John Edwards, Serving the Local Community

John Edwards has always been a central figure in the village he lives in. He isn’t particularly rich, or talented, his house is modest and nothing to write home about. He has a limited group of close friends who live all over the country and some out of it, and hundreds of people who value his friendship.

He retired from a fairly ordinary job some ten years ago and bought a little villa in in a small Spanish village, where he and his family holiday every year, Easter and Summer holidays. He keeps his garden nice and looks after his now very old mother-in-law. He would seem at first glance to be a very ordinary person. But his hobby, for that is how he describes it, is far from ordinary to the hundreds of people he has helped.

Long ago buses stopped going to the village he lives in, and to those hamlets close by, The station has long since been converted into a summer home, and the isolation that has resulted has meant that a simple trip to the local hospital has become an impossibly expensive, or totally out of the question journey.

Of course there is hospital transport, of you can spare a whole day waiting around to be picked up, make the short visit to the hospital and then wait to be brought home again. A half hour appointment could literally take all day if you depended upon this service. And for people who are really ill, but not ill enough for in-patient treatment, this is a depressing and dispiriting way to spend a day.

John solves that problem. In his own car, and for the price of the petrol, if you can force it upon him, he will pick up a single person, take the to the hospital, wait while they are seen, and bring them straight back.

He has had to change the type of insurance he held (at his own expense) so that if an accident were to happen he would be covered. Obviously his car must be kept up to scratch; a breakdown on the way to an appointment would be a disaster he could not accept. The car is spotlessly kept and rugs always available to make the patients comfortable on their way to and from their appointment.

John is in his mid seventies now and some days he gets tired. But he never fails to provide the service his large circle of fellow country-livers has become accustomed to. He knows that the National Health Service cannot hope to provide a service similar to his, and never complains about that. He doesn’t play golf, an expensive hobby at best, or spend money on beer. This is his hobby - helping to make life easier for others. He’s a champion for sure.

Dianna Moylan (Staff Writer)

Tags: hospital transport, local community, National Health Service