Oolite Bulletins

How might Four Yorkshiremen Medicos discuss their junior doctor years?



The Scene:

Four well-dressed men are sitting together at a vacation resort. ‘Farewell to Thee’ is played in the background on Hawaiian guitar



FIRST YORKSHIREMAN: Aye, very passable, that, very passable bit of risotto.

SECOND YORKSHIREMAN: Nothing like a good glass of Château de Chasselas, eh, Josiah?

THIRD YORKSHIREMAN: You’re right there, Obadiah.

FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN: Who’d have thought thirty year ago we’d all be sittin’ here drinking Château de Chasselas, eh?

FIRST YORKSHIREMAN: In them days we were just young interns, glad to be getting our first pay cheque

SECOND YORKSHIREMAN: Aye, we were paid a pittance, mind

FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN: Aye, I remember the more we worked, the less we got paid!

THIRD YORKSHIREMAN: Paid? I would’ve done it for free

SECOND YORKSHIREMAN: But you know, we were happy in those days, though we were poor.

FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:Because we were poor. My old Consultant used to say to me, “Money doesn’t buy you happiness, lad”.

FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN: Aye, ‘e was right.

FIRST YORKSHIREMAN: Aye, ‘e was.

FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN: I was happier then and I had nothin’. We used to live in this tiny old hospital flat with great big holes in the roof.

SECOND YORKSHIREMAN: Flat! You were lucky to live in a flat! We used to live in one room, all twenty-six of us, no furniture, ‘alf the floor was missing, and we were all ‘uddled together in one corner for fear of falling.

THIRD YORKSHIREMAN: Eh, you were lucky to have a room! We used to have to live in t’ corridor!

FIRST YORKSHIREMAN: Oh, we used to dream of livin’ in a corridor! Would ha’ been a palace to us. We used to sleep in the sharps bin!

FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN: Well, when I say ‘flat’ it was only a hole in the ground covered by a sheet of tarpaulin, but it was a flat to us.

SECOND YORKSHIREMAN: We were evicted from our ‘ole in the ground; we ‘ad to go and live in the sluice room. Every shift change we’d be woken up by the ward matron pouring a steaming pile of shite onto our heads.

THIRD YORKSHIREMAN: You were lucky to have a sluice! There were a hundred and fifty of us camping out in the ED.

FIRST YORKSHIREMAN: In the ED?

THIRD YORKSHIREMAN: Aye.

FIRST YORKSHIREMAN: You were lucky. At least you got to work when living in ED. On my surgical rotation we lived for three months in an occupied box in the Morgue. We used to have to get up at six in the morning, clean the corpses, eat a crust of stale bread, go to work in Theatre, fourteen hours a day, week-in week-out, for sixpence a week, and when we got back to the Morgue the senior Consultant would thrash us to sleep wi’ his belt.

SECOND YORKSHIREMAN: Luxury. We used to have to get out of the sluice at six o’clock in the morning, clean the toilet pans, eat a handful of ‘ot gravel, work twenty hour day on Geriatric ward for tuppence a month, come home, and Consultant would thrash us to sleep with a broken bottle…if we were lucky!

THIRD YORKSHIREMAN: Well, of course, we had it tough. We used to ‘ave to get up out of ED at twelve o’clock at night and lick the patients clean wit’ tongue. We had two bits of cold gravel, worked twenty-four hours a day in ED for sixpence every four years, and when we finished the Nurse Practitioner would slice us in two wit’ bread knife.

FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN: Right. I had to get up in the morning at ten o’clock at night half an hour before I went to bed, drink a cup of sulphuric acid, work twenty-nine hours a day in ICU, and pay that prick Monty Mythen [*] for permission to come to work….and when we finished, the Senior Reg would kill us and dance about on our graves singing Hallelujah….then defibrillate us and start all over again

FIRST YORKSHIREMAN: And you try and tell the young doctors of today that ….. they won’t believe you.

ALL: They won’t!

[*] with apologies to Monty Mythen – most definitely NOT a prick! Along with Mervyn Singer & Monty as supervisors, I was privileged to have one of the first ever rotations in anaesthesia/ICU as a house officer in UCL (tradition was for 6/12 medicine, 6/12 surgery rotations – I am grateful that my 6/12 surgery sentence was halved to 3/12 surgery and 3/12 anaes/ICU). Monty & co were great…I think I’ve managed to get most of the methylene blue out of my scrubs since…