Happy New Year 2023

 

I'd like to wish everybody who is a hospital porter, has ever been a hospital porter, or will ever become a hospital porter, as well as every civilian who loves and supports hospital porters, a very Proud and Dignified New Year. All the best for 2023; and remember, it's only a hundred and fifty-two days to St Theo's Day!

The Great Nurses Strike of 2022

 

I was at work, walking between jobs, and I saw a group of about fifty people assembled on a street corner outside the Churchill Hospital. They were carrying placards and banners; and they received many supportive horn blasts from passing cars. They are the local contingent of a nationwide strike by nurses. This does not mean all nurses are walking off their wards; that's unthinkable, but all those not needed for emergency and essential services are carrying out a one-day strike. This is the biggest strike in the history of the NHS. The establishment media has castigated the nurses, claiming they are "greedy" and "holding the country to ransom!" I am not a trade unionist and stopped being an active one about a year into my own service. However, there are times when strikes are justified and this is definitely one of them. A newly-qualified nurse earns about £27,000 pa. This is after two or more years on a full time degree course and with a student loan to pay off. This level has been sub-inflation for as long as I can remember; maybe even before my own service. When I started, the NHS trained its own nurses with salaried tuition; not anymore. It is true that a senior sister can earn as much as £55,000 a year, but this is after more than a decade of wading through blood and excrement! Would she have the sanity left to enjoy those extra beans? I know for a fact many do not. It is actually the nastiest of hypocrisy that the government dares to accuse strikers of being greedy and holding the country to ransom. They're saying this after virtually blowing the economy out of the water and ruining the lives of millions because Boris Johnson didn't have the courage, maturity or self-discipline to tell to the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation to get stuffed. After all this I'm honestly surprised there are so many essential workers still at their posts! What happened to all that clapping? Aren't we "heroes!" anymore? Why is a 19% payrise and a little bit of basic job security too much to ask for in a service with an annual budget of £120 billion when the same employer bailed out the banks in 2008 up to over £1.8 trillion, virtually doubling the national debt overnight!? They did this without hesitation or a qualm. The Treasury won't even publish the accounts for the cost of Covid 19 vaccination, but as of February this year 116 million shots have been administered; you do the maths. On top of this you can add on the pings, warning signs and bulk PPE etc; and all of it lining the pockets of the pharmaceutical industry, including a statistically high number of Tory donors. So, I salute my civilian colleagues for taking this action and I wish them all the best.
See here for background: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2021/02/coronavirus-portal.html.
And: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2015/08/jr-porters-strike-update-2.html.

Finding Barry's Grave

See here for essential background: http://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2022/10/barry-dies.html.
And: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2022/10/barry-dies.html.
I was determined to find out if Barry had a grave or memorial as soon as I found out he had died. This was difficult as I had blocked our only mutual contact, for reasons I will not divulge at this point. However I did mange to find a social media post showing there was something for Barry at the North Oxfordshire Crematorium and Memorial Park, see: https://www.northoxfordmemorial.co.uk. This is not an easy place to get to if you don't have a car and I ended up having to walk from Kidlington, which took about an hour. Thankfully the weather was dry. Once I got there I faced another challenge. The Memorial Park is huge, about thirty acres, and it is covered by thousands of memorials, almost all anonymous and only consisting of a small tree or bush. There are no full-body graves there, but some of the trees have ashes scattered around them or buried in their roots. A few had name tags on them, but most of these were missing. I could see no staff around to ask in the low, modern buildings which included the waiting room, chapel and crematorium. The Park was only open till four PM and so I only had about three hours to search. As I said, I am not willing to ask anybody else where the correct memorial is. I muttered: "Barry, where are you? Help me find you." Luckily it didn't take long. Barry has a more substantial tomb than most of the deceased and it stands out clearly from the trees. His family have interred his cremated remains in a permanent resting place which you can see below.

                               

I said a few private words to Barry. I don't know where he has gone to or where he is right now, but I hope he heard me. I hadn't brought any flowers for the pot, but Barry was never much one for them anyway. Instead I chose a more apt form of remembrance. I went to the nearest pub, a large and pleasant location in the middle of the countryside called Sturdy's Castle, see: https://www.sturdyscastleoxford.com. There I consumed a pint of Guinness. This is not something I often drink myself, but Barry loved it and could drink eight or nine pints of it in a row. When we went camping in Ireland in 1997, we visited the St James Gate Brewery in Dublin where the best of it comes from.

I'm glad I've had the chance to pay my final respects to Barry; albeit almost two years late, through no fault of my own. I've done it in my own way and I think Barry would appreciate it.

I Really Shouldn't Laugh...

