They Understand

 

Some people seem to have a desperate need for attention. I'm not just talking about the child who breaks things so that their parents will notice them or the husband who plants gaslighting clues to antagonize his wife. I don't even mean the unpleasant characters among the staff and patients that we hospital porters have to deal with every day. I mean strangers you interact with casually whom you somehow always know are going to get in your face. The reasons why vary, but they are all manufactured. Sometimes it's for profit, for example see: https://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2020/10/argument-with-homeless-person.html. At other times it's just for social capital or simply energy vampirism. They will start talking loudly in a shopping queue or come up to you on a park bench to talk about anything. I've encountered such people who walk dogs. It is true that some dogs are badly behaved, for whatever reason, and therefore the owners have to keep them on a lead and avoid contact with other dogs. The problem is that some of them go on to believe that they actually own the thirty square feet of space around them in a public area. I have encountered a few of these myself and one of them has been walking my patch for the last week or two. He's a middle-aged man with a medium sized grey English Bulldog. Contrary to their popular image, English Bullies are often very gentle and affectionate dogs; it all depends on their upbringing and training. They are not often used as guard dogs. This man's dog seems to be quite happy with humans and has even acted in a friendly manner towards me, but he hates other dogs. He lunges at them and barks. I have enough experience to know that I should keep the dogs I'm walking at a distance. The dogs also know how to take a hint and back off. The issue is that the Bulldog's owner has turned this matter into a gigantic pose. Whenever I approach he shrinks away to one side in an exaggerated manner as if I am some kind of monster with a pet dragon. He is clearly implying that the situation is my fault. I sometimes come across his wife walking the same dog and she is similar in her attitude. A few days ago I was walking down a narrow wooded cycle track when I saw him with his dog coming round the bend. He froze as he usually does and stood back, waiting for me to pass. My own two dogs were busy sniffing a patch of grass enthusiastically so I didn't move. The man kept staring at me, staying where he was, obviously suggesting that I was holding him up, even though there was plenty of room for him to walk past me on the other side of the track. I didn't react; I just kept watching my own dogs and ignoring him. I didn't even look at him. Eventually he resorted to asking me in an irritable tone: "Are you coming past or what?" I responded: "I'm walking at my own pace. This is a public highway, sir." The man then gave up and strutted past. I knew it was likely I would meet him again; I always come across the same group of people who use that area to walk their dogs. Sure enough, yesterday he appeared again close to the same place. This time I completely ignored him, but as I passed him I began singing one of my porters' songs. As is often the case with dig-states, I never planned this. It was spontaneous and just felt right, see the background links below. By then he was a dozen yards away from me, but I distinctly heard him mutter: "Oh fuck off!"
 
I doubt that this person was ever a HP. I definitely do not recognize him from our community. My por-dar was silent, sweeping smoothly without any blips at all. Yet he knew immediately what I was doing. As I've said previously, my idea of dig-states has had many critics, see: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2024/02/it-doesnt-work.html. According to my detractors, the kind of people whom I consider valid targets for dig-states would never understand them, therefore it's a waste of time trying to make them. Well, as we've seen, that's not true. I've just done a dig-state maybe the fourth or fifth in my civilian life. It was made against a target who is probably a lifelong civilian himself. Yet it struck home. He knew what I was doing. He understood it. I saw him again today. This time we were in the middle of a large park. He stood to one side with his back to me and I just walked past without a word. I know enough about dignity statements to realize that they lose their power if you overuse them.
See here for background: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2024/03/a-hps-life-without-dignity-statements.html.
And: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2017/11/fantastic-dignity-statement.html.

"Precisely!"

 

When it comes to dignity statements (q.v.) there are many different sorts. I've given you instructions on all the variations; physical and verbal, direct and third party, even lift and telephone, see: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2024/04/lift-dignity-statements.html and: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2023/12/telephone-dignity-statements.html. What I'm about to describe to you is an anecdote from my HPing days, but also a dig-state of sorts. It's a social tactic for disarming somebody being passive aggressive and subtly antagonistic. As usual it was because of something somebody said while we were socializing. I can't remember the group of people I was with, but one of them was becoming irritated with my attitude. As I've said recently, I have met many people who consider my feelings of pride and dignity at being a HP a horrific crime. It makes them feel very insecure, see: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2026/10/second-handers.html. I don't remember this man very well except that he was similar to my friend's husband in Manchester whom I describe in that link directly above; middle class and fashionable, very keen on his image, educated and professional. At one point in the conversation the subject came up of trial periods for new employees. A lot of organizations do this. A person is recruited and then told they have not yet earned the right to a permanent job. This will only be offered to them if their performance reaches a high enough standard. (This is not to be confused with agency work, see: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2024/09/infinity-agency.html.) I told him that I'm in favour of this for my own profession. I said: "You should have to prove you've got what it takes." The man sneered and did a ridiculous pose in which he hung ten and pelvic thrusted. He then pointed at me like a slightly effete version of the drill instructor in the film Full Metal Jacket and replied in a sing-song voice: "You should have to prove you've got what it takes to be a hospital porter..." Now, there are many ways I could have reacted to that kind of snide sarcasm. I could have told him to shut up, challenged him about his rudeness, become aggressive, been sarcastic back. Instead I responded in a normal voice with a normal facial expression without a moment's hesitation: "Precisely." I had ignored his tone; I had pretended not to notice. That completely deflated him. He looked at me blankly and went silent. My rejoinder had not gone unnoticed by the other people at the table. They all grinned mischievously at what I had done. This man never gave me any more aggravation. I have actually used this method on several other occasions and have done so for a long time. Even when I was a teenager at school a particularly nasty teacher pulled me up for walking into her classroom too early: "Oh, do come in!" she groaned. I answered: "Thank you." This tactic has so far never failed for me. Give it a try yourself!

Been There, Done That

 

One of the most perceptive characters in the Porters TV show is Anthony De La Mer, see: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2019/07/porters-series-2.html. Daniel May's portrayal is of another classic HP personality type. I knew many porters like that and we used to say of them: "Name a place, he's been there. Name an activity, he's done it." Anthony tells his colleagues that he is an MI6 agent "licensed to kill" like James Bond. He also brags about the celebrity patients he has dated in the private hospital in which he used to serve. This caricature is barely an exaggeration. I knew a theatre porter who once told me: "I'm going paint-balling tonight" and usually had some other exciting activity on different nights. Hospital porters' boasts generally fall into three categories: sexual prowess, military heroism and streetwisdom. The first type usually involves attractive young nurses and store cupboards, as with Mick Jagger; although Jagger is one of the rare examples in which I actually believe him, see: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2021/12/mick-jaggers-service-confirmed.html. Military heroism can often get the blagger into trouble because we had real ex-servicemen in the crew and they can quickly spot a fraud with just a handful of questions about details to do with their training and career etc. They often feel very annoyed with the faker, seeing as it's stolen valour. Here's an example of such a sting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4Z0GIe1Ll8. I've been in a similar situation and can understand their ire, see: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2021/02/i-lost-my-temper.html. I remember one such individual called Sean whom I met briefly before because he was once at the hospital a long time ago in my early days and returned in the early 2000's under ISS Mediclean. He was a young man with blank eyes and a monotone voice. I'm sure he was on some kind of drug or another; typical of a Mediclean hire. I once bumped into him in the carpark just before morning shift change and he regaled me with a story about how he'd been "called up". This was shortly after 9/11 when the War on Terror was getting going. He informed me that he had been a reservist since he joined the Royal Marines soon after he left the previous time. He had just come off a tour of active duty and had received orders to return. A lot of us had remarked about how his long hair and beard was; not military regulation cut. Had it really had time to grow since then? I decided to respond thus: "Oh really? I heard you were going up on the Space Shuttle soon. Hasn't NASA signed you up?" He said "No" in a very deadpan tone, completely missing my sarcasm.

Extreme streetwisdom bragging usually includes long sentences in the harshest prisons and close connections with the underworld. I recall one quiet night in which we watched Guy Richie's Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. It's an excellent film, but I hardly saw any of it because two of the other porters talked all the way though it, explaining how much their own lives were like that of the gangsters in the film. Why do HP's concoct such elaborate fictions about themselves? Why do they never stop telling everybody their fables like some manic raconteur? I think it comes from dissatisfaction with their own position in life caused by the low conventional status of hospital portering. The conman Tom Ripley in Patricia Highsmith's famous series of novels once uttered a line which encapsulates that feeling: "It is better to be a fake somebody than a real nobody." A similar character, Matthew Harris in Paper Mask, echoed that sentiment, see: https://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2026/07/st-theos-watch-party-2026-review.html. That is sad because HP's are somebody. We are essential members of a life saving team. We do one of the most important jobs in the entire world. Those are irrefutable facts. As I previously wrote recently, we must find our self-esteem from within, see: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2026/10/second-handers.html; and once we find that path the rest of the way is easy.

