Edward Picot’s blog (incorporating Dr Hairy)

From The Cake-Maker of Transylvania, a new book I’m working on with Mollie Macgregor-Kinnis.

‘The Doubter’s Mysteries’ are an attempt to write a short cycle of Mystery Plays – ie. plays based on Bible stories, like the Medieval Mystery Plays of York, Chester and Wakefield – from the point of view of a sceptical modern audience; an audience which either doesn’t believe in God, or can’t work out what he’s playing at.

There are fourteen of these plays, and the fifth is now online: ‘Sodom and Gomorrah’.

http://edwardpicot.com/mysteries/05sodomandgomorrah.html (or for the full series so far, visit http://edwardpicot.com/mysteries )

You can now get Pilchards-related merchandise via the Redbubble site, at https://www.redbubble.com/people/edwardpicot . Cushions, t-shirts, posters, coffee-mugs etc.

Check out this cool Kevin the Carrot t-shirt, for example!

The Research Summaries & Quiz for December 2018 are now online. To find out more, go to http://www.drhairy.org/concrete5/index.php/research-summaries/ . Subjects covered this time:

Braced for Brexit
BMJ 2018;363:k4724
Causes of concern for the NHS after Brexit
BMJ 2018;363:k4767
Reciprocal healthcare arrangements after Brexit
BMJ 2018;363:k4727
Sodium glucose cotransporter 2 inhibitors and risk of serious adverse events: nationwide register based cohort study
BMJ 2018;363:k4365
Triple therapy in the management of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease: systematic review and meta-analysis
BMJ 2018;363:k4388
Sixty seconds on . . . meat tax
BMJ 2018;363:k4769
Cannabis based drugs: how will they be used in practice?
BMJ 2018;363:k4665
Mycoplasma genitalium: the next sexually transmitted superbug?
BMJ 2018;363:k4376
Could artificial intelligence make doctors obsolete?
BMJ 2018;363:k4563
New RCP code of conduct aims to challenge #MeToo behaviours
BMJ 2018;363:k4678

From a new picture book I’m working on with Mollie Macgregor-Kinnis, The Cake Maker of Transylvania, a macabre tale of cake-making and vampirism:

Just in time for Christmas – ‘Pilchards’, a picture-book by myself and my lovely friend Mollie Macgregor-Kinnis, has just been made available from Amazon.

Two naughty spuds keep shouting ‘pilchards’ at Kevin the Carrot. What’s that all about?

A funny story about teasing, suitable for children aged 4 and up.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1790338204

Dr Hairy’s Research Summaries & Quiz for November 2018 are now online. For more information, visit http://www.drhairy.org/concrete5/index.php/research-summaries/

Subjects covered this month:

GP-delivered brief weight loss interventions: a cohort study of patient responses and subsequent actions, using conversation analysis in UK primary care
Br J Gen Pract 2018; 68 (674): e646-e653. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3399/bjgp18X698405

Patients’ perspectives on GP interactions after cognitive behavioural therapy for refractory IBS: a qualitative study in UK primary and secondary care
Br J Gen Pract 2018; 68 (674): e654-e662. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3399/bjgp18X698321

Addressing the needs of patients with medically unexplained symptoms: 10 key messages
Br J Gen Pract 2018; 68 (674): 442-443. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3399/bjgp18X698813

Localised hypopigmentation: clarification of a diagnostic conundrum
Br J Gen Pract 2018; 68 (674): 444-445. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3399/bjgp18X698825

Statins for primary prevention of cardiovascular events and mortality in old and very old adults with and without type 2 diabetes: retrospective cohort study
BMJ 2018;362:k3359

Diclofenac use and cardiovascular risks: series of nationwide cohort studies
BMJ 2018;362:k3426

Focusing on overdiagnosis as a driver of too much medicine
BMJ 2018;362:k3494

Doctors who turn down flu vaccine could be redeployed
BMJ 2018;362:k3872

Compliance with requirement to report results on the EU Clinical Trials Register: cohort study and web resource
BMJ 2018;362:k3218

Fetal microcephaly
BMJ 2018;361:k2232

The Research Summaries and Quiz for October 2018 have just appeared online at http://www.drhairy.org/concrete5/index.php/research-summaries/ . Subjects covered this time:

How data protection changes will affect your practice
BMJ 2018;361:k1764
Anticholinergic drugs and risk of dementia: case-control study
BMJ 2018;361:k1315
Anticholinergic drugs and dementia in older adults
BMJ 2018;361:k1722
Exploring low mood in a person with cancer
BMJ 2018;361:k1488
Electronic cigarettes for smoking cessation
BMJ 2018;360:j5543
Clostridium Difficile
BMJ 2018;360:k155
Stemming the tide of antimicrobial resistance: implications for management of acne vulgaris
Br J Gen Pract 2018; 68 (667): 64-65
Vaccinations not covered under Section 7a: who pays?
Br J Gen Pract 2018; 68 (667): 92-93
Early detection of multiple myeloma in primary care using blood tests: a case–control study in primary care
Br J Gen Pract 13 August 2018; bjgp18X698357
Antibiotic prescribing quality for children in primary care: an observational study
Br J Gen Pract 15 January 2018; bjgp18X694409

Up the track behind our house there’s a wild apple tree, and as this seems to be a good year for apples it has been shedding lots of windfalls onto the track for a couple of weeks now. As I was walking home from work last night, by torchlight, I stumbled across this:

You can probably imagine my thoughts. ‘Wooah! The aliens have landed!’ However there are no other signs of an alien incursion, except that just inside the gate of what we call the Rabbit Field, underneath a row of sweet chestnut trees, a similar but smaller and scrappier pattern has been made out of the nuts:

I went to The Film Bunch show in Bethnal Green in London on Thursday night, because they were showing ‘Dr Hairy in: Mince Pies’. It was well worth the effort: really nice people, and some really interesting short films, most of them far more professional-looking than my own. The theme of the evening was ‘DIY films’, so I was hoping they’d all be a bit crappy like mine, but no such luck.

The Film Bunch as an organisation seeks to promote access to film and film-making for people who are hard of hearing. Shaz, the founder and main organiser, is hard of hearing herself (although you wouldn’t know it to talk to her); all the films they show are subtitled; and for the Q&A sessions at the end of each half of the show, they had somebody doing signing, and somebody else typing the conversation so that it could be shown in text on a back-screen.

Amongst other people I got chatting to a guy called Oscar Kraft (in fact I started by chatting to his father, a Rabbi called Niel, mainly because he was the oldest-looking bloke in the room apart from myself). Oscar had a film in the show about Non-Verbal Learning Disability (NVLD), a condition he has himself. He has now sent me the link for a video of the Q&A session the two of us took part in, at the end of the first half of the show. Oscar is sitting to my left, and comes across as completely self-possessed and self-confident. The girl to my right is Jennifer Juan, who had a rather nice poem-video in the show called ‘Love is Love’.  Here’s the video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGXLoybKzno