A Little Piece Of Home


In the wee small hours this is broadcast on BBC Radio 4 fM
I tune in perhaps three or four times a year
And there it is 
Like poetry, or a prayer
More about that tomorrow….it’s been a poetry led evening and I’m feeling suddenly melancholy 

Sweet dreams ( thank you Philip xx)



Bluebell



When you’re single you have no back up! 
Bluebell was taxed last year but the MOT just passed me by and so I was lucky my nephew could fit her into his garage today at very short notice.
By the end of the day , she was serviced and MOTeed and was sitting proudly in the drive at the end of the garden , a constant friend in my 61st year. 
On reflection I have underestimated just how much she has been a good mate to me these past five years, and only very occasionally has she let me down.
This week is a case in point, not only do I have to nights to commute to, I’ve got John Cooper Clarke to go and see at venue Cymru and The Kite Runner is on stage at the Storyhouse. In Chester on Friday .
No car
No social life.
No work
No life

Anyhow it’s Interior Design Masters tonight on tv.
Which is camp as Christmas 

I’ve made macaroni cheese for tea, with onlyRoger in tow, Mary has been loaned out to Trendy Carol’s Hubby again today.



Two night Shift Stories

Nurses get paid more for night shifts. They bloody well deserve it too
It’s a completely unnatural time to be working, which encroaches not only on the day you work but the day before and the day after.
It’s like being effectively jet lagged once a week and research has proved the practice to be dangerous to physical and psychological well being .
Working nights can also be dangerous. You are on minimal staffing, have minimal resources , and in 40 years I have been involved in several violent situations , all centred on a night shift where help often didn’t come.
Night time, is also the time people are at their lowest ebb…..that’s why more people pass away in the wee small hours than anytime else. 

My worst night shift ever was back in my psychiatric days 

“ After I qualified as a staff nurse in mental health' I got a job in a prestigious psychiatric hospital in North Yorkshire. The hospital had only seven wards which were all situated within a beautiful Regency style building in it's own grounds. The wards were carpeted and sympathetically decorated in a period style and their day rooms filled with comfortable sofas and occasional furniture.It was a pleasant place in which to work.
I was placed on the mother and baby unit , where seriously ill post partum women and their offspring were admitted for treatment, but most of the other wards catered for acutely mentally ill patients, patients with cognitive impairments and people suffering severe epilepsy..
Staffing generally was very good , but when there was an emergency situation on a ward then an alarm bell would sound and each ward would send a " runner" to help with whatever problem was afoot. No wards were ever locked.
I was telling some of the junior staff this story last night whilst on a break, as a sort of lesson of how Intensive Care is one of the few places in nursing that is probably safest from assault and injury ....things in the early 1980s could be very different!
I remember one night at the hospital when at around 4am the alarm bell sounded. I was one of the five nurses who responded to the call,
The emergency was on the epilepsy assessment ward , a ward staffed by both general and mental health nurses. On duty were three nurses. A heavily pregnant girl, a young staff nurse just out of training and an experienced male staff nurse. All three had been sitting in what was essentially a glass box which overlooked the dormitory of patients on two sides.
The office was essentially an observation room.
Out of nowhere, a powerfully built male patient had suddenly become agitated and very confused and had hurled himself at the windows of the nurses station. He shattered the glass with his body, and like an animal he went for the nurses inside. The male nurse hit the emergency buzzer then bolted out of the office to get help, but as he ran, the office door bounced shut , locking the two women inside. The pregnant nurse, with great presence of mind clambered over a desk and jumped through a window into the grounds to safety but unfortunately the patient caught hold of the young female staff nurse before she could flee.
By the time we arrived on the scene a couple of minutes later, the patient had fractured her jaw and had broken her arm as well as biting her badly on the side of the face.
This was the only time , I have been truly frightened at work Over the years I have been personally abused many times by patients and relatives alike. I have been screamed at, shouted at, spat at and in one case threatened with a broken teapot! but this situation with a brain damaged patient and a young helpless staffnuse still lingers long in the mind.
A scary story to share with a group of nurses in the wee small hours of the morning eh?”

But as usual things need a balance and this short take should fit the bill



 Christmas  Night 1986
It was very cold and snowy and I remember.
I wasn’t very happy.
I had just started work in the November.