 

Have you ever found something funny that you feel you shouldn't, that you feel guilty for finding funny? Probably most people will at some point. Such emotions are called "gallows humour" or "black humour". Doctors and nurses excel at it, see: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2020/05/sick-hospital-video.html! However, doctors and nurses are not alone. Perhaps it was my twenty-three year career in hospital portering that led me to think as I do for the subject of this article. When I was in Theatres in the early 2000's a new porter joined the department whom I will not name, nor will I post any links to what happened (Right now I can't find any actually). Porters often have nicknames and his was "Swampy". This is because he was a bit of a hippy and reminded us a bit of the famous road building protester Daniel "Swampy" Hooper. A couple of years after he joined, he and a civilian friend of his did a terrible thing. They broke into the house of an old man who lived alone, somebody they knew. The man was in at the time and they demanded money and valuables from him as well as the PIN for his bank card. When he refused they tied him up and wrapped an electric flex around his neck. They then threatened to pull it tight and strangle him unless he complied. I'm not sure what happened next and several different stories came out in court. Either the old man still refused to surrender or one or both of his two assailants got carried away; either way, the flex did end up getting pulled tight and the victim died. After they had fled the scene and calmed down, Swampy and the civilian must have realized that they would be hunted by the police; therefore they took everything they had stolen from the old man and headed for Amsterdam. You might anticipate that this was some kind of escape attempt, but it wasn't. Once in the Dutch capital, the two men went on a wild three-day bender. They blew every penny they had stolen from the old man on drink, drugs and prostitutes. It appears that they realized that they had no chance of evading the police and it was only a matter of time before they were caught, as indeed they were a few days later. Knowing also that they definitely faced a lengthy prison sentence, they decided to have one last experience of hedonism before the years of austerity behind bars. They are probably still there today. The reason I can't help finding this amusing is that theirs is such a typically hospital portering response to the situation. Obviously this is not a laughing matter, especially for the poor man who was killed and his loved ones, who have my sympathy; hence the shame I feel at laughing. We don't choose our feelings though; and once I became a hospital porter I became one in its entirety. I can never again choose not to be one.

Barry Dies

 

I'm very sorry to report that my wonderful friend Barry Blake-Cox has died. I met Barry when I first started at the hospital. He was a telephonist who later became telephone monitoring officer. He went on to be an X-ray records clerk before leaving the NHS. He was definitely the civilian I was closest to and when he left the hospital we remained in touch. He died in April last year at the age of seventy-two. When I joined the Hospital Portering Service, it's no exaggeration to say he kind of adopted me. He was a much older man who became a father figure to me. We drifted apart in the last decade of his life, mostly due to the other relationships he had. Despite this I always held him in the deepest of affection. Rest in Peace, Barry. Hope to see you again some day.

Popping the Question- The Responses

 

What do you do as a hospital porter when somebody "pops the question". You may wonder what I mean by that. It doesn't mean being asked if you'll marry somebody (like the hell that would ever happen to a porter!), it means something very different. It was a question I was luckily not asked very often. It was usually nurses who did it, occasionally paramedics; rarely doctors. Usually I get a few minutes warning before the bomb drops. A stupid condescending smile will come over their face; and then, when we're alone together: "Ben... Ben. Come on now! How long have you been a porter for now, Ben? You're an intelligent young man and you obviously care. You really shouldn't be wasting your life doing something as worthless as portering. Have you ever thought about going up the ladder; becoming a nurse, an ODP, a surgical tech or a paramedic?" There are a number of responses you can make, the most obvious and impulsive being to shout: "Get out of my sight, you patronizing bitch!" Of course you can't do that on duty. I usually take a deep breath and count to ten, and then reply: "No, I'm too young and adventurous. I want more from life than a boring civilian job can give me. If you're content to tootle (great word that) along in your bland and humdrum existence as a nurse etc, then I'm pleased for you; but I am meant for a higher destiny." If I am feeling more aggressive I generally turn the question round: "Have you ever asked a nurse, paramedic, ODP etc if they've ever thought about becoming a porter?" They will of course answer no. "Why not?" They will then be forced into a corner where they have to admit they consider HPing inferior. I can then say: "Right, well I have a much higher opinion of the Hospital Portering Service then you do. I didn't become a HP because I wanted to be something "better", but didn't have the busfare upstairs! I joined the HP Service because I wanted to be a porter! I'm proud to be a porter! Good day!" and I walk away.
 
I try to resist getting too angry when dealing with people popping the question; this is because people who do it usually do not mean any harm. They are being tactless rather than malicious. They've simply never considered seeing the world the way I do. A response that is challenging and robust, yet calm and polite, could educate them. Hurling abuse at them will just drive them away. There is one exception to this, a man called Jack who popped the question continuously to me. He literally did it every time he saw me. He was a former porter who became an operating department practitioner, a kind of theatre nurse. He was very keen on giving porters what he called "the opportunity" to "better themselves". I don't object to that in practical terms. If a HP wants to quit and pursue a civilian career, that's up to them. The problem is, when Jack said "opportunity" what he actually meant was "mandate". It is a very weird thing to be obsessed with what a fellow grown man decides to do with their own life, but Jack was. I do wonder if he was just being a windup merchant. Either way, his behaviour was bizarre and disrespectful. He once shouted obscenities at me in a crowded pub. He eventually moved to another hospital and we lost touch. I suppose I should have just told him to get lost, but for some reason I never did. Maybe it was because of my little "experiment", see: https://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2020/02/humiliation-reply-to-stefan-molyneux.html and: https://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2020/11/nice-guys-reply-to-stefan-molyneux.html. I will have to return to this subject in a future article, but The Gas Spanner programme linked below gives a few more details. Some people appear to have no ability to introspect. They cannot assess their own actions against any external standard other than popularity and peer approval. Resisting people popping the question is not easy; it is actually far more difficulty than making dignity statements. However, it can be done effectively with enough practice.
See here for more information: https://hpanwo-radio.blogspot.com/2020/12/the-gas-spanner-programme-7.html.

