Part 3 - The New Nightingale Chronicles - 1980 - 1983

NEW NIGHTINGALES - THE CHRONICLES

The Chronicles - PART 3 of The Life Diaries

Author and Copyright T.D.Barton

Bartontd1@gmail.com
or
Bartontd1@yahoo.co.uk

NO MATERIAL OR CONTENT FROM NEW NIGHTINGALES MAY BE USED OR REPRODUCED ELSEWHERE WITHOUT THE EXPRESSED PERMISSION OF THE AUTHOR

In the 19^th century Florence Nightingale wrote extensively on the Art and Science of Nursing.

Her vision gave rise to today’s Nursing profession.

‘New Nightingales’ is the life story of two Nurses a century after Florence Nightingale.

"Breathe, breathe in the air

Don't be afraid to care"

"All you touch and all you see
Is all your life will ever be"

Pink Floyd - Dark Side of the Moon – 1973

All events described in these books are based on the actual life experiences
of 
Robert and Jane Gordon (Pseudonyms)

The characters described in these books are drawn from several sources.

All names have been changed. Any similarities with persons live or deceased is coincidental.

These books are dedicated to the ‘Brockley Bums’

May their spirit spring eternal in the hearts of Student and Qualified Nurses everywhere

FORWARD

New Nightingales describes the lives and experiences of two young people who were Student Nurses, and then Qualified Nurses, through the 1980s and beyond, spending thirty years as practising Nurses.  The books and chapters follow in instalments, telling the story of the two Student Nurses through their early formative training years, and then through their years a qualified professional Nurses.  They tell the stories of the many varied and unforgettable encounters they had with other Nurses, with Doctors, and with patients in Hospitals, in Wards, and in Clinics and in the Community.  New Nightingales recounts the very personal events that shaped them as people.  

Chapter One (Part One) - THE STUDENT NURSES OF KINGS COLLEGE HOSPITAL

(New Nightingales - Don’t be afraid to care)

Chapter One (Part Two) - THE STUDENT NURSES OF KINGS COLLEGE HOSPITAL (New Nightingales - Don’t be afraid to care)

Chapter Two - NORMANBY COLLEGE OF NURSING INTRODUCTORY BLOCK (Making beds and losing teapots)

Chapter Three - THE FIRST DAYS - BECOMING A STUDENT NURSE (Blondes, bedpan washers and new beginnings)

Chapter Four - SAMBROOKE WARD (Early Duties and Romantic Difficulties)

Chapter Five - BRUNSWICK WARD - St. GILES HOSPITAL (Girlfriends, a Nursing Officer and a Ghost)

Chapter Six - ELDERLY CARE - St. FRANCIS HOSPITAL (Hangovers, the Front Line, and Old Soldiers)

Chapter Seven - THE BELGRAVE CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL (Holmedene's Golden Age)

Chapter Eight - MENTAL HEALTH - THE MAUDSLEY HOSPITAL (A New Home and Chillies on Toast)

Chapter Nine - MATERNITY – KINGS COLLEGE HOSPITAL (Off Duty, Christmas, Porters, Babies, and Chicken Pox)

Chapter Ten - OPERATING THEATRES – KINGS COLLEGE HOSPITAL (Everything Green, Wars, Bikes and Good Food)

Chapter Eleven - VICTORIA & ALBERT WARD And TRUNDLE & WADDINGTON WARD - KINGS COLLEGE HOSPITAL (Examinations, another new home, night duty and holidays)

Chapter Twelve - ACCIDENT & EMERGENCY - KINGS COLLEGE HOSPITAL (AIDS, a Flashing Boob Tube, Violence, the Spike and a baby)

Chapter Thirteen – WALES & CRITICAL CARE – KINGS COLLEGE HOSPITAL (More New Beginnings, Reflections and Revelations)

Chapter Fourteen - BROWN WARD & RUSKIN WARD - DULWICH HOSPITAL (Sausages, Commodes, and Harsh Lessons)

Chapter Fifteen - LONSDALE WARD – KINGS COLLEGE HOSPITAL - THE SPECIAL CLINIC & COMMUNITY NURSING (Every step you take, we’ll be watching you)

Chapter Sixteen - DAVID FERRIER WARD – KINGS COLLEGE HOSPITAL (A Boy, an Examination and Great Expectations)

ChapterSeventeen - Part 1 - ON BECOMING A STAFF NURSE (Their Life in Your Hands - Breathe in the Air)

ChapterSeventeen - Part 2 - Afterthought - 2010 ON BECOMING A STAFF NURSE (Their Life in Your Hands - Breathe in the Air)

Part 2 (1966-1979) - 1974 - 1979 - Sophie

SOPHIE....