Second Handers

 

Somebody recently asked in The Gas Spanner livechat what was the biggest challenge of being as HP, see: https://hpanwo-radio.blogspot.com/2026/09/the-gas-spanner-programme-174.html. That's a difficult question to answer because hospital portering has so many challenges. I replied that probably it was that a HP's self-esteem must come completely from within and from facts. You cannot find it in other people and conventional social eminence. The fact of the matter is that we are essential members of a lifesaving team doing one of the most important jobs in the entire world, but very few people appreciate that. The knowledge of that fact is all we have to draw on. Life experience is very different if you are a high status individual doing a glamorous and prestigious job; such as solider, airline pilot, stockbroker etc. In social situations people will automatically and instinctively treat you with reverence and respect. You'll find it much easier to make friends, to flirt and find romantic partners. You don't need internal validation because you receive so much of it from outside of yourself from others. That, I would say, is one of our toughest problems and the quest to overcome it is the very essence of the HPWA and all my HP welfare activism. The Russian-American philosopher Ayn Rand, whom I have talked about before, see: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2025/03/he-loved-his-work.html and: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2025/11/all-labour-requires-intelligence.html, called people who draw too much of their self-justification from others "second handers". The term is coined in her second novel The Fountainhead which is about two young men who are aspiring to become architects. One is very conformist and conventional; he just goes along to get along, "climbing the ladder" as Jack Shaw would say, see: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2023/05/i-lied-to-jack.html. The other has his own ideals and values that he has discovered personally and he lives his life according to his own moral principles. Ayn Rand died a long time ago, in 1982; but, as I have said before, I think she would have understood me and the HPWA in a way few others ever could. See here for my review of the book: https://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2013/03/the-fountainhead-by-ayn-rand_29.html.

I've actually had a few experiences that taught me something I hadn't expected. High status people's lack of internal validation comes with a price, and I discovered this for the first time on a trip to Manchester. I travelled with a brother porter called Andy to visit a friend of ours who used to be an ODP in main theatres. She had married a man in Manchester and had got a job there. Her husband was a big-shot young executive in some mobile phone company. They had bought a big house in the Cheshire suburbs and he drove a Mercedez Benz, very dangerously to show off. Although I was a perfect guest the three days Andy and I stayed with them and I was always polite and respectful, I never really got on with her husband. He obviously felt subtly but very distinctly threatened by my presence. I had to think about it for a long time afterwards to work out why. I thought at first that he envied my internally generated self-esteem, but I'm not totally sure about that. It could be that because I did not consider myself beneath him, the way a lowly HP should, that he interpreted this as hostility. He was used to lesser men looking up at him with awe and envy. I didn't do that. This demonstrates that high status people can be hurt very badly when their external validation is suddenly taken away, even by just a single person. They have nothing inside them to fall back on and so mentally collapse in a heap. There are other similar experiences like his I could relate and may do so in future posts. It's never my intention to cause other people distress, but in this case the distress the husband suffered as a result of my existence was inevitable. The only way to avoid it would be for me to put on an act, pretend to be a conventional man for a few days, and I won't do that.  
See here for more background: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2024/04/dont-tell-em-were-porters.html.

One of Our Wheelchairs is Missing 2- Con Club

 

After the rather dismal article I posted previously I thought I'd give you something more cheerful, a quirky anecdote from the annals of my HP service. I was on my way to a two-to-ten and walking along Windmill Road towards the JRH. I passed the Headington Conservative Club, like I did almost every day. It was as routine as brushing my teeth; therefore it was a bit of a surprise when a man came out and called to me. "Hey, aren't you a porter at the JR?" I don't know how he knew that; I wasn't in uniform and I didn't recognize the guy. It must be some sort of psychic aura I give off. "Yes." I replied. "You might be able to help; come with me." He led me inside, through the bar and out into a backroom where there was an Aunt Sally court. (For those of you unfamiliar with it, Aunt Sally is a simple pub game which involves throwing sticks at a peg standing on a pole.) Parked in the corner was a hospital wheelchair, one of the "original fleet" ones with rear wheel steering, see: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2023/09/acute-care-vehicles-1-original-fleet.html. "Isn't that one of yours?" he asked. It was indeed; it even had JRH PORTERS stencilled on the back. "How did it get here?" I asked. "Ain't got a clue, mate." he replied. "Can you take it back for us?" I wheeled it with me to the hospital. It wasn't easy pushing it along the street for the reasons I explain here in a more recent similar example: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2025/11/chair-saga.html. Luckily the distance was short, less than a mile. When I arrived I placed the chair in the pool with the others by main entrance. The senior wasn't sure how to write my task into the logbook; there is no entry for anything off site. In the end he just put: "13:15- 13:49, wheelchair, carpark L2 to L2 entrance, BEJ (my initials)." If the head porter or his deputies had asked me why the job took 34 minutes I'd just have to explain, but they never did.

