Modern Man, 2020 What we did at the end of the World - New Beginnings

10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 HAPPY NEW YEAR, 2020 arrives, the new roaring 20’s what a time to be alive, the Worlds intelligence connected instantaneously by tech and physically in only 24 hours by plane. Like the Jetsons the future is now, as we drive & fly from place to place making irrelevance of distance, the boundaries of nature & borders of history reduced to insignificance by the great few minds of humanity as Modern Man stands on the shoulders of giants, those pioneers of human progress and we all gladly take in the view & drink from the cup. Every aspect of our day to day lives influenced by technology & science, smart phones & internet shopping, school runs in the car, drives to the beach, far flung destinations our appetite for air miles and cheap seats extended to all as everyday travel evolved from the life aspirations of the jet setting few, to package holidays for the middle classes, into the last decade and the arrival of bus stop travel; stag & hen nights to Benidorm, Thailand, Vegas no place to far for a pub crawl & a piss up, Romantic weekends away to Paris & Rome, a week’s pilgrimage to Disneyland, city breaks & shopping trips to New York, Prague, Reykjavik, around the world trips to Sydney for the big game of Rugby with pit stops in Singapore, Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur, Dubai, our desire for winter sun & long weekends, who wouldn’t want that, who wouldn’t do that given the chance. So as individuals, as a people, as a species we do what we are, we do what we can, what we want, we do what we are sold, explorers, instinctive migrators, travel suits our very nature, as we work & adventure, the aspirations of Modern Man, each of us wanting a slice.

In the wake of our progress in the dawn of a new age, lessons of the past begin to fade from memory as Britain leaves the EU & sets sail on a voyage beyond European supervision. At its core ambition the new British model, Rule Britannia 2020, the goal to reinforce her position as a global hub of free trade, business enterprise & travel. The gauntlet thrown down by the PM to the rest of the world that “we are ready for the great multi-dimensional game of chess” with nationalist speeches witlessly boasting of the glory days & achievements of yesteryear, to a nation, to a World far evolved & removed from the mindset and glory of a British history blighted by injustice, racism, Imperialism, Colonialism, genocide & brutality. 21st Century Britain now a minnow amongst superpowers has just swam away from shoal & shallow waters out into the deep. But unlike yesteryear the citizens of the United Kingdom are no longer afforded the safety of their own borders, the nation now a nation of strangers, the wolfs well amongst the sheep, “This newly forged United Kingdom on the slipway: this is the moment when it all took off”.

What could go wrong?

The problem of Climate change is all too easily ignored whilst more and more of us take to the air and road. But, we would learn, our connectivity poses a much more immediate threat!

After a season of summer Holidays and global travel we settle back into our usual routines and the 2019 Flu season begins. This year noticeably worse than other years, the illnesses and sick days mount, by December 2019 the sickness worsens as a wave of illness hits the workforce following the usual pre-Christmas seasonal culture of work nights out, as hundreds follow the same traditional behaviors of the season & cram into warm stuffy pubs and restaurants, across the nation millions do the same, across the World Billions as cards are exchanged, gifts, handshakes, hugs & kisses, the good intended well wishes of the season. The season of goodwill and a period of micro mass migration of the Christmas holidays all for Christmas day and Boxing Day & above all time together. In the age of connectivity when most Western households meet up for that once a year festive get together, annually estranged families, friends & neighbours like clockwork collectively make the effort to connect at the most special time of year.

At home this Xmas season 2019 - 2020 we are unable to drink and eat to the usual excesses as the season enjoys, the illness has hit home hard and we are all sick, appetites lost we get through the holidays and into a quiet New Years Eve, 1 minute to midnight, watching the countdown from home on the TV, the celebrations broadcast around the World of fireworks & fun, broadcasts of what seem like millions gathered on the banks of the River Thames in the heart of London and every other major city, the connective hubs of the world. Across the bank from the London Eye the BBC broadcasts interviews from seasonally giddy tv presenters to visitors and residents alike from all corners of the globe all sharing in the festive warmth of human connectivity and the shared gunpowder show, the dazzling lights and explosions that echo across the globe, in the silence of the lingering sulphur smoke, the people come together for the joining of hands and arms to sing in one voice for Auld Lang Syne as its verse echoes across the nation, across the Western World on that one night.

Either side of Christmas 2019 & New Year 2020 we aren’t the only ones to have suffered illness. In fact for some the illness reaches back to summer & autumn 2019 and things we would all learn would only get worse as the first few days and week of January the masses return home from the Christmas micro migration back to our places of work & education.

As we always do, as we have to do, if you get sick you get straight back on the horse. If you’re sick it’s just a cold and you work through it. Must attend school, must attend work, 100% attendance the expectation the goal of Modern Man, no time to spare, fast food, fast travel and fast living. As the pressure to conform tightens around us, unable to listen to our own bodies we continue to work, despite sickness befalling us. Slaves to the wheel, the sick attend work and school, the big match, the pub, the gym, isolation, quarantine, consequence, words unknown to minds of Modern Man. More and more fall sick with this heavy chesty cold. Around me at work over this winter season I hear of more and more people taking bereavement leave, a father, a mother, grandparents, deaths brushed off to old age, yet many not old enough, for so many to befall the end all together over the same month or two a doubt lingers in my mind, as a season of death and uncertainty seems to have befallen us. Others are sick too, seriously sick as family members take leave to help the ones that haven’t died, the recently healthy middle aged struck down over the same time period by aneurisms & pneumonia, was it all connected?

To the background to our lives on the news, reports of the emergence of a virus in China, the Wuhan Flu, CORONAVIRUS this new word emerges in the news, no one links the illness to here, to now and the summer, autumn & winter of 2019. Besides as our media has trained us, they’re all over the top over there in Asia, with their face masks and good hygiene as once again we dangerously ignore the lessons learned across Asia in the early 2000’s as the Emergence and outbreak of SARS was managed handled and contained by our brother nations. The fear that gripped Asia, Canada, Indonesia, Australasia, a fear that us Brits and wider western world thankfully avoided, blissfully unaware of how close we came to now, to lockdown and Fear in the pre internet age. At the crest of 2019 the first outbreak of Sars consigned to history 18 years earlier. 18 years and how the World has changed our connectivity and human progress throws the near past comparatively into the dark ages. So how can we compare the impact and virulence of a new Sars outbreak, a new viral outbreak of the worst kind to the high speed modern World of today? Would we be afforded the same buffer of distance that we once enjoyed whilst filling our global appetite for connectivity.

January 2020 we shared some days out, walks to the country a visit to the seaside, I’ve returned to work but I’m sick, I’m really sick, it’s been going on over Xmas since the super cold, an “unrelated” bacterial infection of a benign cyst in my back which became inflamed sore at the same time as the cold, my first hand contact with the NHS in 2019 to 2020 in the days before pandemic had begun.

