Hospitalisations for dental abscesses double

I wasn’t going to blog today, but a news item on the radio spurred me into action.

The BBC is reporting that long-standing problems over access to NHS dentists in England are linked to the number of hospital admissions for abscesses nearly doubling in eight years to just under 1,500 a year.

Bristol University researchers analysed NHS data and found there were 750 admissions in 1998-9, but by 2005-6 that had risen to 1,431.

Rocketing electricity price means less blogging

We received our latest electricity bill today and it contained a nasty surprise.

We’ve managed to maintain our electricity consumption at the same level as last year (after cutting it for the two years before that), but despite that we’re now expected to pay £80 a month instead of £50.

I had budgeted for a 15% rise from 1 April (based on Scottish Hydro Electric’s announcement of a 13% rise from that date), but have now learned the effective rise is actually 60%.

And we’re not alone in finding that the real rise is much higher than the announced rise—two other people have told me today of effective rises in Scotland of 78% and 97%.

Chicks hatching

Our first batch of Scots Grey eggs for 2008 started hatching early this morning. I woke just before 5am as sun started to filter through the bedroom window, and the first thing I heard was the peeping of a chick. We keep the incubator in the snug, so I padded through to find one chick out of its shell and several more pipping their shells. By the time I took the boys to school, we were up to three and when I returned home four. A further one had emerged by lunchtime. I took them out to the brooder cage in the old cottage to free up space in the incubator, and took the opportunity to photograph this one on the way.

Contented sows

Graham, Dolores and Delilah all thought this afternoon’s events were marvellously exciting and spent all their time at the fences, watching and chatting to the porkers, and demanding ear rubs from us. But not Daisy, our best Berkshire sow. No, she was comfortably ensconced in her favourite sunbathing position and nothing was going to shift her.