New Lodge

 

I was sent this photograph of a porters' lodge at the JRH and it filled me with sadness. It is so different to the lodges I knew when I first began in portering in 1988. The lodge is the centre of a hospital porter's life on duty. It is the base of operations for work, rest and play in the hospital. As much as I loathe the film Paper Mask, as I said again recently, see: http://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2022/08/cabal-on-paper-mask.html, the portrayal of the porters in their lodge is a well crafted nostalgic fantasy, see: https://youtu.be/4BgBoaCQr20?t=84. A typical traditional HP's lodge is about fifteen feet square. It is usually near the hospital's main entrance and often the reception desk is attached to it because porters often man reception. Most hospitals now employ civilian receptionists, but these only work office hours. At other times the porters do it, often the senior or desk porters. It has the porters' lockers around the walls and usually large items of their property stored on top of them, together with a few decades build-up of dust. There are easy chairs in a communal circle with a low coffee table and a television set at the focus. On the table will be drinking mugs and newspapers. On the wall will be a notice board and sometimes a calendar decorated with soft pornographic images. There may well be humourous items pinned up too. By the door is a punch-clock with a rack for the porters' time cards. There is always a kettle with coffee and tea, with usually powdered milk; although some hospitals value their porters enough for them to provide a fridge for milk and even, the ultimate luxury, a microwave oven! The lodge will sometimes consist of two or three separate rooms. Adjoining the main room described above will often be a storeroom full of gas cylinders, sack trucks, stretcher poles and other tools of the trade. The reception desk space can be accessed through a door designed to hide the lodge interior from the general public. I sympathize there; some sights are for a porter's eyes only. Often the reception function is combined with dispatch; the taking of task requests by telephone, and more recently computer, that were distributed to the crew via the senior porter. The lodge is where we greet each other as we hand over a shift and say farewell to our brothers on the subsequent shift. The lodge was where we had fun during quiet periods, especially on nightshift. There was the watching of films, games of cards and general shooting the breeze; and that's just the start. There were arguments too, confessions and the outpouring of emotion. We always said that on the first nightshift, if a porter were having a row with his wife nobody would know about it; but by the third night all of us would. The lodge was a theatre of conversations that would be unthinkable anywhere else. A large hospital might have several lodges and there are also small ones for departmental sections...
 
The porters' lodge I see in the image above is in another universe from that. There is only one chair, presumably for the dispatcher. The place is sterile, bureaucratic and clinical, with nothing human or personal is sight. Flesh and blood is toxic to it. Anything that is not made out of Formica, chipboard, aluminium or plastic looks completely out of place. The cupboards obviously contain our tools and I see files for paperwork, all stored with state-corporate precision. There are the usual anti-covid measures and a large printer for printing out the task slips. This lodge is buried deep within the building, where no sunlight or fresh air can reach. I have to admit, I was there to witness the early stages of this transformation, see the links below. I recall one of the porters who had artistic talent drew some amusing caricatures of his fellow porters as anthropomorphic animals and added the caption on each one: "Which porter is THIS?". He posted photocopies of them on the notice boards in all the hospital's lodges. The head porter... sorry! Portering manager... went round and took them all down. He said they were "not work related" and even disciplined the porter for the misuse of hospital resources! Management became obsessed with eliminating "downtime", which just means porters taking a brief rest between tasks. There has been an element of this snideness since the 1960's at the Churchill, old porters used to tell me; but modern management have picked up this buck and turned it into a form of mania. They honestly seem to believe that if they make our lodge as uncomfortable as possible we will somehow work harder. They thought porters were using the lodges to escape work. Nonsense! If a porter wants to escape work at the JRH there are hundreds of secluded nooks and crannies they can go and hide in and nobody will find them, I guarantee. The lodge is the last place a porter will seek to avoid work. Workload varies throughout the day in a hospital for all staff, both portering and civilian. This is because it is impossible to plan everything ahead and therefore we are not to blame if we are suddenly left at a loose end for half an hour. We should not be made to feel guilty for that! Why shouldn't we put our feet up and have a cup of tea? So long as we are always available on standby as and when required nothing else matters; that is our duty. That was the whole purpose of the lodge in the first place. Why do modern NHS managers not understand this? The destruction of the traditional porters' lodge is one of the starkest indicators of the destruction of the HP's and the health service in general.
See here for more information: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2014/09/the-social-club-today.html.
And: https://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2011/02/remember-your-place-in-workplace.html.