The NHS a symbol of light and goodness in an ever darkening world, a British institution a welcome consequence of WW2, everyman’s safety net, clapped for and praised by citizens and government alike only 3 months later at the height of the first wave, but before the times of pandemic, the NHS before its time in the spotlight was fast becoming an extinct project, much like the EU as the social gains, payback & lessons post WW2 are gradually diminished. Following a decade of conservative government leadership & austerity measures, their obsession with lowering national debt has stripped the NHS, this essential institution to its bare bones, stripped the infrastructure of the nation to its thinnest tether. Exit from the EU compounded by the same economic policy of degradation, as history proves things quickly turn from bad to worse in times of economic suffering & depression. In stark contrast to the wealth & abundance of the travel industry Britain’s frontline institutions have taken a political financial battering and the NHS is no exception. Perhaps influenced further by a wider policy of disregard from the nation’s leading elite and wealthy middle to upper classes, who have long since rejected the concept of equality in exchange for private health care and pay first treat first, despite the simple fact that the cumulative payments of the many far exceed the payment of the individual.

In 21st Century Britain, the defunding of the NHS a reflection of the quickly evolving extreme polarized society where the disparity of life quality between the wealthy and poor reverts back to that of Victorian dystopia, stagnated wage growth, cramped and dilapidated social housing, no go areas, slum landlords, HMO’s, diminished worker rights, death of the unions, unemployment, street gangs, knife crime, a consumer economy with property prices beyond the means of its citizens, all to fill the already plentiful pockets of the ageing everyday wealthy, no longer restricted to a minority elite, now extended to everyday people fat from the final throws of a bygone era, homeowners before the property boom of the 00’s, shareholders and pension plans an army of “new money” who have escaped the ties of their social class, from small business owners to workers come wealthy pensioners of the industrial working classes & civil servants, gifted golden handshakes, those who had a better deal than generation now, in whole thanks to union action long since extinct and the rewards of a nation that once produced & manufactured instead of only consuming.

The theoretical ideal of social improvement coming hand in hand with more having more, instead in practice reversed resulting in the youth having less, as excess wealth is not reinvested for the betterment & progress of humanity by funding new markets & promoting human ingenuity, advancement and R&D, instead understandably yet damagingly excess wealth is invested in the safe option of housing & land hording, utilities and fossil fuels, junk food and plastics, by consequence a generational gap emerges of those born at the right time, taking everything that already exists and squeezing the wellbeing of the next generation & remaining masses further into bondage and suffering, whilst inadvertently punishing themselves as they too have to live amongst the squalor, in a rapidly changing world & environment polluted by the same industry that grew wealth. The ultimate fruits of greed and inefficiency, all lost for everyone, whilst seeing their own offspring struggle to live in a society that has made no room for them, in an environment that grows every inhospitable for them and the generations who follow.

The outcome of an imperfect system & behavior which encourages selfishness & rewards stagnation, inefficiency and inequality across humanity & 21st century Britain as success is measured only by profit instead of wider social and environmental good. This British conservative society in which wealth must mean everything or risk meaning nothing, to not be wealthy must be punished; being poor must come at a human cost, poor people trapped in poor housing, excessive rents, depraved communities, poor education, low aspirations, the best jobs and futures rewarded to the socially affluent and now the gateway of escape into Europe is also removed, the conservative philosophy of Modern Man witnessed once again across the streets of Britain. It been long decided that it’s a hard knock life, in a hard knock world, survival of the fittest, those who want the most take the most, those who take the gamble make most reward, the deserving strong, no thought to balance the inequality, to balance the social disparity, balance & equality simply not the way things are done. Yet post virus how quickly that ethos is changed and spun on its head, as the world is plunged into lockdown, by a virus which primarily affects the ruling ageing populous, as the largely unaffected youth are further isolated and depraved of learning, opportunity and meaningful employ, the youth and generation now who inevitably will suffer the most, both by carrying the burden of future national debt and further social polarization derived from shortsighted decision making of the ageing many. In this time of despair as the wealthy most of all fear financial loss, throwing more fuel to the side of imbalance in consolidating risk of losses of liquid assets by buying more & more property and investing excess wealth into the safe bet of bricks and mortar, an action which only pushes property prices even higher, further and further away from the attainment of the generation who now so desperately need somewhere to live, this base human right of shelter, this mold of what it is to be British, an Englishman’s home is his castle, no more at least not for generation millennial.

The post austerity, conservative managed NHS, the way I see it now after experiencing its service, is a system built on barriers, as every resource is stretched thinly, close to absolute capacity on the brink of collapse, a constant and rolling battle wages to handle the numbers of sick and needy, ironically the sick and needy increase in numbers as a consequences of austerity ripples through society, so the NHS is squeezed doubly tight, as are the people, by shortsighted Government policy to the detriment of all.

Logic would be for such a vital part of societal infrastructure, human integrity & human needs, to function & exceed demand, spare, abundant & plentiful resources always to hand in preparation for the unknown, preparation for the worst. Human resources used to review, evaluate, research, educate & train the next generation for the benefit of all. Equally the surplus would allow the workforce the reward of time, in what must be a highly stressful and emotional charged environment, the well reported long hours, why have one member of healthcare working 60 hour weeks, when two could work 30, or three work 20, more doctors could service desperately needed 24 hour healthcare to suit the needs of Modern society which is no longer built around the old concepts of Monday to Friday 9 to 5 working.

The reduction in time worked each week, the assumption being would ensure labour of optimal performance, with surplus time available for further development & training. Resources of medicines and equipment held in surplus, equipment that then lasts longer by being used less, machines and equipment readily available to be upgraded and researched for optimal performance. The surplus of both labour and equipment in times of stability distributed for use around the nation & globe to wherever and whoever needs the service the most, all working for the greater good of self & all, above all ready for Pandemic, ready for the unforeseen.

Idealist fantasy would be the usual rhetoric, but no longer so easily dismissible given the responsive cost of pandemic that we would all come to witness as business and society grinds to a halt and vast reserves of money are spent by all Governments to hold society together as time is lost. Lavish spending which for some reinforces the theory that things are worse than we know, that this is the end of days? Although we all hope is not.

As I would learn the NHS post austerity and pre pandemic is an institution built on barriers. In a damaged health care service, desperately underfunded and short of all resources the best way to stop the elastic band snapping is to simply delay patient numbers.

So a new system is created 111 a phone line to ring the first hurdle as you work through a flow chart with the phone operator to tell you what you already know, either you need a doctor or you don’t need a doctor or call an ambulance, this unnecessary tier of confusion the first of the time delay tactics, focused wholly on delaying & reducing frontline care.

