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.