See here for essential
background: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2022/01/ten-years-on.html.
There's a question a lot of people have asked me and I have asked it to myself: Is there any situation in which I would have willingly hung up my gas spanner? After serious consideration I have decided that the answer is almost certainly no. When I look back at what I endured during my twenty-three years of service; and none of that made me even consider it, what could hit me in the future that could be worse? My brother and sister hospital porters still serving keep me informed and they tell me that in the decade without me that has just passed, things have got far worse. (I'm not claiming there is a causal link there!) I have reported a lot of these nightmares on the HPWA and The Gas Spanner radio show. However, had I been serving, none of these ordeals would have induced me to leave. It's possible I would have been dismissed because of my stubbornness when it comes to matters of principle; this almost happened twice before, see: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2022/02/delivery-suite.html and: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2017/07/odo.html. But to instigate my own departure from HPing? No way! I was so institutionalized that I actually couldn't imagine myself as anything but a HP. As I've said before, it's more than "just a job, mate". Envisioning myself as anything other than a HP was like envisioning myself as a centaur or a leprechaun. Not only that, but on a practical level, what else could I do? I have no formal education, no qualifications except a GCSE pass in English and French. I have no skills outside those needed for HPing and it's hard to see how most of those could be applied to any civilian profession; they are exclusive to the work HP's do. As a result I now work in a simple self-employed civilian state. I was also socially institutionalized. I lived inside a relationship bubble containing my brother/sister porters and people they all knew or were related to. I once joked about this, that I knew nobody else outside that bubble, but even at the time my laughter had a slightly sombre undertone. There are no support organizations for ex-HP's (except the HPWA of course!) or in fact for any NHS veterans. We literally jump into the dark, landing in, what for many of us, is a completely alien world. This does not affect all HP's. There are some of us who get through our service with "one foot in the lodge", doing our duties without really caring about it or getting deeply involved emotionally. I don't understand those people, but I know they exist. I was never one of them; I could never be one of them. This is a big subject that I cover elsewhere, but I do believe in fate, to a certain extent. We are definitely the directors of our own lives, yet we direct within the framework of a basic storyline, some changes in our lives are ordained by "higher forces". If what happened to me in 2012 was "meant to happen", that it was simply the time in my life that I needed to move on from HPing, then this destiny was fulfilled the only way it ever could be; I was forced out.
See here for more background: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2024/01/its-not-job.html.
There's a question a lot of people have asked me and I have asked it to myself: Is there any situation in which I would have willingly hung up my gas spanner? After serious consideration I have decided that the answer is almost certainly no. When I look back at what I endured during my twenty-three years of service; and none of that made me even consider it, what could hit me in the future that could be worse? My brother and sister hospital porters still serving keep me informed and they tell me that in the decade without me that has just passed, things have got far worse. (I'm not claiming there is a causal link there!) I have reported a lot of these nightmares on the HPWA and The Gas Spanner radio show. However, had I been serving, none of these ordeals would have induced me to leave. It's possible I would have been dismissed because of my stubbornness when it comes to matters of principle; this almost happened twice before, see: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2022/02/delivery-suite.html and: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2017/07/odo.html. But to instigate my own departure from HPing? No way! I was so institutionalized that I actually couldn't imagine myself as anything but a HP. As I've said before, it's more than "just a job, mate". Envisioning myself as anything other than a HP was like envisioning myself as a centaur or a leprechaun. Not only that, but on a practical level, what else could I do? I have no formal education, no qualifications except a GCSE pass in English and French. I have no skills outside those needed for HPing and it's hard to see how most of those could be applied to any civilian profession; they are exclusive to the work HP's do. As a result I now work in a simple self-employed civilian state. I was also socially institutionalized. I lived inside a relationship bubble containing my brother/sister porters and people they all knew or were related to. I once joked about this, that I knew nobody else outside that bubble, but even at the time my laughter had a slightly sombre undertone. There are no support organizations for ex-HP's (except the HPWA of course!) or in fact for any NHS veterans. We literally jump into the dark, landing in, what for many of us, is a completely alien world. This does not affect all HP's. There are some of us who get through our service with "one foot in the lodge", doing our duties without really caring about it or getting deeply involved emotionally. I don't understand those people, but I know they exist. I was never one of them; I could never be one of them. This is a big subject that I cover elsewhere, but I do believe in fate, to a certain extent. We are definitely the directors of our own lives, yet we direct within the framework of a basic storyline, some changes in our lives are ordained by "higher forces". If what happened to me in 2012 was "meant to happen", that it was simply the time in my life that I needed to move on from HPing, then this destiny was fulfilled the only way it ever could be; I was forced out.
See here for more background: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2024/01/its-not-job.html.
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