Gloriously Ordinary Sundays - 25th October 2026
Quick one this week. Just as a reminder of how small, simple, potentially easy, almost inconsequential, gloriously ordinary is, and can be.
The Girl moved house back in May this year to live five minutes down the road from where we lived together as a family for six years. The move itself was Gloriously Ordinary – triggered by her landlord wanting to sell the house. A bit irritating, but real-life stuff. It has turned out to be a great move on lots of levels, and one little bit of the fabulous jigsaw is that she’s re-registered with our original family GP.
I share the story of my first appointment with this GP often in Gloriously Ordinary Co-production sessions. Her name is Kirsty.
My first appointment with her, maybe 5 years ago, was remarkable for two reasons. First of all, I walked in and sat down, and she said, ‘Hello, Patricia’ then immediately checked, ‘Is it Patricia or is it Tricia or Pat?’ I was able to say that it absolutely is NOT Patricia and that everybody calls me Tricia (unless they are VERY cross with me or I owe them money). She said she’d get that changed on my record straight away. Little thing, huge impact for me. She then smiled and said, ‘How do you want to spend our time together?’ That different framing of an opening line set a very different tone for our conversation – she wasn’t offering, ‘How can I help?’ but recognising we had some time together and inviting me to lead what that might look like.
Last week I went with The Girl for her new patient appointment with Kirsty. Everything about the appointment was set up (by the system) not to be glorious or ordinary in any way, shape or form. We had a 15-minute appointment in the middle of a busy surgery. However, from the second we walked in, Kirsty did everything in her power to make it work.
She remembered me and greeted me warmly, even though I’ve not seen her for three years (I’ve moved house and she’s no longer my GP), and then she spoke directly, sensitively and humanly to The Girl. She kept checking with me and with The Girl’s support worker that she was making sense to her.
There are a couple of key medical issues for The Girl that we really haven’t managed to get sorted over the last few years, and she was on them straight away. Respectful and professional but cross on our behalf that the right tests hadn’t been ordered.
She admitted that she had a long and very impersonal form that she needed to complete and asked if I would be up for doing that over the phone in the next week. She recognised that a list of questions really wouldn’t work for The Girl.
The Girl really likes (needs) to take a picture of everybody she comes across in her day. She’s learnt from medical professionals that they generally don’t like their faces in pictures and now asks for ‘pictures hand’. Kirsty said, ‘Do you not want to do a selfie?’ and pulled a face for the photo. The Girl made a new best friend for her humanity.
The Girl left after an appointment that stretched to 20 minutes, and I stayed, at Kirsy’s invitation, to share a bit more detail about some other things that needed sorting. Another 15 minutes.
We then had a beautiful moment where we realised that Kirsty’s grandparents had lived all their lives in the small East Yorkshire Village that John Nicoll and I lived in for 11 years when Ciaran and The Girl came to live with us. She’s a good 20 years younger than me, so would’ve been visiting her grandparents during her Uni holidays over the first five years we lived in the village. We probably smiled at each other in the village shop. It was a lovely human connection, and she gave me a hug as I left.