Cabal on Paper Mask

 

See here for essential background: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2015/07/paper-mask-full-movie-online.html.
My good friend and brother porter who goes by the online nom-de-guerre "XCABALX" has written his own review of Paper Mask. The article is in both Polish and English because, like many HP's, Cabal hails from Eastern Europe. His insight into the film is very interesting and he spots many things that I missed. He has also captured a number of screenshots from the movie. Since watching Paper Mask I have also seen Withnail and I and I must admit Paul McGann is very good in that excellent comedy. Therefore he has redeemed himself slightly in my books. Cabal rightly points out the incredulity of the plot. It is not realistic; in fact it is something of a fantasy. Even back in the 90's, in Poland or the UK, it would have been impossible to impersonate a doctor as easily as Matthew Harris did. Today it would be even harder, with the endless electronic ID checks we all have to go through. I have also watched the film The Talented Mr Ripley, which tells the story of a habitual conman who kills a millionaire playboy and impersonates him. There are parallels between the two stories. Simon Harris is every bit as much an antihero. He is not only extremely deceitful; he is heartless, selfish and cowardly. He only expresses genuine emotion when his own hide is jeopardized. The scriptwriter is indeed a doctor, and I have yet to read his novel from which he adapted the film; I do have a copy though. He would have been in a position to research the HP's at his hospital, and didn't do too bad of a technical job; although, as I have said before, I bitterly resent his offensive and patronizing portrayal of us. I also don't like the way the extent of the porters' uniforms at the fictional hospital Harris serves at consists of a filthy grey overcoat pulled over their ordinary jeans and sweatshirts. HP's don't actually look like that (or they shouldn't). One element of the story that is one hundred percent accurate is that literally moments after Matthew/Simon has been unwillingly reunited with Moran, the first thing his old brother porter says is: "So are we going to a pub or what?" Typical HP! As it happens Harris is luring Moran away to murder him. Well done to Cabal for producing this neat bilingual essay on that most hateful of cinematic curses. Source: https://dreamingspireart.wordpress.com/2022/08/11/za-maska-recenzja-filmowa-paper-mask-1990-movie-review/.
See here for more background: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2016/12/hospital-porters-in-media.html.

"Head Porter"

 

Sometime in the mid-90's I had a rather unsettling conversation. I used the term head porter to refer to my boss, the person in change of the JRH porters. The person I was talking to, a domestic supervisor, corrected me; it's “portering manager”, she said severely. I had already found out by then that the OxRad administration placed a bafflingly extreme priority on using the right words; and indeed I had another major lesson many years later, see background link below. The terms “head porter” and “portering manager” are actually very similar to “U-boat” and “submarine” or “astronaut” and “cosmonaut”. They are exactly the same thing, yet they are given different names for psycho-political reasons. George Orwell predicted this would happen. Nevertheless, when the terminology changed there was a massive change in the culture of the hospital and therefore the role played in it by the porters. It happened during the Blair New Labour era which was marked by the massive corporatization of the NHS, which I've discussed too many times to suggest a reference. Image became everything. The Trust spent almost a million pounds revamping the public areas of the hospital to make them look like a combination of a hotel and shopping centre. Since then they have spent even more money doing it again! Yet at the same time waiting lists lengthened and post-operative infections soared. New and virulent superbugs emerged out of nowhere, apparently. In truth it was because of a breakdown in the organization's efficiency and professionalism that led to unsanitary levels of hygiene. One year, five thousand people died of these bugs in NHS hospitals less than a decade after I almost lost my job for refusing to call myself an “ODO”. These people are like dodgy car salesmen, painting over the rust. When I started out on a HP career in 1989 the head porter was usually somebody who had been promoted up through the ranks, with a huge amount of experience and expertize is HPing. Portering managers were brought in from outside. We had a whole series of them and they were usually people who had business college degrees. Most of them had no experience at all in healthcare outside administration. During their orientation they would do their standard two weeks in the lodge, but that does not make you a porter. They usually didn't stay for long. This is why I felt so uncomfortable being corrected when I said “head porter”. I knew, partly subconsciously, that it symbolized the rot. You'll be glad to know that I always called my boss the head porter after that, without exception. I still use that terminology to this day.
See here for background: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2017/07/odo.html.

"You're Wasted as a Porter!"

 

At my hospital it seems I had a reputation for being very intelligent. This is not what I said about myself; just what others thought about me. They also were impressed with how dedicated I was towards my job and how caring I was towards the patients. Unfortunately the usual progression from that was something along the lines of: "So why are you wasting your life being a porter?" As if you have to be a heartless, lazy moron to be a hospital porter. (Cue the wag who comments: "but it helps!") That's what they were implying. It is a very difficult situation to deal with; far more so than those which require dignity statements. This is because your antagonist is probably not motivated by any malicious intent. Yes, occasionally you'll come across some emotional vampire who will keep saying "you're wasted as a porter" to wind you up, but this is very rare. Mostly they will truly believe they are giving you an honest compliment out of friendly intentions. They do not realize that the compliment doubles up as an insult, an insult against the hospital portering service. I don't like feeling angry with people who mean me no harm and act out of ignorance instead of spite. Probably the ideal solution is to explain the conundrum in a calm and gracious manner. If you can manage that, then you and your antagonist will part on good terms. Hopefully they will have learned a lesson and no longer be an antagonist. I'm surprised this is the first time I have mentioned this issue during all the years I have been doing the HPWA blog and The Gas Spanner radio project. Oddly enough it was a very recent experience that reminded me, literally just a couple of weeks ago. The lady involved is a good woman who is gentle and respectful, meaning no harm. You'll be pleased to know that I did respond politely.