The next hurdle and barrier to health care the doctor’s receptionist, once there to manage health care workers diaries, patient appointment times and filing, now a triage service as you are quizzed unsympathetically and unethically on what’s wrong with you before your able to get an appointment, as the receptionist repeats your conversation aloud to the hearing ears of all and sundry in the waiting room. They themselves now know your most intimate health needs but fear not as the receptionists themselves are in such high demand as a back log of calls wait for their turn to speak, the voice of one no different to the voice of the next. Once they have decided if your worthy of an appointment the next concern is the time slot lottery, which could result in an appointment later that day or later the next week, the problem being that the health issue has sometimes passed by the time you see the doctor, so that care, that reassurance and medication you were expecting to ease the suffering has already passed. The first failing of the system, the prolonging of human suffering and anxiety for short term illnesses, a double edged failing as the lack of ability to see a doctor for such illnesses, ensures most avoid the Doctors in the first place, which then limits the effectiveness of identifying new outbreaks of flu or new viral concerns and diseases which in turn promotes the factor of spreading, as you can’t get a sick note as you haven’t seen a doctor, so your illness if contagious becomes one and all’s illness as everyone continues to work and attend learning unless they are floored by illness or told otherwise by a GP. This broken system along with the nations “I look after me” attitude provides the perfect conditions for viral spread.

Then there’s the GP appointment itself, once a long time ago you knew your doctor, now a different stranger each time who knows nothing of you and you anything of them. For the bigger concerns, the health scares and long-term illnesses as the roulette wheel spins at the mercy and competency of your estranged GP who will either send you on to see a specialist or just say your ok and come back in 3 months if symptoms persist, instead of always double checking everything every time as would always be the best outcome. If you are referred and need to see a specialist, that’s another wait of 3 months, maybe 4 for the initial consultation, then if needed another wait of weeks for the follow up appointment. All the while if you’re ill, seriously ill, the one thing you don’t have to spare is time.

Yet by comparison private health care, the same doctors the same specialists, accessed within a short time frame, same day, same week and same treatment, the time saved making a better survival rate. Equal to a fast pass at a theme park, all pay to get in which covers all costs, the ones who then can afford to pay more & get to the front quicker do so, a new attitude of modern man which would have been scowled at by the morality of all in the not so distant past. This special treatment which provides extra profit yet only exacerbates the waiting times for the rest. A fundamentally floored concept, as more people come forward affording to pay for the express treatment, the longer both waiting times become, until over time another tier of special access is needed, instead of simply building more facilities in the first place to meet demand. Yet this isn’t something as inconsequential as an optional line for a theme park ride, this is health care, this is life and death of our fellow man, our family and friends, our neighbour. These cheap measures of human indifference applied in a pledged and honored profession which extends to all, life or death decisions in a broken system which in its inefficiency only prolongs pain and suffering, this is social inequality at its most explicit.

But why the shock, the surprise, the same cold indifference is extended throughout the societies of modern man, the class system which now allows anyone to climb the rankings does nothing to balance the life lottery of being born into the 1st 2nd or 3rd world, the injustice and imbalance which exists just beyond the veil and yet we all willfully ignore. Our 1st world British health care plight pales to insignificance against third world living conditions.

So there I found myself in December 2019 the near history and social conditions now set for us, struck sick by this super cold along with the rest of the family. The work night out may have been the catalyst, or my daughter attending school with 30 or 40 kids in a classroom with one teacher within a school of thousands, my son at work in a busy restaurant kitchen, my wife in a preschool nursery of 40 or 50 children, myself on construction sites or the office, was it that time in December when a co-worker brought their sick child to work with them in the run up to the holidays as they couldn’t afford the time off? Wherever it came from, of the many likely scenarios and settings IT came in and floored us all one by one, stomach sickness, coughs, general fatigue and tiredness our symptoms varied. As you do we carried on at work & school, despite one or two days sick then broke for Christmas, two weeks off we kept ourselves to ourselves and all got better except for me, the illness caused swelling and I had an pre-existing benign cyst in the centre of my spine right between the shoulder blades. I had been to the doctors multiple times over the last few years to get this lump checked out but they had all advised it was nothing to concern me despite over time it growing larger and larger and now feeling bigger than a golf ball. I had asked if it could be cut out as it was uncomfortable but they had advised the NHS don’t cover operations of this type and to go private if I wanted it out. Going private was not something I had been educated in or had been prepared for as I had always assumed paying around 50 pence in the pound cumulatively to taxation and the NHS, the system would take care of me as it was designed to do, yet clearly I was incorrect. So stupidly I did nothing, instead I had faith in the system and went back the NHS to the doctor for treatment and compassion.

Sick, ill and unprepared, December 2019 I enter the health care system.

First I call 111, a friendly but altogether pointless voice over the phone, they spend 15 minutes with me to finally tell me to head to the nearby walk in centre, it’s only an hours wait they assure me.

I head to the emergency doctors, like a busy bingo hall the ill and needy sit on dirty seats and settings unfit for the numbers, waiting times of 4 hours, 6 hours, human care and wellbeing an afterthought to the Society of Modern Man, a hive of human suffering as I sat waiting, I now a member of the whole, a statistic, one of the masses. I considered the great Buddha’s revelation of the noble path could have begun here, a Saturday night in a British walk in healthcare centre, blood sweat and tears, human suffering on display from broken bones to fever and sickness, young to old the processes of life & love and suffering told here and replicated in identical settings across the nation, all wait in despair.

Hours pass

The tide of patients roll in and out all in shock at the uncomfortably long wait times in the stuffy waiting room of plastic chairs, the people all hunched over, eyes focused on smart phones as the voice from the TV fills the cycles of silence, broken by coughs and sneezes, a baby cries, the arrival of a new patient registering with the reception. Their optimism of a 1 hour wait time crushed as they enter hours 3 and then 4, in between patients coming and going, the silence crescendos as the door handle is pulled and the treatment room door opens, the friendly call of the one and only Doctor on the Saturday night shift, the polite quiet roll call of a voice that has called a million more before this one “Mr Smith” the faces look around at one another all asking first is it me? then quickly realizing it is not your call, so who’s is it, the call again “Mr Smith” as the doctor and patients look around for acknowledgement, for movement, then slowly they stand and gingerly make their way towards the doctor, in hand the shuffle of plastic carrier bags, coat and hat, the door held wide open the Doctor smiles welcomingly, Indian, Pakistani maybe Bangladeshi, English? No he has an accent but what does it matter, a Doctor a human, a brother, the patient walks through the door and the door is gently pulled shut. Silence falls across the waiting room once more, eager in anticipation and hope for their turn to be treated.

Mr Wilson the voice calls, finally my turn I follow the same ritual, the waiting area filled now with new eager faces as once was my own, 4 hours later as I make my way in towards the Doctor, “please take a seat” he says “what seems to be the matter today Mr Wilson” I tell him of my problem, Antibiotics prescribed I head out.

The infection continues, I keep taking the antibiotics, in the week I call my regular doctors to explain my condition to the doctors receptionist, fingers crossed she will deem me worthy of an appointment with my Doctor, relieved she agrees and I get appointment later that week.

