Main topic aside, what are you doing putting bread and butter together with a fork?

All the small appliance suggestions so far are great - they remove a lot of the danger and give you an easy place to start. Same for the safety items. Even with no fear, it is sensible to have an extinguisher and fire blanket in the kitchen.

When you feel that you are ready to start picking up knives and working with flame, do it with a friend or family member that is suitably understanding & willing to teach. Simply watching it done is still familiarising yourself with the process and hopefully reducing your fears.

My sister is the same way - I am teaching her slowly. We started with baking, as all the prep work is done cold with only one heating process. Not exactly healthy, but it it gets the ball rolling on working with heat.

You'll love Anthracite Grey then.

For another arm of the empire, try Frontier - which focuses on Hudson's Bay Company.

It's a nickel & dimed hot potato that neither side wants to take the hit on now. Our 'left' (Labour) has moved right enough now that it is unrecognisable from the party that Blair led in the 90s. It took unprecedented levels of corruption, cronyism and flat out fraud from the previous Tory run government to change the winds - and honestly it's the same wind with a slightly more palatable odour.

Brexit did the service no favours. We used to be able to tap an increasing array of medical talent from the EU, which promptly plateaued then stagnated after the vote. Now we have more and more locums and agency staff that cost a bomb to keep up. Ironically, we are now seeing an marked increase of African and Asian staffers, which the racist idiots that voted Leave abhor.

https://ukandeu.ac.uk/what-has-brexit-meant-for-the-nhs/

Another major question is how Brexit affects the NHS workforce. New nurses arriving from the EU and EFTA states slowed to near zero immediately and dental recruitment entered a prolonged slowdown, exacerbated in both cases by a new language testing regime.

As with funding, both the politics and the actual impact of this were based on a longstanding problem caused by domestic short-termism: many key staff groups were in serious shortage seven years ago, and many still are. The reaction of successive governments has been to repeatedly reform visa rules to enable a very high rate of recruitment from Africa and Asia.

While I have no issues with the nationalities of the people there to make me well, it has led to shortcomings such as the Nigerian nurse scandal.

Along with the many, many strikes that have occurred - the argument for privatisation sadly becomes stronger. I'm actually on our work's healthcare plan as an employee benefit, something I have never experienced before. It's very nice for me, but it shows that my company does not trust the public system to ensure my continued fitness for work.

Big ramble there, sorry.

I almost died from stress

Thanks for your continued living, I imagine future updates might be more problematic otherwise.

Cheers for the update :)

Terraced in this instance means there are two other homes, one either side, that we share walls with.

Having good neighbours is essential.

Tongue in cheek, of course.

The free healthcare has nosedived over the last 2 decades. It's still free, but wait times for everything are insane unless you are actively dying. People can wait years for routine procedures & treatments. A regular GP appointment is weeks, unless you snag an 'emergency' appointment by phoning in at 8am sharp and beating everyone else doing the same.

If you need an ambulance and aren't having a cardiac episode or similar - good luck and hope someone can drive your ass to hospital. Wait times are hours at minimum. A long time to be writhing around in (non life threatening!) pain.

Yes it is free. Unfortunately it is underfunded and overworked.

For that vote, we actually had a whole-ass government produced booklet through the door.

It supported Remain and explained all the shit that would happen if Leave went through.

The plebs saw some lies about the NHS slapped on the side of a bus, suspended all intelligence, and voted Leave. In my eyes the majority was not strong enough to consider changing foundation policy, but here we are.

All the turmoil promised came to fruition.

"Shit could be worse" never ceases to be true.

Best wishes from me, sounds like you have a handful.

Wales, so close enough.

25 years, 6 years in.

Not in the US. Suburban Wales, UK.

It affords a 3-bedroom terraced home. It used to be cheaper before our previous UK government fucked interest rates.

Jfc, that's my mortgage at least 4 times over. Any money spent on your kid is well spent, but it's horrible that you must sacrifice that much.