While Shepherds washed their frocks by night ...

I was dressed in a completely inappropriate shade of pink - not the proper colour for a shepherd, but when I gave my mother the note from my infant teacher asking parents to support the class’s production of the Nativity by providing costumes for their child, Mum had looked at the overflowing basket of dirty laundry, calculated the time it would take to pull out the twin tub and run through a couple of batches of washing then get it dry before tomorrow’s dress rehearsal (it already being teatime and a week since the teacher had given me the letter), she’d decided a ‘make do with what you have to hand’ approach was the only way to go.

Which is why, next day, I stood by the manger with my fellow shepherds in a bright pink breast cancer awareness t-shirt - inside out to hide the lettering – and a Guinness beer towel clasped on my head with a bungee cord from dad’s tool box. Classic.

AM

Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash

A Hospital Christmas Day

Christmas day at Glenfield Hospital was a day that no nurse without young children would ever mind working. Those on the rota for the morning shift had previously worked the late shift on Christmas Eve. Sister Chalk had produced NHS funds so that each patient had a gift to open on Christmas morning and these would be placed at the end of each bed by the night staff.

It was 1985 and I had been tasked with buying the inexpensive gifts with a Christmas card and wrapping.  The Ward was Female Surgical. A great believer in the power of the bath, I purchased bottles of bath gel and talc in various flavours. These would be used on Christmas morning for a deep soothing bubble or bed-bath for each patient in every six-bed bay. The old adage that the busiest nurses are the ones with a liberal dusting of talc on their shoes, is, in my opinion, a true one, mine were always peppered with talcum powder.

A warm comforting soak later, patients emerged from the bathroom, many on a mobile hoist, trailing an aroma of Lavender, Lily of the Valley, Rose or Coconut as they were held aloft and transported back to bed.

Day staff arrived for duty by 6.45 am having finished at 10 pm the previous evening. Morning report was given just before the night staff left at 7 am. For Christmas day many nurses sported fancy-dress, arriving on the Ward as Fairies, Elves, and a Christmas Tree to name but a few.

By mid-morning, patients gleamed, shiny faces, hair washed and brushed, the Ward pristine with bedside flowers neatly arranged.

At 11 am, the Surgeon arrived sporting full costume and make-up as a clown. Not an image you would want to conjure up if you were lying prone on a trolley, pre-op. His two children attended and ran between the beds collecting Quality Street, Thorntons, Ferrero Roche and any sweet treat the patients had unwrapped from brightly decorated Robin, Holly/Ivy or rotund Father Christmas wrapping paper.

Mr. Wann - who could notoriously replace a hip joint in less than 30 minutes - always bought his six children who could enthusiastically devour three courses in next to no time and still have room for more chocolate.

As you can imagine, the arrival at 12 o’clock of the golden brown, steaming turkey roused a round of applause from its weak and sickly audience. The bird was carved meticulously at the steady hands of the eminent Surgeon.

After lunch, a group of local children came in to sing carols. Even the poorly patients mouthed the words, the odd tear trickling down a cheek at the memory of Christmases past. For these souls, who had been too sick for discharge, the dread of staying in hospital for Christmas may have been transformed into a happy experience, a day packed with surprises and events served with generosity and goodwill. It was perhaps more about the spectacle than the deed. Patients, whether pre or post op, do not tend to have a large appetite.

At 2 pm the visitors arrived. More gifts, maybe a Poinsettia or Cyclamen in a fancy pot with a ribbon, more smellies, perhaps a fancy nightdress – what else do you buy the mainly elderly hospital patient who has to later transport the gift home at the end of their stay?

Gratitude of the relatives was mostly shown in the form of chocolate or biscuits. These would be devoured mostly by the ‘Lates’ who would work until 9 pm. The morning shift ended at 3 pm and many nurses, me included, returned home to cook dinner and open presents with family.

The patients’ day had started abruptly at 6 am when the bright fluorescent light tubes sprung into life. The thrills of the day would eventually take their toll on the varying degrees of serious illness. Fatigue was aided further by an optional measure of sherry or whisky from the Drug Trolley at lunch and dinner. Full bellies and the additional alcoholic infusion found most resort to the land of nod long before the night shift arrived.

Good-night and God bless, for its Boxing Day tomorrow and we can do most of it again.