Into the Doctors 20 minutes earlier for my appointment, another wait, the appointment time elapses half an hour later, an hour I’m called out. It’s not my regular Doctor, they view the infection and advise to continue antibiotics. Nothing more to be done they say, as it’s only a cyst and the NHS doesn’t treat cysts.

I head back to work and later home, days pass and the antibiotics don’t seem to be working, the infection only gets worse, more painful, more tender and now its begun to weep puss.

Saturday night once again, a week later its painful its weeping, I call 111 again and repeat the same process as last time. This time another long wait, but not as long this time, as the duty nurse’s treat me instead of the doctor. They view the cyst and the infection and agree that it’s a bad one, puss now weeps from the cyst and it’s heavily inflamed, they squeeze the cyst to relieve the pressure and clean and dress the area. Just keep taking antibiotics they advise and book another appointment with your GP, if it worsens go to A&E.

I head home again, now my sleep has become affected.

Back to my GP, infection worse puss and blood and ooze running from back, breaking the skin, the infection is killing me. No help, home again, it’s just a cyst the NHS don’t treat cysts, nothing to worry about.

Sleepless nights, pain, agony, sweat and delirium, back to the doctors, no help, just take your antibiotics, the days pass.

Back to the walk in centre, Doctor unavailable instead another nurse views the infection, I’ll try and squeeze it out she says, she does, cleans it and squeezes it, ooze and puss and pain, naively I have faith in the system, in our healthcare, the NHS, so I follow their instruction, despite my feeling of sickness I do nothing, they do nothing.

Back to my GP clinic once again, I’m sick, another nurse, doctor won’t see me, she takes a look and squeezes, the ooze flows, the pain, oh the pain! Come back tomorrow for more of the same, If you get any worse she says head to A&E.

That night, delirium sweats, pain, in and out of sleep, nightmares. I make it through the night. In the morning I wake and walk downstairs ready for work, my legs give way, I’m weak, I’m dying. I make the decision to drive to A&E cutting through the morning traffic not an easy task, suffering and sick an hour goes by, my car just one of the snake of a billion cars which extend bumper to bumper across the city, across the world, gas and fumes burning, I’m nearly there, but the traffic is not easing, then the infection hits my stomach, oh God I need the toilet. The route to the hospital full, the way back home empty the flow of traffic as always one direction busy the other vacant, I U turn and make it home. Feeling ill, shaking, dying, back into the car across the city, its later in the morning now, the traffic has eased, I head again to the hospital, driving along I feel delirious the colour of the winters sky is gray and bright and white, my perception of the world is changing. I head down an industrial street Clough Road, this connector of east to west, one I have travelled many times before, across the River Hull and slowly along the line of now moving traffic, passing the large gas store cylos, the type that sit in a cylinder frame of metal high and circular, the gas held within a blue plastic membrane that lifts & falls in concertina within the frame, high when full and low when empty this landmark of industry which I have journeyed by a thousand times before, behind them the giant chimney tower, the narrow long and high concrete chimney, much much higher than the gas cylinders, the dark tower which is the highest landmark across the whole of the City at the site used to make Ultramarine pigment, which on dark winter mornings sat atop of clouds & mist, glows the deep red light which illuminates the dark sky and looks down upon us all. This landmark of Hull, the structure of industry this symbol of modern man. I never knew why but the gas towers had always filled me dread, from first site as a child they had haunted me, a terror unknown in these structures of gas and man and energy, a recurring bad dream centered at this place flooded back to me as it had before as I had travelled by, walking, biking or in the car, from the school run to rugby training or a friends house finding myself living on one side of the River and then the other. Then later work & passing by as an adult in day to day travel, each journey from then to now in the background to my life, passing these megalithic structures of industry through the good times and bad and always the guise of fear. The dream my nightmare of this place, strangely linked with a loved one, my Grandma, from a young age this place these gas towers and her love entwined in the physchedelic horror of nightmare, unraveling shapes and emotion of loss, suffering & despair to the background noise of static, best described as the sound of cosmic background radiation. I thought the nightmare irrational and unusual of this place and these structures that had all my life visited my dreams on the darkest of nights, when running a fever as an infant my earliest nightmare was of here. Irrational I know to fear a dream and reason such notions but only a few years before this day and this hospital drive, perhaps to be my last journey along this road and onwards to the next I had found myself living through a part of my nightmare for 3 days & nights. My Grandma had suffered with Cancer, leaving Hull for East Yorkshire and living miles away from the dark tower I had thought it a haunting coincidence that in her dying days she would be brought back here to this place of all places to see out her final days, the location of my long suffered nightmare and then in reality her own. The Dove house hospice in view of this my nightmare scene of towers of steel and concrete. I thought I had made sense of the dream in the type of way that nothing really makes sense to a rational mind but I can only speak the truth of that nightmare and that place and the remote likelihood that my Grandma would breath her last breath at the foot of the tower and these gas megaliths of industry that I had fearfully & seemingly irrationally dreamed of so many times before. After that day, the sad day of her passing I thought of that dream, of that the nightmare of my youth and the unlikely coincidence of reality following that path and reasoned that it was over now, the dream the nightmare ending that day and never returning since until now along this drive. When in my sickness the realms of imagination, superstition, foresight, love & time combined, sat in the car journeying to the hospital as the life was draining from me, at my closest connection to the veil between life and death, a revelation told through dream and nightmare, reality and non linear time as I drove slowly along with the traffic passing the towers as though seeing for the first time the expanse of life and existence, far further reaching & connected than our immediate perception understands us.

I drive on

I make it there.

The Car Park full I look for a space, find one, then I need a ticket, sick and dying, and still having to pay for parking. I get the ticket place it in the window and I make my way from the carpark to the hospital, to the entrance at the foot of the high-rise hospital, passing a walking warzone of the impoverish sick & desolate, who stand and congregate at the hospital entrance, were they stand despite their health waning, smoking, drinking with drip & frame attached, slippers and nightgowns in wheelchairs, the people stained with poverty, social decay printed on them like a tattoo of Auschwitz & Birkenau, these people products of their environment, prisoners of circumstance, Caged within the urban slums they are born into, the dark ages of Victorian British slums & the citys before then, as mankind progressed in the blinking of an eye from freedom to bondage, from nature & agriculture into industry, the dystopia of Modern Man never leaving still alive in the 21st century, always history repeating.

