Well I think I will keep my (MY) Matt Cardle video until later. ( He was very sweet singing Nights in White Satin!Tonight, whilst reading waspish Tom's highly entertaining blog ( http://tomstephenson.blogspot.com/) I was reminded of my fairly brief sojourn into psychiatric nursing way back in the last years of asylum care. The long dark corridors of a building that dated to 1829 lent themselves more to Hitchcock's Rebecca rather than a "modern" day health care system and the imagination of an inexperienced nurse could literally run riot when on night shift.
One particular shift I remember to this day, I was the only student nurse working nights on a ward called Dunham, which was a 20 bedded ward for, what was termed then, as the Elderly Mentally Infirm. I worked alongside an elderly senior enrolled nurse or greenies as they were affectionately called ( because of their green uniforms), and the night flew by in a flurry of toileting, bed changes and over tired attempts at reality orientation.
I must take a moment to describe the ward.Twenty foot ceilings and two inch thick doors that were locked at night with cathedral sized keys. Pealing blue paint, ancient wood block flooring and wrought iron radiators there were permanently set on "hot"
At night the ward looked more creepy than the motel in Psycho!
This one night, at around 1am, the trained nurse and I was sat in the ward office which over looked the sleeping patients. Unexpectedly the phone rang and it was the hospital chief nurse who said in a clipped and somewhat breathless order " Go around your ward and ensure all of the doors are locked do it RIGHT now" before hanging up
We were terrified! As a fairly fit 22 year old male I got the job of racing around the Gothic darkness double checking that we were secure and safe...and boy was my hands shaking when I got to the final connecting door to the main asylum corridor, for in the distance I could hear shouting, shrieking and the sound of breaking glass!!
The enrolled nurse and I then stood in the darkened office listening to more shouts, bangs , crashes and screaming.....and I practically wet myself when the sound of running feet could be heard thundering up and down the central corridor only feet from where we stood.
My imagination ran riot , and if I could have resigned my nursing career there and then I honestly would have done, but like the true Brits that we were.....we sat there in silence, praying for the end to be merciful quick!
The noises finally diminished somewhat and feeling brave I walked to the office window and opened the huge out-of-date floral curtains in a flourish so I could look out on the main hospital building.
There standing not two feet from the window, and barely illuminated by the office lamp was a pale starring face of a man.
I remember everything stopped for a moment.
I said something rather manly like "eeekk!"
and the enrolled nurse bellowed "Jesus Christ Almighty" before the man turned slowly away into the dark.
I have NEVER been so frightened in my life and I can honestly say that I all but wet myself there and then on the ancient parquet floor...
As it turned out, the man was high on a cocktail of drugs and alcohol and had been flinging milk bottles at staff from the rooftops . (Like you do) after being refused night sedation from the neighbouring A & E department.
...and to this day, I still cannot cope with a sudden face at a window...or saying that.....I hate horror films to boot
