for the NHS and have the very same concerns about drug costs. In the case of where I work there is a drug called NOVO FVIIA which is great at blood clotting. Its used by Haemophiliacs who are suffering with inhibitors (ie they are having trouble taking the regular medication). Its also used at the sharp end. RTA's and such like as a quick way of clotting the blood after a major injury. It costs over 500 pounds a dose.

I asked the rep about the cost and got the spiel about development/research costs and ya know, fair enough, these things take years to get to market. However, Novo has now been around for quite some years so you would think the company would have recovered the cost right?

In the last 3 years it has dropped by... 15 quid or so and that is only because the centre uses so much that prices have been that little bit negotiable. Even normal treatments like Advate or Kogenate are hundreds of pounds per adult dose. Patients on preventative treatment (most of them) take a dose twice a week or so.

I'll let you do the math and remember that Haemophilia is for life, not just for Xmas.

Remember kids, buy your shares in the Pharmacuticals. Novo Nordisk is currently over 100 dollars a share...

Country life(tm)

Well we are in! Moved fairly painlessly on the 30th April and now trying to figure out where all this *stuff* will go. I suppose thats the fun part of moving to the compact and bijou country cottage. Its very cosy but there is bugger all room.

I'll have to learn this minimalist lark... Yeah right, because thats going to happen.

The interwebz came up pretty quick, just in time for our week in Scotland >.< We have returneth down south now and had a good time despite the weather. Yes I know Scotland = rain and also apparently it means hail.. in May. I'll bore everyone with pictures when I've sorted through them.

In the meantime theres this.