Finally 3 weeks from first contact with the health service I arrive at the A&E waiting room, now to speak to someone, please, to plead and beg to see a Doctor, through corridors of the dilapidated hospital I follow the signs to A&E in a half dreamed trance, life fading from me as a rat in a maze searching for a Doctor. Lost I ask around until finally Bingo, I find the waiting room, walk through the double doors passed a diaspora of patients waiting that spill out to the corridor, just need to speak to someone, one more hurdle. I hit the empty reception desk, no one there; I read a sign, check in on the touch screen, I look around and see only 4 pews which look like those on who wants to be a millionaire. I just need some help I scream a silent voice, the pews are all full, I join the queue, the touch screen is now in front of me, generic questions, NI number, name, address, DOB, then the flow chart begins, programmed by some IT genius with the social range of a stapler, this isn’t a good idea, Yes, No, Yes, No I touch the screen, you will be seen in 2 hours take a seat. I look around the waiting room, its full to capacity, heating cranked to maximum faces of the ill and suffering are all around. Baby’s cry, people weep silently, I walk around looking for a seat, there are none so I stand, someone gets up and walks out, another drops into the seat. Someone else drinks a coffee, another eats crisps, the tangy mixed smell of human sweat, stale breath, crisps coffee and disinfectant, its hot, so hot, I’m hot, I’m burning up, I just need a doctor. I look at the countdown half an hour passed, No Triage nurse, no one, nothing, just machine, the wait and the room full of heat and people and pain and suffering.

A seat comes free so I sit down, next to me practically sat on each other, as an airplane seat but this one made of hard plastic, a lad next to me in a tracksuit, trainers hanging together by thread, he stinks of weed, of dirt and decay, he’s doubled over holding a sick bucket in nicotine stained fingers, wretch… he lurches… dry vomit, spittle drools from his mouth into the cardboard bowler hat. He fidgets and writhes, “fuckin hell” he swears, “fuckin hell!”

Next to me are a couple a man and women, considerable age gap, he’s big and potbellied in black tea shirt and black jeans, an oil stained lumberjack coat, he’s about 60, dirty oily skin, pitted face, long wispy dark hair, not a mechanic but a scrap man evolved from the rag and bone, he smells of oil and grease, his girl next to him peroxide dyed hair, she’s 30, overweight, we are all overweight, except the drug zombies in lycra gym clothes, keep fit? Not fit, a crack cocaine habit and lycra gym leggings, the ultimate contradiction. She sits & sobs his big arm tight around her, he looks at her and comforts her with loving eyes, they kiss, she cries, he strokes her in reassurance, they wait, I wait, thrown together with the people either side of me and that pack the room, they wait, she sobs and we all wait.

Across from me old and young, the class system of the new working classes, the underclass, the criminal class, and the classless, now distinguished only by soap and clean clothes, by manners and vulgarity.

To some it’s a day out as they tuck into pre made packed lunches knowing the wait would be long, are they wrong!

All and sundry needing care, some medical but many more social, we pay half of our incomes to taxation we pay for medical care, but where did all the money go, where did all the love go?

The timer glitches, the waiting time is going up not down 3 hours, I need help, I’m dying here. I sit in silence, no one to ask for help only patients, masses and masses of patients.

In walk two policeman with some dysfunctional waster, yellow stained skin and no teeth, get the fuck off me he shouts and laughs at them, the full waiting room watch on, he loves the attention and acts up more, another victim of social injustice of concentration camp council estate. The allegory of the cave, for this man he is living life as it is lived, he knows no different and likely never will. Violence and ill treatment, the escape of cruel reality found only through drugs and drink, so he shouts & kicks & bites, no fear of police he laughs and thinks he is free, but he would be better off dead. He knows it, he longs for it, “don’t give a fuck”, the survival instincts of the city’s poor. Grown and raised in hard places, don’t give a fuck means surviving your youth, blending in, been a lad, but with that choice, with that necessity a chain is locked around his neck that he will never be free from, a slave to his environment, a slave to his childhood choices, always a victim always an abuser, no happiness, no love only pain. The police babysit him as he threatens them, the two cops 6ft 5inch 20 stone of muscle the police could annihilate him, but they don’t, they know they can’t, he knows they can’t, so he acts up, acts like an animal, part beast & part child, a waster, a waste. The cops just deal with him, their faces reveal a story of calm indifference, but deep inside the officers unspoken mind they would love to knock the shit out of him Judge Dredd style, the Purge and clean the streets of this human filth. A glimmer of thought exists as it does, as it resides in the recesses of the minds of all in control, but no punishment can be worse than the life already lived, the blackness of the soul, living in the dark, the socially forgotten, their trip to the hospital, their interaction with the police the only time they feel seen, the only time they feel alive.

An elderly relative sits with her elderly daughter, they are clean and fresh and in stark contrast to some of the others, hair done nice, pride in appearance, clean clothes, clean living. They sit waiting like the rest of us, in walks a paramedic, the green uniform he sees them in the corner of his eye, “mum, nan” he calls “I’ll come back soon” as he sees what looks like another overdose patient straight through to triage, 20 minutes pass and he is back to see his family. They look so proud of him, doing the good work and he is helpless to them as they wait for care and he is called off to another job.

A doctor comes in and sits near me, a doctor or a surgeon, dressed in the light colour scrubs, she sits and waits like the rest of us, holding her hand with dressing around it. It looks as though she has either cut herself of pricked herself, a fellow colleague walks in and looks around and finds her, come on he says you can’t wait here, she resists initially then rightly accepts and goes with her colleague to be seen.

Two other workers in NHS clothes, what look like office or admin staff sit side by side one another, two woman one younger than the other, the youngest one seems sick, she looks close to tears and her colleague comforts her, they wait like the rest of us.

We sit on these plastic seats, lined back to back and face to face, then again rowed around the perimeter of the room, divided in the middle by the machine pews and the empty reception desk, the doctors and nurses enter and exit the room from side corridors and cubicles along the front wall. A labyrinth of sickness, no windows or daylight, no fresh air, the waiting room located in the bowls of the hospital, waiting, all waiting. Some stay sent to the busy elevators upwards and onwards with hope of care and recovery or the dread of death & the back door into a tin coffin and a black van. Each ward stacked atop the next, filled with people living a life not shown on adverts and sit coms, an unplanned visit into living purgatory on the edge of life at the mercy of human spirit, of goodness and care, empathy & intelligence. Whilst others leave once again through the electric sliding doors they earlier arrived side by side they go along with the saviours of humanity, the workforce of the hospital at the start or end of their shift each journey passed an ever replenishing army of desolate addiction, within the fabric of the hospital all becoming one organism each a piece of the whole.

We wait! Hours pass...3…4…5…finally its my call, my name rings out.

Relief the doctor waits for me at the swing doors, he smiles, a black doctor with an American English accent, young my age say 30’s he is friendly, calming and welcoming. He speaks to me with care, dignity and respect, something not offered in the waiting room, but thankfully in abundance now. I tell him my concern, show him my back which by now is a river of infection, the ooze breaks the skin and is seeping from the pores it feels now from shoulder to shoulder and the pain like burning hot needles stabbing me to death, weak and delirious I can feel life leaving me. He reassures me, takes my readings, takes blood and reassures me again, things will be ok.

Back from his care I sit back in the waiting room, but first I need the toilet, 3 or 4 cubicles as everything else all heavily used and in high demand. Public toilets in the time of Modern Man no longer in abundance as people are deprived the dignity of been able to piss or shit away from home, another task that doesn’t make a profit so falls to extinction, that reflects the spirit of society, to wealthy to shit.

