One of my colleagues private messaged me it’s He’s Behind You ! message as we started
Panto Season
Fangs
Last night Gorgeous Dave and I went to the 100 year anniversary showing of the 1922 classic horror movie Nosferatu over in Chester.
It was shown in its entirety with an improvised score by The Frame Ensemble who had been specially commissioned by the British film Institute to accompany Murnau’s seminal work.
It was a really interesting night . And a different experience enhanced by the fact that it was improvised and a total one off. I studied it at university , and loved the revisit.
Dave and I giggled away when we agreed that we felt very intellectual in a very New York Woody Allen film character kind of way.
The Old Policeman
A beautiful ward at Bootham Park
This morning I’ve been balancing the books.
It’s going to be a lean and tight month all told as I’m just getting to grips with my part time pay status and tax bills.
But I got most things sorted, and was presently surprised that I’m in credit to Northern Power by 800£
Happier than I was, I took Roger down the lane to some friends, who live in the old mill. Here we chatted and drank coffee, whilst Roger galloped like a loon around their field in the faint hope of catching their beagle bitch.
I’ve been meaning to go down since I got him for it’s important to socialise young dogs with more characters outside his home pack.
I enjoy the socialising too as one of my fiends is a retired policeman from Yorkshire with all the sensibilities and flat vowels that I’m used to
On my way home, I was reminded of an old Yorkshire Policeman called Ken, who I had nursed in York, and of the time he saved me and my friend Tracie from a bit of a beating.
Ken was approaching 80 when I first remembered him. He had been a beat policeman and then a Sargent during the 1930s and forties and had worked in the city of York all of his life.
A city which was rough as a bears arse come the weekends where squaddies and locals would fight after a session up Micklegate.
Mental illness had left him incredibly quiet and withdrawn and he was admitted under section and was going through a course of ECT which it was hoped would kick start him from his near catatonic state, and longs days sat in a chair staring out at nothing.
I never heard his speak once.
The ward had two sitting rooms, both ornate and carpeted in expensive maroon carpets.One was upstairs where patients could smoke and watch tv and the other downstairs, which was quieter and used for group meetings. Ken usually sat alone downstairs, in a small alcove overlooking the grounds. He was on general observation and was not deemed a danger to himself.
Now I was still in my early twenties , back then, and still dressed like a children’s tv presenter ( thick colourful jumpers, loud pants) and I remember one day suddenly being embroiled into a physical encounter with another sectioned patient who WAS a danger to himself and to all around him.
This schizophrenic patient had secreted a few snooker balls into his pocket from occupational therapy and with one in his hand , had hit me with it several times before I could call for help.
A nurse by the name of Tracie Birkin came to my aid, she was fearless, and even though she always wore substantial heels and a tight skirt and bright red lipstick, she would get stuck in with the best of them if needed.
A barrage of snooker balls , made her rethink her usual strategy and I remember we both ran into the downstairs sitting room in an effort to garnish more help. It was there that the patient caught us and the fight continued as another member of staff who had shut herself into the ward nursery with some mums and babies , sounded the hospital alarm bell.
Now even though we knew in a matter of a minute or so each of the seven wards in the hospital would send a runner to help us, we were losing our fight.
That was until something clicked in Ken’s head and the old policeman resurfaced with a vengeance.
“Gi’Orrrrr! “ he shouted ( Gi Orr is Yorkshire for GIVE OVER!)
And after getting up from nowhere he swung and punched the violent patient once, very hard in the jaw , before helping him to lie down, unconscious on the carpet.
“ There’s no need for all that” he said simply helping Tracie who had lost both shoes to her feet and was sat down quietly in his chair before the runners from the wards breathlessly arrived in the doorway seconds later.
I can’t really remember if Ken ever recover properly following his ECT .
Too many patients and too many years have gone bye since he saved me and Tracie from a bit of a pounding
But I would like to think that the old guy did recover enough to go home
You Are My Sunshine
Albert eventually settled down last night.
He’s very stiff on his back leg and so I’m presuming his old injury is playing up again in the colder weather. I will ring the vet about painkillers.
He won’t want Albert going to the surgery
I haven’t anything planned today.
I’ve just taken the dogs to Colwyn Bay and after walking them , sat on the wooden promenade seating with a coffee.
