Roger’s Stairs

 

After many weeks of trepidation and angst, Roger has now mastered the cottage staircase.

True he runs at it with all legs flaying,

Almost as if he was a over wound clockwork toy injected with Adrenalin 

And true he is still very much so an uncoordinated mass of red and tan curls, typical of a puppy half his age.

But hundreds of times a day, he can be found somewhere on or around the staircase,

Bouncing up it

And Falling and bouncing back down it.

A gleefully happy smile upon his daft face.

The Valeta and Other Stories

 

In yesterday’s comments Lizzy asked how such a quiet, clearly gauche young Welshman like me became a psychiatric nurse at the tender age of twenty.

The answer, is probably more complicated than I realised at the time, they always are, but the overwhelming reason was that I was looking for a career was that I hated my life as grade 2 bank clerk in the National Westminster Bank in Rhyl.

I wanted a job with kudos

Something I could be proud of 

Something my family would be proud of.

And my decision to be a nurse was thanks primarily to a woman by the name of Nerys Griffith 

Now Nerys was a student nurse at Wrexham Maelor hospital .She was and is,very Welsh, was a seriously committed General nurse and briefly was my second or third girlfriend ( I know it was a phase) I was also quite in awe of her general nurse tales of blood guts and gore so thought that I could be a nurse of sorts and psychiatric nursing seemed a logical move even though I knew absolutely nothing of what it would entail. 

Up to then my sole experience of mental illness was that I watched the film Ordinary People with Timothy Hutton in 1981

I hadn’t got a Scooby Doo!

And so I applied to three school’s of nursing .

The local psychiatric hospital in rural Denbigh.

The school of nursing based at the West Cheshire Hospital in Chester

And a dreadfully scary gothic looking hospital in Chesterfield of all places in Derbyshire 

I was accepted for both the English schools

Now my spoken welsh wasn’t good enough for the local hospital .

And so I chose Chester , a city I revisit weekly even now.

My nurse training was dominated by a camp,multifaceted Quaker tutor by the name of Leslie Brint. He opened my gauche, small town mind not only to mental illness and it’s treatments , but to different lifestyles, cultures, sexualities as well as to aspects of social injustice, pacifism and culture and literature

He was my Jean Brodie. 

A man of great charm

Safari suit jackets 

And a lover of the Valeta 

 

So , apart from the Valeta what did I learn from my three years at the West Cheshire hospital? 

I learned that fragments of human beings that were ravaged by mental illness were still people that required respect and care.

I learned to give physical contact to people before I even leaned to receive it for myself and

I realised that an unhappy childhood was a common experience of so many.

Policemen Stories

I have always had a healthy respect for the police.
I was stopped by one last night when taking the dogs for a walk .
Bluebell had just had her service and the bike rack which is always hanging from the boot had come loose
The policeman just wanted me to know that it was unsafe.
He was very good looking and reached through the window to stroke Roger who suddenly became all wags and smiles. 

I smiled like a fat boy in a cake factory 

And simpered like a schoolgirl 

Years ago, I was once part of a psychiatric nurse team who had to retrieve a sectioned patient from their house in the community. We were accompanied by four extremely large Yorkshire policemen and my job in the whole event was to look after the syringes of intramuscular chlorpromazine . Sedation which I had to inject into the patient's buttocks if all went tits up.

Then I was only 23 and rather slight in stature. I also wore a very unflattering thick woolly jumper which made me look like a presenter of a 1980s childrens' tv show. I couldn't have been less of an asset to such a venture if I'd put on a gingham dress and platted my hair, but there we go.

Nowadays the police have all sort of equipment and protocols to follow in such situations as I am sure psychiatric nurses now do. Then , I chose the biggest and most manly policeman and stood behind him.
" Are you the lad with the drugs? " the policeman asked me when I peeped around his biceps to see what was going on
" yes " I gulped weakly
" Keep behind me, don't get in the way and if you need to jab the guy, I'll call you" he instructed carefully. He sounded like Freddie Truman and looked like a Greek god.
I nodded, white faced and shivered helplessly when he added

" and prick me with that fucking needle and I'll fucking batter you senseless !"

Yorkshire Puds

 Sometimes I think I shouldn’t write in Going Gently every day.

Like for most us, ordinary days can be somewhat mundane here in Wales.

But write I do 

A habit such as a journal can’t be broken just because fuck all happens.

I’ve spent most of the day at home, what with Bluebell in the garage.

