My natural inclination to be at home when not at work was shaken yesterday by a trip to the local market at Box Hill. Exposure to the society in which I live. They say it is good for you. I bought some soft shoe inserts for work. $2. I really didn't like it, exposing myself to my society...and never have liked it... although, as always, the women looked nice.

I like all statues. In comparison with the people who wish to tear them down...the statues are so very quiet now. I like soviet statues, roman statues, catholic statues, emancipation statues, hero statues, especially flawed heroes. If the sculptors had made all statues, indeed, with feet of clay, we would have no statues at all...and I like statues, even of angels. I like their silence.

I recall counselling a nursing colleague who was, indeed a Nazi, and yet still I was fond of her. She was in a lot of trouble because she was really horrible to people...and they had made claims. Instead of retiring, she chose to stand up and make a mess of herself, legally...and I said 'Dear friend, the worse thing you can have as a nurse, or a doctor, is a clear memory. This will get you in so much trouble...simply because it is not true. You may think you recall everything perfectly, but, you don't. You don't have a good memory of the events...and events. The sole purpose of having a memory is to survive, this is why humans created ways to remember... a memory doesn't exist as anything perfect...a memory is not designed to be forensic, or even vaguely true.' But she didn't get it. She had to have her day with her flawed memory and get into even more trouble. I am not an enemy of even really bad nurses...but nor am I in solidarity with them and their very worst notions. If nursing has paid your bills for a number of decades, and you have done what you can to helpfully influence some good outcomes for some people, be at peace with that, and be at peace with the cost to you of that. This is no time to jump on the high horse...it is not a high horse...it is an ass.

On Nursing Violence: Not the violence metered out to Nurses by the public, or sometimes by the spouses of nurses, but rather the violence forms within the profession. I did a semester on this years ago at Uni, and it was a fascinating study. The violence is usually metered out to young nurses or to fringe dwellers of the trade by way of race or belief or orientation etc and is not usually physical but rather tonal, or task related so that the nurse knows exactly where they belong and don't belong in the organisation. This is done by repetition. This is called 'horizontal violence' and has been, for many decades, a method of control by some managers. As an Agency person I am a fringe dweller. Incident: Overhearing 2 nurse managers at one particularly odious establishment talking about replacing staff on leave... 'well, what we do is just order some Agency nurses for those shifts and as we get closer to the date, we usually find one or two of our own who will do the shifts, so we cancel the Agency staff. Stuff them. It keeps them lean and hungry for shifts. We definitely, absolutely, will need an Agency nurse for Thursday night, but we'll order that later.' Then I got 2 shifts a few days later at that place, and re-arranged my life to meet their needs only to have the shifts cancelled a few hours before each was to begin. Then, come Thursday, a desperate emotional appeal for an Agency nurse to fill a vacancy Thursday night... my response... 'Stuff 'em.' Interesting to see that their are still some of the traditional fuckwit knuckle-draggers who haven't left the Temple yet, and it surprising how young some of them are.

I love the English language. Arcane is a very ancient word that isn't used anymore; and it describes perfectly something that is ...very ancient and that isn't used anymore.

North Korea progresses along the lines as expected...hey, we do have nuclear weapons...the US proceeds along the lines...but you shouldn't...the only people who can decide on what is best for Koreans is Korea, north and south, working it out with each other...the solution is there and it is the only solution.

Advice to the student nurse with me as her mentor the other day...her first day in a mental health clinic....imagine that! Poor kid. John: "The trouble with identifying patients by their photos is that, well, with women, mostly, after 60, it all crinkles down into wrinkles, naturally, and they all look kind of like sister prunes...and with men, they all mostly look bald and round, and they look, generically, just like little babies again...except a hundred kilos larger...hard to pick 'em out by a photo from each other...but still, neither are likely to run off anyway...or run off very fast. By 60 most folk have evolved beyond their shallow individual ego appearances and they have no where else to be, or go, anyway, or they wouldn't be here."