1975-1979

This was a Bright, Glittering, Intense time of life. And yet it was also a Dark time. This will be one of the most difficult chapters I have to tell. And there is so much to tell, but as I have promised throughout I shall not dwell on minutia – but tell it nevertheless I shall.

Sophie is a pseudonym – she yet lived at the time that this chapter was written. My current family, sons and others, know of her, but I will not draw the reader to find her in the age of the Internet and Social Media.  Sophie was my first great love, my first overwhelming passion, and ultimately my first wife. But Sophie and I were also ultimately not to be.

It was just over 5 years that Sophie and I shared our life. It seemed like a long long lifetime, but it was just over 5 years... It was a time of living on the edge, in the fast lane, of pushing the boundaries of acceptability. There were moments of bliss, and moments of the deepest regret and despair. By the time this chapter closed, in darkness at a cold wet Bus Stop, I was a very different and changed man.  But it all HAD to happen – it HAD to happen to make sure what would eventually follow would also happen ..... 

I struggled through 6^th Form at school, distracted by partying, flirting and having a good time. I failed all 3 of my A Levels, disappointing myself and my parents, and subsequently I left School and went to South Bank (London) Polytechnic to resit them. At College I would meet a whole new group of friends, and the bonds between the Wendy House gang began to weaken and fade as we, as a group of maturing young adults, all moved onto new things. 

It was here at College, in the Canteen on a lunchtime break, that I first saw Sophie. She was a year younger than me. She was short, a dark of Mediterranean complexion, with long dark hair and had flashing inviting eyes. We talked, we dated – it was a beginning. Sophie was 18 years old, living in a multi-occupied house two minutes walk from Golders Green Tube Station. Her Mother and Father were separated. Sophie was close with her mother, but mostly estranged from her father and his much younger partner.

Sophie and I spent increasingly more and more time together. She left her Golders Green house and moved into a house in Tooting, owned but not occupied by her Mother. It was a turning point – I moved in with her and we became a “couple”. 

Montana Road - Tooting Bec

I can remember the evening that I left Berkeley Square penthouse to “move in” with Sophie – my mother waving goodbye to me with tears in her eyes. But I would visit regularly – and I was always remained incredibly close with my parents.

I failed my A Levels again, and took a job as a laboratory technician with the multinational Beecham Products company – working with new formulas for Tooth Paste and Brylcreem. 

We quickly moved from Tooting to another multi-occupied house in Wimbledon. Our house mates were all of our own age, drama students - it was chaotic.

Sophie and I lived a dangerous relationship, entertaining and acceptant of other lovers and other complex relationships. It was exciting, challenging, different. We thought we were so grown up – sophisticated – and perhaps we were. But there were also so many risks.

We holidayed and travelled. We went to Hungary with Sophie’s best friend Suzie. By train across the Europe we crossed the border into the Communist Block. We visited Budapest and then on to the Balaton – that great inland lake. On the shores of the Balaton we got gloriously drunk one evening and sat on a rickety wooden pier, singing Beatle songs with young Russian troops. They couldn’t speak English but they knew the lyrics off by heart.

Sophie’s mother and her boyfriend lived at that time in the villages in the mountains outside Benidorm. We went on holiday several times to visit them, this interspersed with their visits back to the UK.  

Spanish Mountains

Then Sophie decided to train as a nurse, and became a Student Nurse at Kings College Hospital near Camberwell in South London.  I continued to work for Beechams, peddling an ancient bicycle down the South Circular everyday from Wimbledon to Ealing and back. The 20 mile round trip on a bicycle had me incredibly fit, and saved a fortune in beer money that otherwise would have been spent on Tube Fares. It is worth mentioning in passing that I commenced a BTech course in Bio-Chemistry – and left after 6 weeks. I clearly had no interest nor discipline for such study at that time.

Merton Hall Road - Wimbledon

We lived at the Wimbledon house for 18 months, and then Sophie and I moved to a flat in St John’s Wood – this arranged by my father via his varied business contacts. Charles Lane – it was a lovely flat in a North London Mews – and Sophie and I were happy. We had many friends, Martin a local policeman Steve a Barman from New Zealand, and local Nurses from the Wellington Hospital. We were in love and so happy – so it seemed.

