Mark Woods: Burning rage at profiting from sick

The first fire of the year has been lit in our house and it didn’t go well. Despite knowing deep in the recesses of my mind that we should really get the chimney swept, I couldn’t resist putting a match to it on Sunday afternoon. All started well, paper to kindling, kindling to summer-long seasoned twigs and then the delicious smell of coals started to fill our nostrils. Trouble was, it didn’t stop at our nostrils and within five minutes the entire front room was filled with clouds of noxious smoke as what went up, began to come down.

After dousing and wafting duties were carried out, we surveyed the scene and a chance comment about small boys making ideal chimney sweeps created the kind of indignation which only a six-year-old is capable of whipping up.

“They used to send children up chimneys? Did their mummy and daddies know? Did the police know?”

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I explained, in our ancestors’ defence, that things which were once seen as normal and accepted have a habit of looking very strange and often downright wrong from a distance and my son inevitably asked what it is we do today that people in the future will think was awful? A conversation about recycling, landfill and the ozone layer followed which underlined that he knew more about all three than I did. It wasn’t until 24 hours later though that a call from my Dad helped me identify the worst day-to-day practice of them all that will undoubtably contort the faces of generations to come.

I am, of course, talking about hospital car park charges. A certain North Yorkshire hospital – let’s call it Scarborough General – had not only provided insufficient parking spaces for its visitors, it had fined this 84-year-old man £60 for being forced to park on the grass to go and visit his poorly 83-year-old wife!

While the doctors and nurses inside provided absolutely exemplary medical and emotional care under difficult circumstances – being forced to cash in on the parking really does seem beyond the pale.

I can just hear the six-year-olds of the future now – “they used to make people pay to visit their sick relatives! Did the police know!”

Twitter: @mark_r_woods

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