A new staff nurse role, in a new city of York
I’d barely been there a month and still lived at the nurses’ home at Clifton Hospital a couple of miles out of the city.
I knew no one properly and I was homesick
And already I had been put onto night duty.
The ward was quiet. 
A psychiatric admission ward with twelve or so general admission patients and an attached mother and baby unit with a half complement of two mums and two newborns.
We had three staff of duty. Staff nurses clive and I covered the main ward and Sue who was a motherly enrolled nurse took charge of the nursery.
Around midnight Sue and I were in the darkened office, each of us feeding a baby.
I couldn’t see her face properly just a glint of her glasses from the lights from the snowy garden.
She was asking me about me, and I had been yacking on in the dark for an age.
I had no idea what I was doing but my baby was large and content and sleepy so from the get go..so I was lucky.
“ Are you gay John? “  she seemed to ask me out of nowhere and she nodded when I defensively replied no, just a little too quickly .
“it’s ok if you were you know? ” She said slowly in her broad flat Yorkshire accent  “I’ve always loved gay men”

And in the comfortable silence that followed, something quietly and inexplicably shifted in me 

As we fed babies in the dark on Christmas Day”

Everybody


My favourite lisping Spanish choir
And orchestra 
Can anyone spot my favourite woodwind player??



 

The Art Wall part 1

 The next couple of blogs will explain, in part, the significance of the paintings, and drawings and prints and fabrics chosen. It’s not static, it has to be fluid , but most, (but not all) have a special significance to me

First it is this little map 


This was a gift , a secret Santa gift given to me on the first Christmas I worked at the hospice. It was given to me by Sionad a woman that couldn’t be more Welsh if you had dipped her in a mixture dragon poo and Bara Brith

It signifies the purchase of my cottage. A thing that could only have happened when I managed to get a full time job and a contract saying so. Despite my age, the Halifax took me on as a customer and the cottage and the village remained mine and Sionad remembered my relief on that day and had the map made accordingly as a Christmas gift.

Note there is a heart and a Gray ( Grey) one where the cottage stands


Catherine, Princess of Wales reveals cancer diagnosis


A pitch perfect reply to Fleet Street et al
Gracious and supportive and incredibly Brave 
Brava !! 

Finished

 It’s Friday and I’ve finished the kitchen and it’s Friday and I’ve passed my filmed Counselling assessment I will have the opportunity to critically assess my own skills next week, as we have to write an essay review.
I hate seeing myself on video.

The weather is brighter today and Trendy Carol’s Hubby phoned to see if one of the dogs could go around to keep him company. I’ve sent Mary around because she loves a cuddle slightly more than Roger.
The kitchen now looks fresh and clean. 
I’ve used a Jasmine White only in order to allow the colours of the paintings to pop a little, but as you can see, nothing matches too well, which suits me just fine.

Can you see the felt scotch egg hanging from the window!!!





Morale and A Memory

Morale at work is low, it always is when a much loved workmate dies unexpectedly and staff gather together to morn, to talk, remember and gain comfort. I’ve not been back to work since Ann’s death but I’ve been in touch with others I work with and now am able to go to her funeral as others that didn’t know her well are kindly now covering my shift.. As a Manager I have dealt with similar scenarios and you just have to have broad shoulders and an open office door. 

The following blog of a decade ago, was flagged up by a follower this morning. He emailed me with a kind, thoughtful observation which I shall take on board and I will share the blog with you today.
On reflection I’m rather proud of it, and I’ve enjoyed the memory


“I have often heard that cats are attracted to people that either don't like them or are frightened of them. Such is the fickle and rather demanding nature of felines.
Dogs on the other hand seldom approach someone who does not want to be approached. They, like insecure children, need and love adulation and will often grab it whenever it is offered.
They are wrong footed when they feel rejected, like toddlers can be.

Every night The Prof is approached by Winnie after he has sat down heavily into his armchair.
She doesn't bounce like the terriers, nor does she jump up to rest huge paws on a knee, she just sits and looks, waiting for that big kiss on a face the size of a large dinner plate.
To be fair to the Prof, he never wanted or indeed even likes bulldogs. Winnie's arrival was a kind of fait accompli which drove him almost to distraction, so he kind of tolerates the big old girl, without offering the sloppy affection I give her, every single day.
But every day. Winnie wanders up to the Prof as he taps away at emails that need reading, and rather seriously she will lower herself down like a fat woman negotiating a deck chair, her eyes never leaving his face. There she will wait,sometimes for an age, for him to look over his spectacles to acknowledge her.

I watch this scenario every single night.

The acknowledgement always comes eventually.
It's never, however, a kiss on a big sloppy face. Nor is it an overwhelming coo-cooing an old lady gives to her pekingese but eventually the Prof will look slowly down from his work and without a smile he will pat the big girl firmly on the head .
Winnie will always battle for more. She will wave a fat paw at the Prof in a futile attempt for him to pat longer and hard as it may seem on the surface, I realised that all this is a kind of game the two of them play.
She is more than happy with that one pat!


It's a dance between bulldog and stoney faced academic.”