The new guidelines - a collaboration between NICE and the National Collaborating Centre for Chronic Conditions - stress the need for flexible services to properly address the whole range of needs that a person with MS may encounter.
Instinctively, we are making assumptions about our future encounter with this person we have just met and judging whether it will be positive or negative.
This increasing substitution of sure-fire techniques for the clumsy but sincere efforts of the amateur lessens the opportunity for the magic of spontaneity and a genuine encounter with another person.