"He Killed Himself cos of Her"

 

This is one of the most disturbing stories I've ever had to cover on the HPWA. A few years ago I bumped into an old colleague from the hospital, a civilian not a porter. He was a ward clerk on one of the medical levels that I used to get on well with. Like myself he had moved on to other things since we last spoke, yet he enjoyed reminiscing about life at the JRH. At one point in our conversation two names came up; one was a male nurse on one of the other med wards and another was a sister who was on the same ward. Both names were well known to me; I'll call the nurse "Fred" and the sister "Kath". We both spoke about Kath in disparaging terms because neither of us liked her. I asked my friend about Fred and whether he had heard how Fred was. My friend looked down sadly and said: "Oh, you haven't heard. I'm afraid he's dead." I was shocked. This was a man a good decade and a half younger than me and had no long-term illnesses that I was aware of. "I'm sorry to hear that." I replied and said a few words about Fred. I pointed out, with a bit of sentimental humour, that I hadn't envied him working with Kath every day. My friend nodded and said in a serious tone: "Not half! He killed himself cos of her." I was speechless. This was the first time my friend had mentioned that Fred's death had been suicide, let alone the reason behind it. "He left a note saying that he couldn't bear the way she was treating him anymore." What shocked and upset me the most about this conversation was the casual way my friend spoke. I got the feeling this wasn't the only time somebody he knew had taken his own life. What's more his tone indicated that he had come to regard suicide as normal, one of the unavoidable hazards of living, like lightning strikes or sinkholes. This normalization of suicide is horrific. I wondered how Kath had felt about this. Was she unaware of how harmful she was being, unable to understand the vulnerability of her victim; like I report here: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2025/08/unbreakable-rubber-balls.html? Possibly, but I think it's unlikely. I came across this video that contained nothing surprising and actually confirmed my own experience, see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LtXyoUb6M8. It's not just doctors who are very likely to be psychopaths, so are other people in clinical professions. What's more I think Edward Dutton is being too optimistic. His research does not include the phenomenon of pseudo-psychopaths, see: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2025/10/its-our-job.html. 

If Kath were a full-blown psycho then obviously she would not give a damn, but if she's a pseudo-psycho she also might feel very little concern. Pseudos are capable of empathy and guilt, but they rarely feel it. They tend to invent excuses and cop-outs to exonerate themselves in their own minds. It was only years later, when I thought back over this conversation, that the fact struck me that maybe my former ward clerk colleague is similar. He spoke about Fred's suicide so nonchalantly that it seemed to me he had rationalized it away too. Or maybe he was simply desensitized by it happening in his life so often. It turns out that, tragically and scandalously, suicide is the leading cause of death among twenty to thirty-four year olds; 16% of women and 27% of men, that's over a quarter. I don't know, but I suspect that in the National Health Service that figure is even higher; we know clinical depression is very high there. This should justify a state of emergency, that dedicated people taking the king's shilling to save lives end up giving up on their own. What has gone wrong with us?
See here for more background: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2023/12/hps-and-psychos.html.
And: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2015/12/nhs-nurses-destroy-patients-doll.html.

...And it's Goodnight from that HP

 

I'm thinking of doing a regular slot on The Gas Spanner called something like "famous ex-hospital porter of the week". The latest addition to this most illustrious hall of fame is the comedy actor Ronnie Barker. (I must thank my friend and Spanner listener David for telling me about this.) Ronnie Barker was a versatile performer who was equally at home sit-coms, most notably Porridge, and the very long running sketch show he did with Ronnie Corbett, hence its title The Two Ronnies. I used to have the claim to fame that I lived in the house where he was born in 1929, but that's not true. He moved to 23 Church Cowley Road, Oxford when he was four years old, about 1933. Since I moved out, a blue plaque has been placed on the wall. I started watching Ronnie on TV when I was a child and always enjoyed his shows. The famous movie actor Alec Guinness was once asked which of his fellow thespians he admired the most. Everyone expected him to reply with the name of a Hollywood legend, but he said instead: Ronnie Barker. Ronnie was enormously talented. One of the best sketches he ever did with Corbett was their parody of The Professionals in which Barker plays a dark and sinister character obsessed with continuously drinking tea. He is based on John Le Carré's George Smiley, see: https://ok.ru/video/4292584016580. Anyway, on to the important stuff. Ronnie started out in drama like most actors, as an amateur and part-timer who aspired to greater success. In 1949 the theatre company he was touring with went bankrupt and he was forced to quit and get a day-job at the age of just twenty-one. He became a HP at the hospital today called the Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre in Oxford; in those days it was called the Wingfield-Morris Hospital. His service there affected him his whole life. He developed compassion and empathy while caring for the patients, some of whom had been struck down by polio. He cheered them up by performing impromptu comedy routines. It makes me think of Patch Adams, see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKNh9e6QPJY. Ronnie Barker died in 2005 after a lifetime of brightening up people's lives, including my own. This was partly from his comedy, but also from his stint in our ancient and noble profession. I salute MEP&DBP Ronnie Barker.