The toiler door opens, a man warns me, “you might want to wait for the next one as this one’s disgusting”, I look inside, piss on the floor shit on the seat, I take his advice and wait for the next one.

Another person says “that one’s empty but I wouldn’t use it”, I look inside, part illuminated with the purple light as are all public toilets, to discourage the drug abuser injecting heroin or whatever else they inject as the purple light stops them from seeing a vein, the same light now on public transport can be seen weaving across the city at night. On the floor what looks like dark water, its blood, with the door wide open and the light from the corridor coming through its definitely blood, a pool of it near the toilet, smudged in handprints then on the wall, on the tap around the sink, tissue smeared and ripped dots around the floor.

So as the rest of the people do, I wait, this time for the next toilet to come available, another user is not so picky or just too desperate to relieve themselves and just goes in, despite the blood and filth.

I’m back in the waiting room now and am quickly called again and sent through to the next area.

Now I know I must be sick as at this point the process is very quick it’s just a shame its 4 hours late, a shame its 3 weeks late, a shame its years late, my cyst so easily removed as planned day visit.

I am sent through to the registrar, a friendly but stern white woman with a Scottish accent, I ask her “am I going to die?” As by now I feel like life is fast leaving me. She reassures me “no, we can treat this, no.” I am relieved. She says I would be going straight to theatre had I not eaten a stick of kit kat in the waiting room, something I immediately regretted.

After that I am quickly put on a drip of I assume antibiotics, sat in an empty room now with drip in arm I feel kind of shell shocked, a friendly porter with an eastern European accent comes and chats with me, reassuring me that I’ll be moved to a ward soon.

The friendly Doctor I had first seen has come back to find me, he has my bloods back and wanted to see for himself that I was now on a drip, he asks me if I’m ok and says I’ll start getting better soon. He as all the staff in all settings it seems is very competent and caring, it’s clear they are just under resourced.

The porter comes back for me and gathers a group of other patients and we all make our way to the lifts and the ward where I am informed I will be staying overnight.

I have never been so relieved to be in the hands of these people, medical professionals at the front line of care and hope, our NHS, battered and bruised but still functioning.

They check me in to my ward and I enter a room with four beds, I am shown to a bed which becomes my own and sit on it. I look around the room, the bed next to me is empty but someone’s things are around it, next to that is the window, we are now high up in the building and from my bed I can see a view which extends without obstruction to the waters of the Humber and beyond. Opposite me is another bed and on it lays an thin old man, frail and narrow in face and body, he smiles and gestures to me, I smile back and say hello.

Diagonally across from me is another bed and patient next to the window, he is curtained around, the thin curtain frame which can be pulled around all beds and divide us if needed.

The nurse comes to see me, checks my drip and antibiotics a dyed red head woman, young and friendly in stark contrast to the sickness on the ward, she is life and the beds are death.

Another nurse comes by and explains I am on a strong course of antibiotics which will be administered through the night until my operation tomorrow, my face is red and swollen and I still feel ill and getting worse, I zone out in withdrawn silence.

A young man is pushed into the room on a bed, drowsy and out of it he has just come back I would learn from an operation on his finger. He is young say 20 or so, his mum is next to him and the nurses are trying to help him but I assume from the drugs or anesthetic he is a little out of it and is just plenty angry as he wants to go home and yet they are saying he has to stay until he has been to the toilet and had something to eat and drink.

The beds rotate as the patient in the opposite corner is taken away.

The young man next to me is growing more and more impatient and vulgar in his attitude to the staff and his mother as he wants to go home now, after several arguments he decides to discharge himself and leaves with his mother. The sleep induced anesthetic seems to have brought about his core character which is that of a petulant brat. He leaves and the commotion and conflict that surrounds him leaves to, the room is now peaceful with me and the old man opposite me the only patients left in it.

Another patient arrives and is placed in the bed next to me. An old man with digestive issues he is bloated I would learn and can’t pass wind. This guys a real talker and soon drifts around the room and then the ward looking for an audience, he can’t be that sick I consider.

The catering trolley makes its rounds, headed professionally by a friendly Indonesian looking man with a leather flat cap of sorts, as he makes his way round each and every patient making them feel human in this place away from home and to people feeling distant from self. As he asks if you want a meal or a sandwich, a tea or coffee, water or juice, I opt for the hot meal of the day, mash potato vegetables and beef in gravy, sponge pudding with custard and a cup of tea all served by this kind and thoughtful man in his days’ work another integral part of the team, none can function without the other.

After tea its visiting hours, my wife, daughter and mother in law all come to visit me, they are pretty emotional as I am looking worse for wear, they bring the usual welcome gifts of Lucozade, a wash bag, pajamas and clean clothes. I’m grateful to see them but feel to sick to make dialogue.

After visiting hours its hot and I ‘m and burning up, a team of 2 orderlies, both women late middle age 50’s white, English overweight, down to earth direct and helpful they come by to treat the man opposite and see that he keeps staring and smiling at me. They pull the curtains and change his urine bag, try and get him to drink and generally care for him. Looking at me one orderly can see how red I am and hot and gratefully she asks me if I would like to be switched beds and put by the window in the opposite corner which I gladly accept. I sit in the chair next to my bed whilst the two orderlies roll my bed across the room to its new position by the window. I crack the window open and am greeted with a welcoming breeze, real fresh air, I instantly feel cleaner.

If you have ever spent the night on hospital ward it’s a fair shock to the system, not unpleasant other than your illness and certainly nothing to complain about knowing that all around you there are other people critically ill and dying. For me the Children’s ward always comes to mind when in hospital, thinking of all the kids up on their floor facing their daily challenges makes me always dig in and not feel sorry for myself. The things some of those kids have faced and continue to face should ensure anyone who thinks themselves an adult, fear nothing in front of them.

For me it’s the sudden detachment from normal life, not away in the comfort of a hotel out of choice for work or pleasure but to suddenly to be plunged into no control, at the mercy of the healthcare systems treatment and skill, it really brought home to me the concept of faith and how important this is. Faith in your fellow human and the kindness and skill of others to deliver you better, to recovery, suddenly you have this task to overcome that is so critical to moving forwards that continuing with the present rests on its outcome. Gratefully I have only spent 3 nights in the hospital including this night, both stays at Hull Royal Infirmary and both would leave me with a period of reflection on life and what is important to me of it. The first time many years before at 22 or 23 a broken jaw “welcome to Hull” following a night out drinking around the town and a subsequent mass beating, thinking myself lucky to be alive with the toughest bone in the human body snapped like a twig I recall looking from the window of this or a similar floor height at the line of cars snaking its way across the city in the morning traffic and considering how meaningless the day to day problems of work and other people can be. The pressures of bills and debts, the fickle wants and desires for a new bit of clothing or the latest gadget and how shallow these needs and problems are compared to the real problem of health, of life or death of yourself or a loved one. It made all other thing pale away to insignificance.