Further along, a scruffy looking woman was rocking a small dog in her arms as she sang You are my sunshine very gently to it like someone would sing to a baby.
It was so unexpectedly poignant a moment that I had to look away
I walked the dogs all the way around to Rhos On sea, until Roger stopped pulling on his lead before we walked back and I knew the dogs were tired by then as they had stopped sniffing. We got back into Bluebell where they fell asleep and I sneaked another cup of coffee and a bacon sandwich from the Porth Eirias Cafe.
I’ve been reading about Denmark recently mainly The Year Of Living Danishly by Helen Russell but as I was exploring what to see in Denmark on the net I came across a painting called The Drowned Fisherman by Michael Ancher which can be seen in the Danish National Gallery.
It takes your breath away, and I was captivated by its solemn beauty and the sensitivity of its subject matter.
It’s funny how much a single painting can move you and dominate your psychi. Christina’s World by Andrew Wyeth still affects me in some strange guttural way now than it did when I last saw it at New York’s MOMA back in 2014
The beautiful Drowned Fisherman by Ancher
The woman singing You are my Sunshine has given this Sunday a melancholy I wasn’t expecting
Albert’s Pissed
He’s fucked off big style
I’ve just gone with the flow
I dropped Nigel at the train station in Chester at lunchtime. He didn’t want me to make him breakfast so I bought him a bar of chocolate to eat on the way home .
It was nice to have him visit after a six year hiatus.
I’ve known nige over 32 years. We joke together in the short hand way only old friends can and we talk bollocks for hours at a time .
The dogs wound themselves up because of the visit, but Nigel understands their ways and calmed them down with it too much effort.
We drank wine and ate pizza and talked more
And the cottage seems very quiet again this afternoon after he had gone.
I’m falling asleep watching and old episode of The Wire
Chimney
I’m waiting to handover at night shift
I like a punchy handover
I’ve got to get home early as the chimney sweep is turning up at 8.30 am
I’m picking Nigel up in Chester this afternoon.
The Silent Nun
I usually get back home soon after nine am after the first long dog walk of the day
And I spied Mrs C standing by the kitchen wall seeing if I was about.
She wanted my “ professional “ thoughts on something so I left the dogs in the car and invited her in for tea.
Mrs C ‘s father is poorly in hospital. He has covid and is not expected to recover and Mrs C, who is in her early sixties wanted to know just what a syringe driver did and why fluids had been stopped on her father.
The nurse looking after him overnight had been attentive but silent and Mrs C felt as though her questions , of which there were many, could not be asked.
This sort of night nurse I always refer to as The Silent Nun . As death is approaching they glide around as if invisible , say little but always looking solemn and quietly supportive.
It’s as though death is something purely something to be an awe of.
Instead of something normal, albeit it often earth shattering .
I am often surprised just how few people have seen a death up close.
In these days of expert resus both at home and in hospitals many people are treatable over and above their normal life expectancies. The times where granny is gently fading away in a single bed in the corner of the living room seems more of a rarity as it was , and with our busy lives and fragmented families many moments of death are missed or sanitized or both .
The Silent Nun can compound this distancing by giving death a overwhelmingly devout miss en scene .
There has to be a balance of course.
But in my experience death and the process of dying has to be talked about and explained as a normal yet hugely significant undertaking.
I make it a point to ask if the relative has been in this position before. If they haven’t I tend to ask if they want me to be outline what to expect, and the answer invariably is yes.
Patterns of breathing, noisy secretions, agitation, all manner of scary things can be explained in layman’s terms and plans can be discussed for treatments to alleviate some of the symptoms seen.
The relative is brought into the treatment plans for their loved one, they can understand why something is being done ( or not) and by being part of that plan can feel less helpless within the situation.
I answered some of Mrs C ‘s main questions and encouraged her to clarify some others with the ward staff when she returned to the hospital this morning and as she drank her tea I remembered the words of a support worker who I worked with eons ago now. She must be long time dead herself . But she always brought into a family vigil a pot of tea, with a small jug of milk and a sugar bowl with spoons. Cups , coffee, saucers , biscuits on a plate
The works …
“ it always gives the family something to do” she explained “ sorting out the crockery and pouring the tea”
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