Great work from the hospital

MY 93-year-old friend, Joan, fell and hurt her arm.

The next morning, a Sunday, she realised there was something very wrong with her wrist.

She first rang her surgery and a voice message told her to dial 111. This was around 7am.

By 7.45am, an ambulance had taken her to Airedale Hospital and she was having an X-ray.

She next had a pot put on her fractured wrist. No waiting about. Then she was seen by a nurse who suggested she stayed in overnight.

My friend described her cosy, warm flat and she was allowed to be taken home by ambulance, but not before arrangements had been made for a trained nurse to visit and assess what help she would need.

To crown this wonderful NHS service, she was sent home with sandwiches, a drink and a yoghurt!

Joan described all the staff, including the ambulance people, as wonderfully kind and thoughtful.

On her behalf, this is a public thank-you to the early Sunday morning staff at Airedale Hospital.

Jan Gordon, Colne

---------

It’s the wrong time to give up

IT feels like God’s timing is all wrong. Giving something up for Lent doesn’t make sense.

Driving past corridors of roadside daffodils in late March is inspiring. An end is in sight at last to the constraints of those dreary winter months.

A promise of abundance is in the air, sunshine and butterflies, strawberries and cream, coffee and conversation.

Giving something up is a big ask when nature’s banquet has only just begun.

On Good Friday an empty wooden cross will be lifted up or celebrated in every Lancashire church. Christians all over the world are ready for the greatest show on earth.

The one ‘who gave up everything for us’ will once more be Easter’s focus of attention.

The mystery of Lent will be over.

Ray Hall, Blackburn

----------

Tea’s not cure for all illness

I READ on the front of a national newspaper that if you drink at least three cups of tea every day it may help to hold back the onset of dementia.

It did not say which tea - Tetley’s, Yorkshire, or even better Lancashire, Typhoo, Herbal or Fairtrade.

If this is true I should be OK as I drink at least seven cups of tea a day and my sister, who died seven years ago with this dreadful illness, should have been OK as she was a tea drinker also.

I just pray that they will eventually find the real cause of dementia and the way to stop it.

Mary Robinson, Blackburn

----------

I miss the good old radio shows

MY husband, John, and I were recently reminiscing about wartime radio shows during the Second World War years.

We were only children then, aged four years old up to 10 years old.

We both enjoyed these moments, especially on a Sunday lunch time, with the Billy Cotton Band Show, musicals from London, Max Jaffa and his Palm Court Orchestra.

Then there was Vera Lynn, the forces’ sweetheart.

From Monday to Friday, you had Dick Barton and his Special Agent Big Band Shows, The Archers and farm life. All happy memories of the war years.

Barbara Jones, Accrington

----------

Shocking roads

I LIVED in many countries during 30 years in the Armed Forces.

Sadly, the roads in East Lancashire are among the worst I have encountered.

I had smoother rides in Iraq, Afghanistan, Labrador, Ukraine!

Our roads are a pot-holed mess, riddled with poorly managed traffic flow systems (eg ungoverned traffic lights where a decent roundabout would suffice).

Sadly, utilities and telecom service providers are totally unregulated and leave carnage, misery and poorly reinstated roads in their wake. Woeful.

Joe Jones, Accrington