Editorial JCM 134

The first week back in clinic after new year saw me chewing the winter cud with a patient whose Christmas had been ruined by a seasonal bug that had left her exhausted, overflowing with phlegm and running to the loo with diarrhoea. In the south-west of the UK where I live it had rained pretty much solidly for a month from mid December, resulting in the worst floods that many could remember. A proper damp squib. The year before in January 2023 we had witnessed a brave soul make the best of that winter's flooding by taking his windsurfer out across the fields that are normally full of sheep. This year the waters were even higher. Everyone knows the UK is wet, but it seems to be getting wetter. That morning I had listened with horror to a report on BBC Radio 4 about substandard social housing that focused on the death of a poor child from mould. It included an interview with a mother who recounted how she had to brush mould off her family's pillows, duvets and clothes on a daily basis...