Every so often I come across something that reminds me what kind of a place we live in, and makes me glad of it.

We were recently making one of our regular visits to Salisbury Hospital to see the resident Fibromyalgia specialist concerning Wife’s ongoing pain management and touching base on any new or improved ways of doing it. In pre Sat Nav days we would have gone via main roads as we consider being late for an appointment pretty rude. However a few visits ago Eliza our Sat Nav took us via a geographically more direct but somewhat less than main road route and it stuck so we now allow extra

It’s not often that ‘Lymington’ and ‘dangerous occupation’ are mentioned in the same sentence. In fact I can’t recall a single such instance. I suppose being the lollipop person on Avenue Road outside the school might count, the interface of children and traffic is always going to be a tad tricky.

But today I came across someone for whom that could be an apt description. Well technically Wife came across them, but anyway. Those with long-ish memories who live in the area may recall that the new Lymington hospital was originally built with a number of ‘green’ aims, possibly highest among them to reduce car usage. The thinking went something like this. If we have 200 parking places for a hospital with staff of 400 and a 4500 projected annual patients then we will be helping to save the planet. And in a remarkable ‘let them eat cake’ moment of clarity, concluded that the local bus service could take the strain and an old single platform station just behind the Somerfields garage could be re-opened to bring patients by train. How glorious to be blessed by such forward-thinking public servants.

Now I don’t know if you can spot any potential holes in the thinking, but here’s one to start off with. The station didn’t re-open. And for some reason sick people, even out-patients find buses a little tricky. So we have the log-jam which is the hospital car-park and return to the previously mentioned hazardous occupation. Viz parking attendant at Lymington Hospital. Wife came out after her blood test to hear an elderly chap berating the parking attendant for the staff cars parked in the disabled spaces. Two things you need for a proper hospital are staff and people who may have limited mobility so bit of a problem really if they need to fill the same space. As Wife left she saw another irate person joining in, and I dare say had she stayed long enough there may have been a pack circling.

Obviously something has to be done.

During a somewhat changeable day weather-wise yesterday, it became clear that there was to be no flooding in Lymington. At one point in the afternoon there was the most impressive rainbow over the town, at least as viewed from the car park behind M&S, and everyone knows that means there will be no flooding, right?

Of course the recently (nearly) completed flood defences along the Lymington river may also have some say in the matter, but only when they finish said defences by placing a (presumably moveable) gate across the road at Bridge Road. At present we are safe from flooding as long as the water doesn’t get sneaky and go along the road and thereby bypass the impressive metal wall erected along the side of the railway. Trouble is you never know where you are with water, sometimes it’ll float your boat, other times it’ll bite you. Mixed-metaphorically speaking of course.

One thing I haven’t figured in this is quite where our new