Nursing literary ambitions

My short story Weekend On Call has just been published. I’m delighted for two reasons. First, this is the second of my short stories to be published this year – my story Eastgate Clock was published in the March issue of Firewords magazine. Second, Weekend On Call was shortlisted for the Bridport Short Story Prize last year but didn’t make it through to the final selection. However, I then discovered it had been longlisted for the 2021 Bournemouth Writing Prize and was subsequently selected to be included in The Waves of Change, an anthology of short stories and poetry published by Fresher Publishing. I’m looking forward to reading all the other contributions in the collection.

Weekend On Call is an entirely fictional account of a weekend in the life of a mental health nurse manager. The combination of an alcohol problem, work-related stress and difficulties in his marriage lead to a crisis, as he struggles with his own mental health while being expected to oversee the management of mental health services over the weekend period. In the story, the on-call manager recalls something he was told back when he first trained as a mental health nurse:

           Back inside the house, you put the bleep and the on-call mobile on the coffee table and sit in an armchair, in the dark. You notice you can’t stop crying. When you did your nurse training all those years ago, you remember someone saying that to work in mental health you had to be ‘okay in yourself’. What did that mean? That you had to have good mental health in your own right? That you had to have a stable home life, a secure relationship, a happy marriage?

The Waves of Change is a remarkably apt title from my point of view. By a strange quirk the book's publication coincides with my decision not to renew my registration as a mental health nurse. I retired from the NHS in 2016 (but maintained my professional registration as I then began a second career as a senior lecturer in mental health nursing.) When my late wife became terminally ill I decided to retire from nurse education, ultimately becoming her full-time carer. Waves of Change indeed – retirement followed by widowerhood. But it is only now, as my professional registration comes up for renewal, that I am finally, officially un-becoming a registered nurse. I began my nurse training in 1983 so there hasn’t been a time in the past 38 years when I haven’t considered myself involved in mental health nursing. 

Relinquishing my nurse registration could be seen as another major life event and another loss. In one way I do feel like I’m surrendering a major part of who I am, but I’m considering it an opportunity to become something else. Now, having retired twice, I feel it’s time to let go of nursing and to focus more on my other lifelong interests – writing and music. That’s why it’s so good to have some of my fiction published this year. And so I begin my third career – this time as a full-time writer and musician. It sounds, somehow, so much more interesting than ‘retired mental health nurse’.   

The Waves of Change is published by Fresher Publishing and is available from all good bookstores.

This blog post is published simultaneously on my other blog: Tony Gillam on Creativity, Wellbeing and Mental Health 

From wistful synth-pop to masterful folk – Celebrating Worcester's Huntingdon Hall

One of my favourite live music venues is Worcester's Huntingdon Hall - a former 18th century Methodist chapel which continues to play host to an eclectic array of artists. Over the years, I’ve seen guitar wizards like Gordon Giltrap and Eduardo Nuebla, singer-songwriter Dean Friedman and prog-folk legends like Focus, The Strawbs, Magna Carta and Caravan. (Many of these shows are memorialised here on this very blog. Just use the ‘search’ button to revisit those.)

Now that live shows are getting going again I’ve been tempted back twice to Huntingdon Hall in the last two months. In October I saw – for the second time – eighties synth-pop balladeers China Crisis. I’d last seen them here almost exactly two years previously, and that earlier gig is poignantly memorable for being the last live concert that I ever went to with my late wife. We had been pleasantly surprised both by the charming familiarity and warmth of the music and the hilarious banter of singer Gary Daly, whose wit is more entertaining than many a stand-up comedian. Songs like Christian, Wishful Thinking and Black Man Ray have an enduring wistfulness.

When I saw China Crisis again last month the music was every bit as uplifting and the repartee every bit as funny. When some audience members began to call out to him between songs, Gary responded: ‘Ah, audience interaction! We like that because, to be honest, for a minute I thought you were all f***ing dead.’

Fewer laughs were to be had at last week’s Martin Simpson gig. I’d last seen Martin Simpson at Huntingdon Hall in 2010. This distinctive English folk singer, guitarist and songwriter is now 68 years old but he continues to dazzle with his mellifluent guitar playing and unaffecting singing. There were one or two self-deprecating jokes but this is an artist who takes his art seriously and whose audience respect him for that. A subtle, occasional use of delay on the vocals was supplied by the sound engineer rather than pedals, causing a few in the audience to question their sanity. Highlights included a quasi-bluegrass version of Dylan’s Buckets of Rain and a moving rendition of Donal Óg (Young Donald) as well as Martin’s always touching tribute to his dad, Never Any Good.

From wistful synth-pop to masterful folk, we’re very blessed to have venues like Huntingdon Hall.