The Charles Lane Flat (and Bleary the Cat)

Sophie’s training as a nurse progressed and she travelled endlessly between St Johns Wood and Camberwell to meet the demands of her clinical shifts and studies. Meanwhile I left Beechams, disenchanted with the career of laboratory technician, to work as a Barman in the Sir Isaac Newton Pub. The Publicans were Paul & Diane Thirgood, and were to become briefly good friends.  

The Issac Newton Pub - St Johns Wood

Then we got married!!!! Yes we did... It was planned, it was thought through. Friends and Family were invited. On a clear morning Sophie and I made our vows at Marylebone Registry office and our family and friends cheered us on in the subsequent reception. We honeymooned – and life felt good.

We had many friends, and we had many flings. “Flings” – a euphemism for affairs, and casual sex. We thought we could make it work, but of course we could not.

And then one day, after long reflection, Sophie realised she was Gay, and she told me in one of the most difficult discussions you can imagine. At first I hardly understood what she had said. I thought we could just be as we had been – Dave and Sophie together, with our lovers, and that nothing would change. But that of course was not to be.

Sophie qualified as a Staff Nurse. And I became a Hospital Porter at St Marys Hospital in Praed Street London, close to Paddington Station.

We left St Johns Wood and we briefly shared a flat in Croydon, flirting mutually with the “Gay Community”, still having many “affairs” and flings. But now we were unhappy and ultimately, as a couple, we were doomed to failure, and on a dark bleak night at a bus stop we parted, never to meet again. I was 24 years old.

Despite the pain, the overwhelming sense of loss, it was to be a whole new beginning – and now will shortly pass you onto the New Nightingale Chronicles and the start of the most important new phase of my life...

--------------------------------------

BUT – before we move on I must update you on my family ......

My Mother and Father had grown older. By 1979 my father had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease and was increasingly compromised in his cognitive and physical abilities. He and my mother left Berkeley Square House. Briefly my father held another property manager post in a building in the City - but soon had to retire on the grounds of ill health. They were placed in council accommodation, a flat in a large estate near the Barbican. The Golden Lane Estate was a 1950s council housing complex in the City of London. It was built on the northern edge of the City, in an area that had been devastated by bombing during World War II. 

All of this change, ill health and stress had devastating psychological and emotional effect on my parents. This was then further compounded by my mother’s deteriorating health. Diagnosed with bowel cancer, and following surgery that resulted in the formation of a colostomy, she struggled to care for my increasingly confused father.  

Sue was living with her husband Charles in the beautiful village of Ferryside outside Carmarthen. My sister Sue arranged for my parents to move to sheltered accommodation in Ferryside. They would spend the last years of their life there. By 1985 they had both passed away...........

In 1985 Susan also died - following a minor head injury that was exacerbated by her developing Leukaemia.... 

I was alone..... 

But by then there was someone new in my life - Janet (Jane).
And a little boy called Thomas

But more of that later....

And now it is 1980 – and the New Nightingales Chronicles begin.

BREATHE - BREATHE IN THE AIR

Part 2 (1966-1979) - 1972-1974 Berkeley Square – Teenager to Adult

1972-1974

Berkeley Square – A Penthouse

Teenager to Adult

Some more details.......

Joining the Oval Theatre Club - Run by “Joan Mills”

How Peter discovered Joan Mills and the Theatre Club at Oval House escapes me. Joan Mills – was engaged by the Royal Court Theatre to encourage youngsters to participate and become involve with the Theatre's work; directing and commissioning new work for young people; leading weekly theatre workshops for young people; directing Summer Projects; originating and developing a writing competition into the Young Writer's Festival from 1972 onwards.

Joan Mills

The Oval House Theatre!!!!! It was just a ‘place’ to us – but we had little idea that it was a place that played a key part in supporting the experimental theatre companies of the '60s and '70s. Later it would see the emergence of gay, lesbian and women's theatre in the 1970's and 80's and the development of new Black and Asian writing in the '90s and into the next millennium.

All I remember is turning up with him and a handful of others in its shabby cafeteria, where we smoked and laughed. And then there was Joan’s workshops, every Wednesday evening, in the plain and basic theatre room with its small stage. A dozen (or so) young people laughing as we improvised simple activities – where we learnt the basic principles of “Acting”.

