Thursday 22nd July 2010

Something has been preying on my mind lately and now I just have to say it, even at the risk of upsetting my American friends:  hands up who thinks Hillary Clinton's hair looks a mess these days?  Well, not just these days, ever since she started being Secretary of State she looks like she's been dragged through a hedge backwards!  She always used to look so smart. Somebody buy the lady a comb.


Well, that's the bitching out of the way!

I was just reading Ann in the UP's latest entry 'Are we in Kansas' - a reminiscence of her time in nurse training.  I think she must have been training about the same time as I started because so much sounds the same.


There were strict rules about uniform for a start.  If you left the hospital with your uniform on you had to wear what was instantly recognisable as a nurse's coat and hat.  This outfit was navy (dark) blue and the hat was a little pillbox affair.   It flattered no-one but that was the rule and had to be obeyed.  What you did not do was go floating round the supermarket with your sticky fingered brood getting your uniform contaminated with all sorts.  

Nor did you wash your uniform yourself.  You were given enough dresses, aprons and caps to last a week with a couple of spares in case of necessity and each Friday, whether you 'lived in' or not, your used uniforms had to be put in your own personal box and left for collection by the hospital laundry.  As students our caps were made of white card, which was precut for us to fold - tee hee flat-pack nurses' hats!  The IKEA of the NHS!


Our uniform dresses, as students, were green with a zipper from collar to waist at the front and under no circumstances was that zipper anything other than zipped right up, even on a hot day.  You wore flat, black, lace-up shoes AND tights and if you needed to go outside on the hospital premises you had to put on your cloak - again, as much meant to keep your uniform contamination-free as to keep you warm.  Your dress had to be long enough to just touch the floor when you knelt down - which made it pretty darn long when you stood (try it).  We had a horrid Assistant Matron (the Matron was the boss of the hospital) who had no qualms whatever about making suspected transgressors of this rule kneel wherever they were - even in the hospital corridor - so she could check.  She certainly wouldn't get away with that these days!


All first year students had to 'live in' at the Nurses' Home in the hospital grounds.   The only exception to this was if there happened to be a male student nurse; very unusual then because nursing wasn't considered a men's job.  We had 2 of them:  Ralph and David!  Couldn't have them in a house full of females, though I'm sure they wouldn't have minded.  You got quite a nice single bedded room with a dressing table, wardrobe and a small desk and chair and wash-basin.  The bathrooms were shared with everyone else but I was lucky to be right next door to one.  There were two common rooms (lounges) and one of them had a black and white TV.  We had a small kitchen with a stove, fridge and kettle but for a while they closed this because two of the girls kept stinking the place out cooking pilchards.  OK?  Rather than tell them not to cook pilchards they stopped the rest of us making tea!  Typical!


But it wasn't all doom and gloom because if you didn't go home for your days off you could have your bacon and eggs breakfast right there in the nurses' home.  You put your name in the breakfast book the day before and a kitchen assistant came over to cook and clear away.  We thought that was real luxury.


The watchword though was always obedience.  We were there to learn from women who knew more than we did in the hope that one day we would know as much as they did.  It didn't occur to us to contradict or argue and, know what, that worked - Yes Sister, no Sister, three-bags-full Sister..  We never used each others' Christian names, only surnames, and patients were always Mr or Mrs or Miss.


Them was the days - or were they?  What do you think?