Happy St Theo's Day 2022!

 

On behalf of every serving hospital porter, every former hospital porter, and everybody else who loves, appreciates and supports us, with all the Pride and Dignity of my Extremely Proud and Dignified Brother and Sister Porters, I'd like to wish all my friends and readers, a very happy St Theo's Day.
See here for The Gas Spanner St Theo 2022: http://hpanwo-radio.blogspot.com/2022/06/the-gas-spanner-programme-25.html.
See here for the HPANWO TV St Theo 2022 video: https://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2022/06/st-theo-2022.html.

St Theo's Day 2022 Fliers

The fliers for this year's St Theo's Day are finished. Pretty soon I shall print and distribute them. This year, as with last year, I have produced two different fliers, one for the Oxfordshire hospitals on my doorstep; and another to be distributed to other institutions around the country. I will send the second national flier by post, addressed to the porters in those institutions.

St Theo's Flyer 2022 (N... by Ben Emlyn-Jones

St Theo's Flyer 2022 (JR) by Ben Emlyn-Jones

...One Must Be Silent

 

I thought I'd give my EP&DB&SP's something a little more light-hearted for the weekend. Have you ever been in one of those conversations with another person in which you're disagreeing about a fact and the other person, instead of simply explaining why you are factually wrong just says: "But what would you know!? You're not qualified to express an opinion because..." and they criticize you personally. They concluded: "If you don't know anything about it then don't talk about it!" This is called an ad hominem fallacy and it is so widely committed that it is almost endemic. Unfortunately it was an HP who promoted it with his famous quote: "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent." Ludwig Wittgenstein was a porter at Guys Hospital in London from 1939 to 45; and he also served in an Austrian army field hospital in the Great War of 1914 to 18. He was also an occasional amateur part-time philosopher, so I'm told. His quote has been interpreted to justify the ad hominem fallacy, although this was probably not my brother porter's intention. Anyway a few weeks ago I happened to meet up with the same person again at a family gathering and spoke non-stop for about half an hour about hospital portering. I saw them looking more and more annoyed until eventually they said to me: "Ben, could you please stop going on about hospital portering and change the subject?" I reminded them: "But a few months ago you told me that if I didn't know anything about it then I shouldn't talk about it. Hospital portering is the only thing I know a lot about, so that is what I am talking about? Rememer, this is accordance with your instructions... Or would you prefer it if I just sit here in silence?" I raised my eyebrows and gave a crafty half-smile. The person gritted their teeth and their cheeks flushed as they found themselves boxed into a logical corner. It was almost as satisfying as a well-delivered Dignity Statement! One-nil to the HP's again!
See here for more information: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2016/05/wittgensteins-poker.html.
And: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2015/03/wittgenstein-on-that-dress.html.

The Millennium Bug

 

The Millennium Bug aka Y2K, or the Y2K error, was a portent of an approaching mass computer malfunction caused by the limitations of the standard six digit calendar format used by most computers. This means the current date, the 14th of March 2022, would be stored in such a database as 14/03/22. The obstacle is obvious. In this format the year 2000 is identical to 1900. This contradiction was predicted to lead to electronics crashing in enormous numbers. Such a crisis was considered by some an approaching Armageddon scenario and in preparation for New Year 2000 people stockpiled food, bought weapons and prepared shelters in their basements; like they still do today for other reason like nuclear holocaust, asteroid impact, viral pandemic etc. Comedians found inspiration from it too, like with The Simpsons episode entitled Life's a Glitch and Then you Die, see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Whu5nr17DYA and: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbQsxZvHeI0. Luckily there was a simple solution, to introduce a new calendar format with eight digits, which would record today as 14/03/2022. However the task of upgrading every computer in the world was Herculean. It was only half finished when the clocks chimed midnight on New Year's Eve. As it happened, there were a small number of breakdowns, but happily the DoS Doomsday never came to pass.
 
