That sounds lovely Parker.
Are you sure he won't be tempted back into some p/t locum work? Both my cousin and his wife have as local practices are so short staffed, though they say it is easier without all the paperwork involved in running a practice. Do you have any grand plans?
I have been wondering how @Haffdonga DS is getting on. I think I saw on another thread that she has a second DS applying for medicine. I would not like to do that again.
My mother could be quite stubborn, and refused to take me to the dentist when I was a teenager as I was at boarding school and she felt it was the school's responsibility. At the same time I was avoiding school food and eating mainly sugar, so my teeth are awful. Central London NHS dentistry started to fail early (endless cancelled appointments and hopeless locums) and so we started commuting to a friends husband's practice. He was forced to go private but going outside London was cheaper than London and I was keen that DC grew up with good dentistry. This proved useful as DD has problems resulting from the fact she was a very sick and underweight baby and this affected her tooth development.
Weirdly, though on most levels she is not better off than other students, largely because as home-owning Londoners we were asset rich but cash poor, the marker of middle-classness that her friends seized upon was the fact that she has appointments with a private hygienist.
DD is glad she had a gap year, even though with an intercalation year she is two years behind some of her peers, and now wants to one of the longer specialist trainings. She even talks of taking a year out and working as a clinical training fellow. I am starting to wonder which will come first, her qualification or her retirement, and at what point she will tire of exams (though CPD will continue to be a fact of life.)
Speed limits round us are now universally 20mph, easy to forget when you have had a lifetime of driving at 30. I guess Sadiq needs the money. I calculated that with new, bureaucratic, trader parking permits as well as congestion charge and ULEZ it is costing my builder £250 a week before he even starts work. Add in VAT and income tax, and the state is getting a huge chunk of every £I pay him. Whilst the existing problem of finding reliable workmen has become far far worse.