I recall the ward that night of my first visit now so long ago 16 or 17 years passed, the other patients suffering from throat cancer of one form or another, through the night hearing the distant gargle and struggle for breath of a patient recently back from surgery as tar and phlegm from his lungs kept causing him to choke, caused in most cases by years of smoking. The next day a conversation with one old man opposite me who had regretted a lifetime of smoking as he now faced a throat operation which would render him unable to speak and suffering the same as the man the night before. Maybe as it was his last day of talking or maybe it was just the nerves, but he conversed with me and I listened in silence, my own face fat and swollen from the broken bone and flesh within silent to his words but listening still, I always will remember him saying about all the times he smoked and despite the warnings he never thought it would come to this, not to him and how he now regretted each and every last drag. Causality cruelly dealt at his own hand by his own habit and desire or at least doing what he thought he desired, but in truth bound by nicotine & habitual addiction. Later that night I recall as he arrived back on the ward post operation and began the same struggle of breath as the man the night before, as his lungs rattled and his fight for air & life waged, the sound of panic in his breath waiting seconds for the nurses to treat him as they did throughout that night. As I waited for my own operation the following day the lessons learned from the night I took with me and they lasted for a time. When I got out and recovered I pledged to eat healthier food and stopped my on of habit of smoking but over time the lesson fades and years on I had found myself back onto the path of self-destruction the direction of modern man.

Now on this visit I would learn a different lesson, as the following day another patient would be brought in with same bloated stomach and trapped wind, unable to pass water. Both men relatively early into their old age but having clear signs of a life well lived, large beer bellies and fat, their condition highly likely linked to lifestyle, a lifestyle of work and excess and little self-control and if I don’t change my own ways, I will undoubtedly be on the same path as them, with a similar or worse fate?

Yet there too was the old man on the ward, who had lived a long life, a clean life, the now frail skinny old man who was well into the depths of old age, a school teacher he told me, he still had a glimmer of light in the eye indicating the man he once was, ruined in his temple of ageing biological decay. Fate which none can escape. I remember thinking him reminding me of a canary, as he stayed there on the ward repeating desperately that he just wanted to go home. Long into his stay on the ward a week, two, three, longer? He now confined to this room on this ward, his final days, meeting new faces that passed through each day as his dignity gradually falls away. He longed for sympathy, for help as the nurses and orderlies cared for him with his basic bodily functions failing him, yet still life waged strongly within him, his urine and defecation letting down his will. In the night I couldn’t sleep and I could hear him rambling to himself up and awake the energy of madness I assume Alzheimer’s setting in clouding him mind and being with spats of normality between, I could hear him close to me, the curtain drawn dividing our now neighboring beds, his breath and his presence felt just behind the fabric, until like a the jump scene in a horror movie he suddenly appear at the side of me passed the gap in the curtain. Thankfully prepared for his presence but still startled, I say hello and ask him kindly to go back to his bed, he just stops and stares at me, right in the eye, caught in a trance of concentration, frozen still and then as quickly as he appeared to me, he moves and turns and walks straight towards the new guy in the bed opposite me who is unaware of his investigative presence as he hovers around his bed as he sleeps. The sound of an orderly breaks the silence of the night as they usher the old man “john” to back to his bed.

Later that night, at its darkest time just before the dawn, I was laid wide awake, my birthday 22nd January 2020, just turned 38 and my life hangs in the balance, unable to lay on my back and get comfortable I had spent the night in and out of light sleep. I sat up and looked out of the window at the city below, illuminated by street lights. The occasional flashing of blue lights as another ambulance made its way up the street and turned into the road of the hospital. Life in the city silent compared to day but never fully still, basked in the yellow hue of street lights the only experience of night known to the eyes and minds of Modern Man. Across from the hospital rows of high rise flats of concrete and cladding another of the citys council estates, the inhumanity of human life stacked and rowed from ground to sky in social depravity, I look on across the city as the first light of dawn breaks the darkness, a fine mist rolls in with the light that creeps into the space between places weaving itself between the tower blocks, reflected in the street lights below, a new dawn. A somber time of personal reflection basking in the beauty of life and the new day, awake in the present, the mist and the light as the sun arose and flooded the darkness, the crispness of the morning felt through the small opening of the window next to my bed and fresh air as it flowed through the gap. Watching the city gradually come again to life as the noise of bus engines whirl and pistons hiss, more and more people emerge from the blocks of flats and houses between heading to innumerable places of work and the activities of the new day, more and more cars enter the roads. In the hospital grounds below JCB’s come to life in the surrounds of the site fencing and commence digging and scraping as trucks roll in to be filled, the whirl of sirens erupts across the city as emergency services begin to cut their way through the building morning traffic as more and more blue lights head towards the hospital, LIFE. In my inaction, bound to the bed by illness I witness the lives of modern man in the present day, itself soon consigned to history.

On the ward lights come on as the nurses and orderlies make their rounds, curtains pulled back and morning calls, urine changes and toilet breaks, I rise early and head toward the shower room, under the warm water of the shower head I’m re born to the day, re born to life it feels, as the antibiotics have started to win the war being fought within me, the war for life against death, my cells ward of bacteria and virus that my unconscious life system wage within me. Clean and fresh and back on the ward the staff have changed over and some faces of yesterday are back again, a new nurse this time changes my antibiotics, a middle aged friendly Thai women with an excellent bed side manner, enough to lift the spirit of all, the busy and friendly orderlies, the same food server with his friendly demeanor and leather cap, makes the rounds once again for the breakfast run of tea, coffee and toast, at this point and since tea time the night before I am nil by mouth so I politely decline. He says he will bring me back a sandwich later on for when I can eat again.

The cleaner arrives in the room for bed change, an old white English woman who must be close to retirement herself yet faces a mammoth task to fill as she asks the sick to take a chair so she can change sheet and pillows and clean surfaces, she expertly works her way through the room, sweat on her brow, this brave women on close to minimum wage she doesn’t get paid enough for what she’s doing she vents, I suggest she needs a hand which she agrees but she is paid through an agency and they take the rewards, there’s no money for her wage never mind another cleaner.

The old man John gets washed and changed by the orderly nurses once again, my drip bag is changed too as it has been every two hours throughout the night.

A new patient is brought in also with stomach bloating, a white English man in his 60’s he is clearly pretty worried and settles on his bed. The nurses & doctor quickly attend with curtain drawn round and insert a stomach drain, as we hear the man wretch and writhe as this alien device is fitted within him. When the curtains are drawn back and the medical team have left he starts to chat with the rest of the room, now having a tube coming from his nose which transfers liquid from his stomach into a bag at the side of him. He had asked if he could drink tea and the nurse had said a little if you need to just too wet your mouth, later he drank a cup of light brown milky tea and as he drank the tea came back out of his nose into the bag, the nurse explained what had happened to his tea and he looked quit saddened at his situation.

