Countryside Memories Working On The Edge Of A Forest In The 1960s

A Memory of Savernake Forest.

I once worked in a Cottage Hospital, situated on the edge of Savernake Forest in the West Country. The hospital doctors were also the local General Practitioners. The wards consisted of one surgical and one maternity ward and a third ward which was comprised of everything else, all mixed up together. In one bed there was an elderly lady with heart failure and next to her, a teenage girl who had just undergone an abortion. Long term post operative patients were also nursed there.

Christmas arrived and Sister made what turned out to be, by the end of the morning, a very potent Punch. She made it in the ward bathroom, indeed to be more specific, she made it in the ward bath! After each addition of alcohol she would sample the ever-changing flavour and was soon quite tipsy.

We sang carols around the wards on Christmas Eve and our angelic candle lit faces smiled demurely from the local rag the following week. Appearances can be so deceptive. I had moved to the area in the hope that I would be able to see my parents more often, as they only lived ten miles away from the hospital. Ten miles proved to be quite a distance without a car, or a local public bus service! I saw nearly as much of them when I had lived hundreds of miles away! I worked for five months in the hospital, the briefest time I ever spent in an employment.

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