A Question...

 

Have you ever felt something that I always have: There is a secret. Everybody knows it except me. Everybody else is conspiring to keep it from me; alternatively I'm the only person in the world who cannot comprehend it. When I think about this, I picture myself asking my old telephonist friend Barry about it, see: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2022/11/finding-barrys-grave.html. I'm not sure how he would reply. I don't think I'm suffering from paranoia; I think it's more having an eccentric personality in a large institution; and the NHS is the world's third biggest employer, after India Railways and the People's Liberation Army of China. Conformism and convention are an unspoken essential in such an institution. I sometimes heard a particular question asked when people's names were mentioned: "Is he normal?" The individuals who asked and answered those questions never defined exactly what was meant by the word normal and I actually wonder if they even could. It's one of those "it just is" things; and in fact that is another hospital catchphrase. Maybe it's just human nature. We are a social species and so certain codes of behaviour are essential to cooperate with others, but there are two problems with that theory. The first is that the most important code for social creatures is natural law. This refers to laws present in all human societies without which no human community could function. They include a prohibition against murder, the unlawful ending of another's life; theft of another's property and harm done to their person, unlawful assault. Natural law is not confined to humans. A wolf that broke natural law would be driven away by the rest of the pack. However, the NHS is a rare aberration. Servicepeople who do harm to others, even patients, are tolerated as much as possible. In fact the establishment accommodates them desperately for as long as they can, literally until the national statue law intervenes, see: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2015/05/killer-nurses.html. That brings us on to the second problem. At the same time, servicepeople who respect natural law, and even NHS regulations, but also exhibit harmless nonconformist behaviour are swiftly eliminated; for example people who make comedy videos are mopped up within eight days, see: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2025/01/thirteen-years-on.html. For this reason it is obvious that from the very start my career in HPing was doomed. If they hadn't kicked me out in 2012 they would have found a way to do it soon afterwards based on another pretext. Deep down I always sensed it. I used to say many times to my partner-at-the-time Susan, whom I called the night I was suspended; sentences that included: "... when they sack me." Not "if". "when". I think this is the secret.