CW

Image by Lorena Lees

A National Coal Board Christmas ‘do’

When I worked at one of the National Coal Board offices in Nottinghamshire, the Christmas ‘do’ was talked about long before and long after we actually enjoyed it. There was much speculation about it; where would it be?

What would be on the menu? What would the ladies be wearing? More importantly, who would be getting off with who?

In the early days we waited for the bosses to let the departments know if we would finish work at lunch time. The sensible ones, and those who had respect for (or fear of) their marital status would go home then, or stay for the buffet which the tea lady had spent the morning preparing, then disappear. The rest of us would aim to get as much booze down us as we could. This was all paid for out of the N.C.B Recreation fund. The DJ – usually one of the Geologists - put on the music (vinyl ruled in the seventies) and we would be dancing in the corridors or the large reception area, or watching out for those of our workmates who were heading for dark places.

Around 3:30 pm when it was getting dark, those of us who were more or less compos mentis would be comparing notes on who we hadn’t seen for a while and forming plans to track down the absentees. Melanie was on the door, listing those who left the building and whether they left singly, in pairs, or separately with a view to being a pair imminently.

The Drawing Office revealed at least three couples who were getting to know each other better. If any of the bosses had left, their offices were up for grabs (or whatever else you could manage), but the star of the show was the stationery cupboard. It was small enough for 2 people to squeeze in and it had the advantage of a lock and key. Savvy staff would have secreted the key in their pocket on arrival that morning and we all knew that it would be found when we had all left.

I was a good girl. I limited myself to snogging one of the Geologists who was fit, but married, for as long as I could keep him busy.

After the ‘do’ - around 6 pm -  the tea lady who doubled as the cleaner came to clear up. She was met by little piles of vomit, empty bottles and half-full glasses, crumbs everywhere, and on attempting to hoover the Drawing Office, a couple fast asleep under a drawing board alongside their underwear, that they were not wearing.

She must have complained to the management because after that it was decided that the event would be held in the local pub!

JT

Photo by Dorine Allali on Unsplash

An Argument Against the Christmas Do

Christmas is a dangerous time of year to have a social gathering with work colleagues – I’d say ‘enjoy’ but does anyone really enjoy them? There's so much potential for things to go wrong and none of the options are good.

For a start, it’s dark and cold and (largely) cheerless and by rights and the laws of nature, you should stay home in the warm, hibernating in a huddle with loved ones, safe and cosy and only moving to throw a log on the fire or get up and pee. But do you do that? Do you heck.

Instead, you agree to the implausible suggestion of fun and team-bonding offered by a Christmas social gathering – which you’re too overworked and stressed to squeeze into a busy working week anyway, having also to squeeze in the tasks that need doing before the place closes for Christmas and also card-writing and present-buying in your lunch hours and evenings.

But you grasp the opportunity nevertheless, in Christmas jumpers or a sparkly tube dress, figgy pudding earrings and flashing reindeer antlers on your head, stuck on a table beside the disco speakers and chewing cardboard turkey and tinned brussels whilst laughing at cracker jokes with colleagues you can’t stand the sight of for 235 working days of the year but are now pretending you’re best buddies with.

Alcohol’s flowing and inhibition’s flying out the window on Christmas angels’ wings, and you’ve forgotten that whatever you say will be all round the factory by next Monday lunchtime. You’re spilling deepest darkest secrets that even your best friend from childhood doesn’t know – that your husband’s a tight-fisted arsehole you shouldn’t have married, that the temporary lad in Packing has a thing for you and you meet him Tuesday evenings in a pub the other side of Leicester where nobody knows you and his pregnant girlfriend with the brother just over from Sicily won’t get to hear about it; that you borrowed a bit of money from the petty cash tin to pay for this dress and will have to sneak it back on Monday before Bob in Accounting finds out.

It’s always the same. They say the divide between this world and the next weakens on Christmas Eve and spirits leak through, but the leaking happens well before then at the work’s Christmas do. And if you’re not careful, you’ll end the night snogging the face off the forklift driver from Outerwear in the back room of the Three Crowns, and after clocking-off time on Christmas Eve the ghosts of Christmas past and present will have emptied their desk in the office and kicked your future into touch.

So, Merry Christmas, one and all!

AM