Back from a weekend in Berlin with two mates, Ulla and Jorun. Special times. We met when we started working together nearly 10 years ago in January 2007. Ten years. Wow. [Howl]. Two beautiful babies, the death of two dads and one child, moving back to Finland and Norway (before any whiff of Brexit), getting a doctorate, a professorship, a new career in the charity field of women’s work in the Global South.

A weekend of talk about families, love, work… Laughter, health, life and shopping.

On Friday afternoon, in a coffee shop in Kreuzberg, my phone started to ring. I didn’t think it worked in Europe. And it rarely rings. I missed the first couple of calls. Unknown numbers. Something kicking off. Clearly.

We headed for the East Side Gallery. Later, standing outside the closed to the public, iconic television tower, the Fernsehturm de Berlín, my phone was still ringing. Katrina Percy had stepped down.

Earlier, I’d decided to walk from my hotel to Kreuzberg to hook up with them. A 7km walk apparently. Armed with a cheeky tip from George Julian (for no phone or roaming wifi) I screen grabbed the route in my hotel room and set off early. CaminoLB training. It all went brilliantly until this point (screen grab 4):

I walked in the direction of the blue dots, post canal, for what seemed like miles. I knew I’d missed screen grabbing one section of the route (because it was all the same road) but couldn’t remember which one, so just kept walking. And walking. And walking. Eventually I stopped at a junction, stared at my next screen grab (again) and a passerby asked if I needed help. He didn’t speak much English, my German is non existent. He looked at screen grab 6, pointed a sharp right turn and we started walking together.

We walked and walked. Managing to share, along the way, that he was Lebanese, living in Berlin and owned an Italian restaurant that did takeaways. And that I lived in Oxford and was going to meet mates. We walked in a comfortable silence after those few exchanges. Eventually, we reached the overhead railway. He pointed to the steps up to it and gesticulated one with his thumb. One stop. One stop…

“Can I take your photo?” I asked. He seemed chuffed.

I caught the train, one stop, and met my mates. We chuckled (I’ve an embarrassing history of travel mishaps) and had a fab weekend.

This experience made me wonder, again, about the utter, utter failure of Sloven, NHS England, NHS Improvement, the General Medical Council, the Health and Safety Executive, the Nursing and Midwifery Council, the Care Quality Commission and the Secretary of State, to help bereaved families in any way whatsoever.

As always, it comes down to being human.

Thank you.