Mid-morning the head Doctor of the ward made his rounds, an older gentlemen of Indian appearance and accent, he the medical maestro with an entourage of younger doctors & surgeons as on medical tv shows, doing the rounds visiting the beds of each patient in the room. Friendly, yet purposefully, interrogating each patient and instructing treatment. It comes to my turn I take of my tea shirt and turn around showing him my infected cyst, “do you have diabetes” he enquires? I reply “no doctor” he explains that this type of thing is usually the side affect of a patient with diabetes. They discuss the surgery what will happen that they will open my wound and extract the infection, run tests on the bacteria and then clean the wound out with a wash of some kind that will kill any remaining bacteria, the wound I was advised would have to remain open afterwards to ensure it heals correctly but I should be on my way home by tea time that day. That is unless any other patients arrive.

I sit and wait in the room with the now 4 patients myself included and we all began to chat, the difference 20 years makes, me approaching 40 and the two men with bloated stomachs at 60 and then John at a guess approaching 80. In his moments of clarity he told me he had been a teacher, a good teacher, he pleaded with me that he just wanted to go home, “why” he said “wont they let me leave"? The first of the bloated men the one who seemed excited to be there and perhaps not as sick as he had made out, he chatted with me constantly from the minute he arrived to the minute I left, when I ignored him or slept he would then be up and about, harmless but a nuisance in a capacity hospital and it seemed all he needed was company, an audience to see him and hear him, to feel connected. He told me he had been a trawler man all his life and his heart lived at sea, married and faithful to his one and only, he was now a widower to his beloved wife, who had succumb to cancer years before. The pain and grief still fresh as it always is, she the love of his life “was a good lass, the best of them” as his eyes welled with tears. He changing the subject & up again floating across the room like it was a stage and he in spotlight, trying to make light fun in a stern situation, no one laughing but sadly pacifying his gaze as much as could be allowed. The medical team it seemed has a six sense for the time wasters and the genuine needy and despite, I am sure, sympathizing with the man and his loneliness had a job to be done under strict timeline without needing the distraction of his one man comic tragedy.

The surgeon team come around again and speak with me saying it will be around late morning for my operation, the team of mixed sex, culture and ethnicity all together in the hospital connected by reason, empathy, intelligence, education and direction.

I sit and wait as the time goes by amongst the quietly dignified hustle and bustle of medical care that flows around me, a thousand footsteps and actions of care are enacted as a counter measure to human suffering in this place on every floor in every room, someone contributes to human goodness.

Then finally it’s my time, two petite female orderlies of Chinese or Asian descent come to collect me and roll me away on a bed out of the room into the corridor and into the small lift to surgery. The nerves build, be brave, I think of all the sick kids going through worse in the children’s ward both now and before, be brave, as we make our way along the empty access corridors of the surgery department. Then into the pre op room, the nerves build, the two women make friendly small talk with me, one has a note pad and is taking notes a shopping list she says to her colleague. On the wall a tv plays of morning television, living without a spouse is the story, gulp, I ignore the tv, instinctively one of the nurses changes the channel. The double doors open and another patient is rolled in, on the bed next to me a man a similar age to my own, I have a beard we talk beards, he is friendly asks me what I’m in for and I briefly explain and you I ask him? A former soldier he lost his leg and is having one of many surgeries’ to heal him, good luck, we exchange well wishes as he is rolled to surgery and I to mine.

Through another set of double doors into a white room, a nurse and a tall white German doctor, at least he sounds German. He introduces himself, he is the anesthetist, they get me ready and in position for surgery, I’m nervous, frightened, be brave I tell myself, doubts creep in to mind, have faith! At this point that’s all there is, faith, as you volunteer your life up to hands of the anesthetist and the surgery team, Faith, laid on my side with my back exposed, he explains the process, a stern face he looks deep in concentration, you just count to ten as the mask goes over my mouth and nose, 1..2..3…………..

I am woken by a different nurse in another room, this room has high rectangular windows and I can see sunlight beaming in, its bright, the nurse is in front of me trying to get my attention, a kindly gesturing voice telling me to wake up, I struggle, its warm and soft in the depth of sleep in the retreat of nothingness and hard to rouse from. Lee wake up the nurses voice calls again, across from me another patient is been awakened “Doreen wake up” I giggle to myself a tv advert springs to mind shh Doreens having her Soreen, I wake from surgery and ringing in my mind now is an advert for malt loaf from my childhood, I don’t even eat malt loaf! Strangely I laugh out loud and repeat the advert to the nurse “sshh Doreens having her Soreen” the nurse laughs, I’m just out of it and still chuckling to myself, the hidden power of advertisement. What was your first thought as you came back to consciousness or last thought leaving this life? What a great mystery! The face of a loved one, the bright white light, No, no its none of that, its a catchy TV advertisment theme tune or catch phrase, the reflection of life lived in the times of Modern Man. The nurse then stays with me as I am returned to ward. I sleep it off in the afternoon and wake a few hours later.

When I wake on my bedside table is a sandwich and a drink left for me I assume by the leather hat food guy, I am grateful, as with everyone I met in the hospital all are thoughtful and helpful. I sit and wait, no longer on the drip and back dressed another nurse comes to see me and advises that the post-surgery team should be around soon to see me and explain what happened & discharge me. I sleep some more and hours pass. I chat with the other patients in the room, the lonely old man now has a visitor from a young friend or relative, they seem please for me that I am fixed. The nurse comes back and is surprised I am still there, she rings around and says the post-surgery meeting won’t be happening now as they are busy, they obviously need my bed too as the influx of patients continues as it must every day. The nurse packs me with some dressings and advises me to ring the district nurse when I get home to arrange aftercare. I head home with round well wishes from my fellow one night roommates. I am pleased to be heading out but the only thing that is sad is seeing the old school teacher John still trapped in purgatory, needing more social care than hospital care, again he reminds me again of a canary in a cage.

Despite the now dilapidated Hospital which opened 53 years ago in 1967, clean but clearly aged and in need of a new structure. The new designed with modern medical, scientific & technological knowledge and capability in effect, along with meeting the demands of society considered within the building fabric. Thankfully despite being under resourced & damaged by years of Austerity the NHS still exists and in January 2020 following my sickness of the super cold, or what I would later consider possibly the effects of the virus at the start of the first wave? I was able to drive to the hospital and receive the health care I so desperately needed. No questions asked, no insurance or ID checks, as Infection was overcoming me, I was gifted this emergency treatment, a dose of strong antibiotics and operation, a few months of healing and aftercare and thankfully I had survived for me and my family all is not lost. The people of this NHS, the multi diverse convergence of humanity from all nations, of all races & cultures, meeting at this institution of care giving, each and every one working under tough conditions, doing there bit treating people, the individuals of society when they are most in need and I was grateful to all of them as are so many before then and after.

As I left the hospital that night, across in China the city of Wuhan had officially entered lockdown, but I suspect, in this new world of hyper connectivity, the virus was already amongst us.