When it came to the upgrading campaign, a number of institutions were prioritized. One of those was of course hospitals. Imagine the catastrophe if intensive care life support machines suddenly stopped working. Despite the worthy effort by the IT's in the NHS, my hospital was not prepared to take any risks. In December 1999 we took action. I was assigned to a team dealing with anaesthetic machines. These are interconnected systems of oxygen and medicated gas delivery used during surgery. For information: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anaesthetic_machine. All the ones in the JRH were modern and computerized; in fact I remember bringing the new ones into the Delivery Suite theatres a couple of years earlier. They replaced the older and purely mechanical ones that had been there since I joined the department in 1990. We had luckily kept them in the Level 0 storeroom! No doubt they were bound for the scrap yard and would have been gone before much longer. It took a couple of days to move every one of the heavy devices all the way from theatre to a temporary storage location. This had to be secure though because modern anaesthetic machines are worth about a million pounds each and there was always the fear that somebody might steal one. Therefore we had to find a spare chamber with a lock on the door which could be monitored by security. When the older machines were in place the theatre techs installed them and these were used for the entire new millennium period. During January 2000 tests were carried out on the modern machines and when it was certain they would work alright, we carried out the same assignment in reverse. We did get overtime pay so maybe apocalypse scenarios aren't all that bad. It was not only we porters who benefited from the "Y2K industry". Software manufacturers are estimated to have made billions in sales of their new suites. Cynics said afterwards that the threat of the Y2K error was exaggerated deliberately for this purpose. They pointed to South Korea, a country which had no state Millennium Bug alleviation programme and yet did not suffer more computer crashes than any other country which did. Who knows what was true or false? It's all hypothetical. I suppose if I were a patient at that time I would have wanted to play my caution card. As it was, thanks to the good old HP's and other NHS staff, we played it for them.
See here for more information: https://hpanwo-radio.blogspot.com/2020/07/programme-379-podcast-apocalypse.html.
And: https://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2020/08/apocalypse-soon.html.

HP on Ebay

 

If you want to help out a hospital porter today, here's how you can do it. One of MEP&DBP's has set up an account on Ebay, the top online marketplace, and has a number of items for sale. He is holding an auction for three books that will be of particular interest to readers of the other blogs in the HPANWO franchise. Shadow of a Bass Man by Anne Walsh and Mary Ann Howard (see here for an interview with the authors: https://hpanwo-radio.blogspot.com/2021/02/programme-408-podcast-anne-walsh-mary.html), Family of Secrets by Russ Baker which exposes the American presidential dynasty of George W Bush and his relatives; and an absolute classic, Not in Your Lifetime- the Assassination of JFK by Anthony Summer. See here for his page: https://www.ebay.co.uk/usr/edinho999. All proceeds go to charity.

Delivery Suite

 

As I said in my previous article, see: http://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2022/02/lets-just-help-each-other-out.html, being a Delivery Suite porter is an elite position within the Hospital Portering Service. It is far more involved and requires more knowledge than any other portering discipline. I entered DS towards the end of my first year of hospital portering, as soon as I finished my relief tour. By then I was aged eighteen and was fully trained up in the basics of portering; and I had gained some experience. I was also extremely gung-ho, having completely fallen in love with hospital portering by then. I had done a day in DS already as part of my orientation, shown around by a genial sixty-year old called Brian. I entered the department eagerly and was in there for nine years. The first five of those nine years were wonderful and I loved every moment of it. There were four DS porters, one per shift, and on each shift there was also a working senior and a lodge porter. We had great fun, playing games of cricket with rubber balls from the SSNAP stall and with chair legs as bats on nightshift, meeting up for quiet cups of tea in one corner or another with the domestics or HCA's and a million and one other things that made my time on duty a joy. I felt truly at home, among a loving community. I did as much overtime as I could, for pleasure as much as for money and used to look forward to going to work. However, that all changed. As is often the case in the NHS, there was not a single identifiable moment when it all went wrong. I can't point to the day, the month or even the year the disease struck. All I remember is, sometime in 1997 or 8, reminiscing about my early service, noticing how the present was far worse and thinking: "How on earth did that happen?" However, I could articulate the malaise. To begin with, the most intense snobbery crept into JRI. I knew that there had always been social divisions within the hospital. Such things are natural, inevitable and not necessarily harmful. The doctors were "above" the nurses who were "above" the porters etc; but there was always mutual respect. Sure, there were one or two distasteful characters from day one, and I'll cover them in a separate article; but they were few and far between. For the most part, the personnel appreciated each other, regardless of their place within the hierarchy. Everybody understood that we were all part of a team and our mission was dependent on all of us. Therefore I was horrified one day when I received the news that the DS porters' lodge was going to be moved. Until then we had a lovely room with windows overlooking the outpatients garden, but this was listed to become the office for the Silver Star midwifery officer. We were going to be moved to an internal chamber close to the DS control desk. I wouldn't have minded so much, but then I overheard the DS sister say: "That room is too good for the porters." At the same time I found that the intake of newly qualified younger midwives was very different to the older contingent that I had become used to. For the most part, they were cold and aloof with the porters, only ever speaking to us to criticize. They were always courteous and reverent to the obstetricians and others above them or equal to them, but casually disdainful of the porters, HCA's and domestics. Serving with them also introduced me to a new concept that is all too prevalent today: wokeism. This was at the same time my own DS colleagues were being far from supportive, as I explain in the above background article.
 