The Surprise and Delight of Music

The coffee house chain Starbucks used to have a set of idiosyncratic guiding principles which they felt set them apart from competitors. A bestselling book - The Starbucks Experience: Five Principles for Turning Ordinary into Extraordinary – extolled the virtues of these 'people-driven philosophies.' These included ideas like ‘everything matters’ and ‘leave your mark’, but the one that resonated most with me was something they called ‘surprise and delight’.

'Surprise and delight' is a marketing strategy that aims to attract and nurture customers and increase customer loyalty and engagement by providing unexpected rewards.  

I saw one example of this from the original source, as it were, in a Starbucks in Manhattan. It was a cold and wet February day and we had time to kill – we’d checked out of our hotel but it was too early to head back to the airport so we gratefully huddled in a corner of the café with our luggage and our two rather grumpy teenage children. I ordered coffee and paninis and was surprised – and, yes, I suppose, delighted – when the barista told me they had a selection of new cakes and pastries and asked if we’d like some free samples. She also presented us with complimentary cake-forks to keep as souvenirs. Word must have got around quickly as a steady stream of homeless people began to arrive, thankful for the generous offerings of free cake. It was heartening to see that the staff made the homeless customers just as welcome as the swanky businessmen who, with mobile phones and laptops, used the cafe as a remote office, answering emails, writing reports, even holding meetings with clients – all for the price of a cup of coffee. More than the free souvenir cake-forks, the staff’s attitude towards the less fortunate members of society surprised and delighted me.

Before you begin to suspect me of working for Starbucks, I should say, of course, that other coffee shops are available, absolutely. In fact, I prefer the coffee made by some of their competitors. But this isn’t really about coffee shops. Much as I like coffee and cake, my point is about the things in life that surprise and delight us and, for me, nothing does this more than music – shapeshifting, time-travelling music. Let me explain...

As a teenager I discovered the music of Scottish singer-songwriter Donovan. I had a budget-priced album of his which included a haunting track called ‘Donna, Donna’. When I started playing guitar myself this was one of the first songs I learnt. It's originally a Yiddish folk song about a calf being led to slaughter – an unlikely choice for Donovan to release as a single in 1965, (though Joan Baez had also released a version five years earlier.) I probably haven't heard the song for thirty years or more but, on a recent trip to Edinburgh, I happened upon a great little pub called The Captain’s Bar. Musicians were sitting outside at tables, taking turns to play and, though I had no instrument with me, I was welcomed and invited to join them. Various songs and tunes were performed and then one of them surprised and delighted me by singing ‘Donna, Donna’. I was instantly transported back to the thirteen-year-old me, getting to grips with that tricky A minor chord.

Cut to 1981. I'm living in Saint-Brieuc, Brittany, and browsing in a record shop. The sales assistant puts on an album and the music is – well, yes, surprising and delightful. I ask what the record is and it turns out it's the latest release by Breton folk-rock band Tri Yann, An heol a zo glaz. One track in particular, ‘Si mort a mors’, is so striking I immediately buy the album. I later learn the song is based on a poem written on the death of Duchess Anne of Brittany in 1514. I assume the tune is a traditional Breton one. More of this later.

Seventeen years after discovering the music of Tri Yann I made a nostalgic return trip to Brittany, now with wife and children in tow. We arrived in the pretty town of Dol-de-Bretagne on market day, just as the traders were setting up. One of them sold records and was playing a song which wafted across the square towards us. It was a heart-stopping moment, the music a fusion of Breton folk and hip-hop beats, the verses a rap in French and the chorus a stirring, vaguely familiar refrain. You guessed it – it surprised and delighted us so that when, later that week, we heard it playing as background music in a supermarket, I just had to ask someone what the record was so I could buy it. I accosted a teenager who helpfully told me it was a band called Manau. Heading for the CD section I discovered the song that was following us around was ‘La Tribu de Dana’ and had just topped the French charts. The irresistible and vaguely familiar chorus was a sampling of Breton harpist Alan Stivell’s 1970s folk-rock hit ‘Tri Martolod’.

One final example: I was recently listening to Mark Radcliffe's BBC Radio 2 Folk Show when his guests were Northern Irish trio, TRÚ. They selected a track by Skara Brae called ‘An Cailín Rua’. I instantly recognised the tune as ‘Si mort a mors’. A revelation. So, it seems, it's not a Breton song about Duchess Anne after all but, as was explained on the show, a love song about a red-haired girl, from the Donegal area! Well, okay, it’s both, since the tune is used to accompany two quite different lyrics.

Of course, it’s quite possible that Tri Yann borrowed the Donegal tune from Skara Brae, just as Donovan might have borrowed ‘Donna, Donna’ from Joan Baez, and Manau borrowed a chorus from Alan Stivell. But it all goes to show – never mind coffee and cakes; it’s music, with its unique ability to transform itself and transport us back and forth in time, that’s most likely to surprise and delight us.