But I’ve been busy enough what with phone calls to three friends , two hours of study and college homework and baking Yorkshire Puddings for tomorrow’s supper.

Now I made a batch of Yorkshire’s rather than the customary big square one which was traditionally eaten as a starter or as a meal on its own filled with gravy and veg.

Bluebell passed her MOT and received her service as I fixed the washing machine, sprayed Roger’s ear cooked and felt smug with myself

The Repair Shop is on tonight. 

Apart from that and The Walking Dead , it’s the only thing I really watch on tv 

Ps I’m now watching Handmade, Britain’s best woodworker which is Bake off from a decade ago with Mel Giedroyc and the very sexy Tom Dyckhoff 

Pity the present day bake off has gone rather bland

Beauty and the Beast | Angela Lansbury Live Performance

I know my friend john Highfield will be heartbroken as I am 

Gawd bless you Mrs Potts 

Life

 Roger has a sore ear which he’s been scratching too much, (he’s presently asleep sat up on my lap)

I’m worried about money as a mortgage rise is on the cards 

I’ve put myself down for some extra shifts .

The new washing machine is playing up too and I fucking forgot to activate the warranty 

Bluebell has her MOT and service tomorrow 

On a positive note

I’ve cracked Google classroom.

I’ve got in two hours of study today and yesterday 

I’ve lost 5 lbs this week 

And the noise from effin Charley, the loud mouthed Yorkshire terrier from next door has suddenly been at a minimum recently.

I wonder if he’s passed away

Is it bad of me to say that I hope he has? 

A little bad

A little good 

Normal, boring life I guess 

Roger , collapsed as I watched a recorded bake off

The Little Pink Spot

 

“I’m deciding who will get what” 

My patient was a single woman in her early fifties, and she was making copious notes on a Basildon Bond writing pad.

Her answer was a reply to my finger pointing 

I sat down and waited for the rest of the story.

My patient was due to be discharged from hospital later that week. 

She had been diagnosed with terminal lung cancer for a while now and this was to be her last admission for any medical treatment  . 

When she deteriorated further she had asked to be sent to St Lukes, which was Sheffield’s hospice at the time. 

I knew she lived in a large family house in Broomhill, which was the trendy and expensive suburb of the city, 

Her house, she told me , was filled with trendy objet d’art .

She was a popular woman too…who went to the Crucible more than I did 

It was her collections and belongings she was worried about .

She wanted the right thing to be given to the right person and was worried that her will , although completed was woefully inadequate for the job 

So she was making a list. 

I had an idea.

I rooted through the ward clerk’s cupboard and found several sheets of multicoloured coloured stickers 

“ Put a sticker under something you want to leave someone and leave your executor the key “;

She thought it was a fabulous idea so much so that she promised to leave me “ an item” for having the idea when she got home. 

By the end of my shift she had such a long list of bequeathed gifts , she had to enter various symbols and letters inside the sticker so that things could be allocated .

I never saw the patient again . I never heard from her executor either 

The pink sticker must have fallen off ……….

Post script 

In the top right hand drawer of my lovely new office desk, in the west wing of Bwthyn y Llan is a sheaf of multicoloured stickers . I bought them in 2009 from Woolworth’s in Prestatyn before they closed and

Someday in the future , I will take the day off ordinary chores and activities and I will amble around my cottage putting stickers on every last bloody thing 

There is some strange satisfaction at this simple thought

Time

 I’m sat in X-ray waiting for my appointment . 

I’m fifteen minutes early.

I’m early for everything I do.

I’m very seldom late.

I was musing about this fact only the other day. 

And now being early is a long term friendship joke.

When I’m off to the train out of London at say 7 am, Nu will often say that I’m catching the afternoon train home.

She knows me well.

I know myself very well too.

For this abhorrence for lateness comes from the constant and low level anxieties a child has when going to school.

As young twins, my sister and I were taken to school by my father, who was notoriously bad tempered in a morning. He was also slightly lazy and would not be hurried by school rules so every morning we suffered from anxieties bordering on abusive levels when trying not to chivvy him into snapping but balancing prudent silence against encouragement to get through the school gates on time. 

That constant, low level anxiety shaped a need to be always on time if not early.

It’s not rocket science 

I took the dogs down to the beach after the hospital visit, came home and prepared a Korean fish curried soup which is simmering on the stove . 

I’ve done laundry , moved half a hundred weight of kiln dried logs from the driveway into their store by the kitchen door and have had to sit down as my back is aching like a nun’s knee

Time to watch the latest Walking Dead on Disney….

What strange bedfellows