I don't want the HPWA blog to be political; this is the purpose of the other HPANWO pages. However I do consider myself a bit of an advanced scout in the resistance against the Wokerati, long before they rose to dominance in society, at least to the level they are today. A team of working class males mixed into a department of educated middle class women is the perfect canary in the coalmine. As I said, I had no problem at all with midwives originally. It is true that midwives are almost exclusively female. I only ever knew two male midwives in my entire career. So, although I'll be accused of misogyny by some readers of this article, like I was at the time, it's not true. Until the mid-90's I only ever met a handful of midwives I didn't like. It used to take four years to train as a midwife; the first half of those four being a standard two-year nursing diploma (this was in the days before degree nursing when you could train up in the NHS with a salary). Then this all changed and a "direct entry" midwifery course was introduced, meaning somebody could train to be a midwife off the street in a single three-year programme without any nursing qualification. It is obvious that at the same time, the healthcare education system brought in what is nowadays known as "critical race theory". A trainee midwife would learn more than just her job; she would be indoctrinated into feminism. At the same time the Trust's obstetric and gynaecology services were united under one roof in JRI, and therefore it inevitably was renamed "the Women's Centre". When one of the porters left, he was replaced with a female porter. This is not unprecedented; about five percent of hospital porters are women. howevver, when a second porter left and was replaced by a woman I began to feel suspicious. I made some inquiries and found that the DS management had contacted Facilities and specifically requested female porters for Delivery Suite. This is, of course, totally illegal. It breaches the Equal Opportunities Act of 1988 and the Equality Act of 2010; but, as always when white straight men are the beneficiaries of that law, it is more difficult to apply it. The Facilities management cooperated unquestioningly. Never were any of us consulted about this policy. What's more the other porters outside DS chimed in to support the move, saying that DS was a "woman's job". This was not their real motive; what they really wanted was to be removed from relief training schedule for DS because it is generally a highly unpopular placement, because of its isolation and difficulty. If I had been in their position at that time, I wouldn't have blamed them, as I found out later. At the same time, the hostility against me increased. It must have done for the other remaining male porter, although he always denied it. I got the distinct impression that I was being shown the door. This antipathy cut me like a blade. I had always been a friendly, cooperative and dedicated member of staff, but many of the new midwives still wanted me gone. It is true that our duties involve dealing with female patients in very sensitive situations, like setting up lithotomic poles; and forceps, ventouse and caesarean section births in theatre; but we did our job professionally and with a lot of kindness, as healthcare professionals should. I felt uncomfortable with the fact that nobody ever suggested than a man cannot be an obstetrician; as I said, we even had male midwives. It was a statement that porters are distinctly sub-professional and so are bound by different rules. One day, in the spring of 1999, I was ordered to leave theatre in a totally inappropriate situation. The person who gave me the order was one of the nastiest direct entry midwives of all and I suspect she did it deliberately to try and humiliate me. Something inside me snapped and I refused. She repeated the order and I still refused. There was an angry silence in the theatre and the procedure continued. I didn't care. At that moment I didn't care if I got sacked. The following day I was summoned to a meeting in which I was reprimanded for refusing to leave theatre. They said: "It doesn't matter what the circumstances are! If you are ordered to leave theatre, you leave! You can submit a grievance afterwards." I had enough experience by then to know that "submit a grievance" in the NHS is the equivalent of "just send me a memo, will you?". Few grievances have ever been sustained to my knowledge, and most were not even acted upon. They threatened to suspend me. There was only one thing I could do, the thing I should have done at least three years earlier; I requested a transfer. I'm pleased to say the head porter was very sympathetic and helpful. He arranged an interview for me with the deputy head of general theatres and I was moved over to JRII onto a rotary shift position within ten days. It felt like being released from prison. The happiness I had experienced during my halcyon days of the early '90's returned so suddenly and intensely that I was overwhelmed. I served in theatres proudly and contentedly right up until the ODO incident of 2005, see: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2017/07/odo.html and: http://hpanwo-radio.blogspot.com/2022/02/the-gas-spanner-programme-19.html. One of the other porters criticized me afterwards, saying that I should have engaged in all-out lawfare against DS, suing them for sexism. I sometimes think maybe I should have, and if I had been as tough back then as I was later on, I would have. The problem is, as I've said before, if you're a white heterosexual man such actions are an uphill struggle. The union would not have backed me up and I would have had to arrange a private prosecution. Today there are numerous very well-funded and organized anti-woke campaign groups such as the Workers of England Union, see: https://www.workersofengland.co.uk, and Solidarity, see: https://solidaritytradeunion.org, but in those days there were hardly any; certainly none who would have been in a position to help me. My rebellion must have had some effect though because over the next few years after 1999 some of the replacement DS porters were male. Nothing was said openly, but it does look like management did abandon their women-only DS portering policy. My downfall in DS was one of the most upsetting experiences I had in hospital portering, as well as embarrassing. This is probably why I've not written about it in detail before until now. It still feels painful to think about it after nearly thirty years. However, when I look back on it rationally, I feel no regrets. I realize that it was actually an essential part of building my character and educating me into the realities of society. So many people have so many excruciating memories like mine. Whenever it gets you down, just imagine... what you would be like today if you had never had that experience?
See here for background: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2021/08/political-correctness-portal.html.

"Let's Just Help Each Other Out!"