IT’S A DOG – IT’S A CAT ?? 
“What?” I hear you say. It was a game that Joan taught us, a simple enough psychomotor skill game that involved passing an imaginary cat and dog in different directions around a group of us all sat in a circle. It is difficult to describe in writing. But suffice it to say it has us, a group of young 15 year-olds howling with laughter. 40 Years later I would teach the same game to qualified and experienced Doctors, Nurses and Paramedics – and watch them laugh as they learnt that even simple psychomotor skills can be difficult to master.

And Joan Mills – The Young Youthful Director of the Young People's Theatre Scheme, The Royal Court Theatre (1972 – 1976). To us she became a mentor, a role model, a wise friend and confidant. In short we idolised her.....

Acting in a Play at the Royal Court

And so at the age of 15 in 1971 I would take a lead role in a short play on the main stage at the Royal Court. A curious cryptic little play directed by Joan – it ran for just two nights but was a howling success as far as the droves of parents and friends who attended.

Mandy, Yolanda, Alison Steadman, future actresses

Inevitably our acting interests via Joan brought us into contact with aspiring actors.  We met  and made friends with Yolanda Palfrey, Alison Steadman and Amanda Wise. 

A Young Yolanda

A Young Alison

A young Mandy and Steve

Steve went on to become a Costume Designer at the Royal Opera House 

(his dream job)  

Sadly he died in the Mid 1980s - AIDS

And in all that glitterati we flirted, and affairs were had and soon completed. It was Peters delight to recall the evening that Mandy ran across Victoria Bus station to beat me with her handbag, screaming abuse, as I had “split up with her”. It was delight to recall how he and Steve had collapsed in hysterics as they observed this.

A New Musical – A Life Changing Moment

In August 1973 Peter arrived at School one day breathless with excitement. He had been to see a new musical at the 230 seat Chelsea Classic Cinema on the Kings Road. He insisted that we all had to go and see it – and so later that week Wendy House booked in for an evening performance of the Rocky Horror show. It was a beginning of a life long love of the outrageous. We loved it, adored it, we Time Warped on the Circle Line and danced Sweet Transvestite across Hyde Park. We went twice a week until the cast knew us in person. Later that year it transferred to the King's Road Theatre (another cinema house) even further down Kings Road and still we attended – we were 17 years old, and we were having fun, such allot of fun.

Thirty nine years later in Golders Green Crematorium, in 2012, I sat in emotional silence, tears flowing, as I stared at Peters coffin, whilst listening to the music and lyrics of the Rocky Horror Show - “'Cause I've seen blue skies, Through the tears in my eyes, And I realize I'm going home”. 

Other Music

We were teenagers of our time. Pink Floyd, the Rolling Stones, Hawkwind, the Pink Fairies and Moody Blues. We saw them all - live at venues around London. Some at grand Hyde Park Concerts with audiences in their tens of thousands, others in murky small college venues, crowded and smoky. And Peter and I sat and listened to our treasured Long Players (LPs - Vinyl's) on our even more treasured record players, we grew to adulthood together.

1974 My Family

Sue had grown to be a beautiful young woman and had boyfriends in abundance. This caused my parents some real anxiety as she launched into all busy London social life. She would meet a Welsh man called Charles, fall in love and marry him. Sue flew the coup for a flat on the Edgware Road. Finally, after sailing the world with Charles, an officer on Merchant Ships, she would settle in the beautiful village of Ferryside near Carmarthen. Ferryside would become a very special meaning to me in later life – the burial place of my parents and Sue herself in the quite ancient church of St Ishmaels.

Sue on the roof of Berkeley Sq House

Sue and Charles Wedding Day

My Mother and Father were getting older – and in the following years they were to both be afflicted by serious illnesses.

Mother in the Downstairs Flat Berkeley Square

My Father on the Beach at Ferryside around 1976

Drugs, Alcohol and Girls (Wine, Women and Song)

By 1974 I was a tall young man, and perhaps good looking. Happily I was mostly unaware of this and focused a great deal of my time focused on drinking and experimenting with recreational drugs. Ganja, Speed and occasional Acid formed a background to parts of my social life. And of course Girls – much time was devoted to female company and I had already had several girlfriends. This fondness for a party life style led to me dismally failing my 3 ALevels, Chemistry, Biology and Physics. Then I left School and went to South Bank Polytechnic (as was then) to resit them.

Me outside the Charles Lane - St Johns Wood Flat around 1976

It was at College that I would meet Sophie – and everything would change, and I would leave home....... And nothing would be ever the same again...

The Spanish Mountains outside Benidorm around 1976