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.