 

My brother porters mean everything to me, but this does not mean they are all flawless angels. Some of my fellow hospital porters have behaved in a very negative manner and I've spotted at least one clinical psychopath among our ranks. However, most of the antagonists I encountered within the Hospital Portering Service were just thoughtless and selfish individuals who were very much products of the bureaucratic institution they were a part of. Maybe they should not be blamed too much for behaving exactly in line with every incentive and temptation the system continuously poured in front of us. As I said elsewhere, there is a race to the bottom, see: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2016/12/nurse-sacked-for-praying.html. However, this does not justify their actions. Therefore I have some advice for anybody starting out as a new HP in today's NHS (something I truly do not envy you!), some warning signs that indicate that your colleagues might be extracting the urine a bit. Because of the squalid competition I describe in the article linked above, anybody who is conscientious and committed to performing their duties properly tends to be lumbered with harder work than everybody else. Management do not care about this, in fact I know from experience that if you complain about your lot in life, your head porter will become angry with you, not with those taking advantage of you. All he cares about is getting the work done to the point where operations fall within the bracket of what the monitoring officers are willing to overlook (how much the contractor is paying them is another factor of course). He will try to persuade, induce, cajole and threaten the muggins into going back to being a muggins long before he dares lift a single finger to discipline the general laziness and incompetence competitors. So, don't expect any backup if you report this kind of thing to the office. In my second year of HPing, just after I'd finished my relief tour, I volunteered for Delivery Suite. This is the part of JRI Maternity, today called the "Women's Centre", where the babies are actually born. It is an elite station within portering because it involves specialized practices like theatre cleaning. Along with the four men in the regular section, only about half a dozen other porters were trained for it. I did it for nine years, much longer than I should have. It was wonderful when I started, but the last four or five years were a nightmare. This is because of a political agenda that I detail elsewhere. Despite the torment it caused me, it was probably a good thing I experienced it because, in the long run, it was very educational and character building. See: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2021/08/political-correctness-portal.html. One day I'll tell the story of how I was transferred out. The four porters in Delivery Suite provided continuous rotary service with one porter always on duty on all the shifts and one on a day off. One of our tasks was to replenish supplies in the suite of four theatres; linen, masks and hats, sterile gloves etc. This was called "topping up" and was the responsibility of the porter on two-to-ten, the late shift from two PM to ten PM. One day I was summoned to a departmental meeting with the other porters and they told me: "Ben, we've been thinking. Maybe we should do the topping up on all shifts, not just two-to-ten." I asked why and they replied: "This way we'll all be helping each other out." I said: "But it only needs to be done once a day. How will we be helping each other out more if we do it on all shifts?" They became frustrated with me and tried to moral blackmail me without answering my point: "What, Ben? Don't you think we should all be doing our bit?" The fact is, by then I had started to smell a rat and they probably knew this. They all realized at that moment that they had underestimated me. The reason they wanted us to change the practice was that they knew that I, being a good worker, would do it diligently ever day... and I would be the only one doing it! Only when I had rotated off would they need to be bothered. That was their crooked plan! It's important not to underestimate the dishonesty and guile of other people, especially in a society that rewards that kind of behaviour. I almost fell for their trick! Beware of your own colleagues, especially if they have a lot more experience and are more streetwise about hospital life. Many will want to use their abilities to protect and nurture you, but others will be simply on the make.

Ten Years On

 

It is ten years ago today that I was discharged from the Hospital Portering Service. I have now experienced my second full decade as a civilian; the first being from birth to aged ten. The full story of my dismissal, told closer to the time without hindsight, is listed in this link: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2013/01/one-year-on.html. Since then things really couldn't have worked out better for me. I very quickly found another job which, although it is "not portering", is still reasonably enjoyable. Also it is infinitely less stressful. Being self-employed means I can organize my own work. I don't have to put up with all the petty politics and bureaucracy, and so long as I do my job well enough, people leave me in peace. You can't say that for the NHS; in fact, if anything the opposite is true. I have remained in touch with my brother and sister porters from OxRad, and have even made new portering and ex-portering friends. I have maintained the tradition of St Theo's Day. I started this post-portering decade in fear and uncertainty. Would I be able to find other work? Would I be able to keep my home? Would I have to endure poverty? Would I be able to support my child? None of my fears ever came true; not one. There are probably a number of people in the JRH who were hoping desperately that I would be ruined by my dismissal. They are no doubt very disappointed and I'm glad. I don't know what my second post-portering decade holds in store for me. Things could get better, worse or just stay the same. Right now I'm content to be in the now and not fear the future. Whatever comes my way, I will deal with it then. As for all my friends, both portering and non-portering, who have given me so much love and support over the last ten years, I have no idea how to thank you.
I have presented a live episode of The Gas Spanner to mark this occasion, see: https://hpanwo-radio.blogspot.com/2022/01/the-gas-spanner-programme-18.html.
And here is a special episode of The Gas Spanner to mark the tenth anniversary of my suspension: http://hpanwo-radio.blogspot.com/2021/10/the-gas-spanner-programme-15.html.