Bed Pans And Broomsticks

Healthcare is always a hot issue, and this week I’ve been taking the temperature at the special invitation of Jill Duckworth, Communications Manager at the Sappington Bounce NHS Trust. Jill was so taken with my al fresco sleepover in Victoria Park last month that she invited me to repeat the experience, only this time I’d be spending three nights in the hospital’s Tahiti Ward.

Arriving first thing Monday morning with a suitcase full of bare essentials my first question is – where am I going to sleep? An awkward one this, since Jill has been rushed away unexpectedly, and it’s all systems go on the ward. Undaunted, I volunteer to crash in the intensive care unit, which turns out to be the only spare bed in the entire hospital.

It’s a long way from Tahiti, but this will do. While unpacking my golf clubs I get talking to Dave, one of the hospital porters, who challenges me to a round, before lamenting that he’s “wheeled out three stiffs already” this week. If Dave was in Iraq they’d give him a medal, but here he’s just another unsung hero on the front line of patient care.

Unlike the hospital’s valiant doctors and nurses my job description this week is far more mundane, although no less important. I begin by shadowing Glenda, a hospital cleaner with 20 years' experience, who swears blind she was born with a mop in her hand. As we begin chatting I figure Glenda must be sitting on a wealth of untapped insights. What does this hard-working hygiene consultant make of the dreaded MRSA virus?

Glenda’s response, when it finally arrives, is like a breath of fresh air: “I just mop up the shit.”

Private sector cleaning companies have copped no end of flak for the lacklustre state of this country’s hospitals, but if Glenda’s sterling work is anything to go by hygiene should be the least of our worries. It’s such a revelation to see pile after pile of human excreta being systematically intercepted and then safely disposed of. After our mid-afternoon tea break Glenda and I swap roles, with me on the mop this time, and her on the bucket. We make a good team until I accidentally catapult a pile of vomit onto the ceiling (don’t ask how!) Time to call it a day.

The next morning I emerge from my intensive care suite rested and rearing to go. Jill arrives looking flustered: it’s been a bad night. A motorway pile up on the M27 has left a couple dead and their five-year-old son in a critical condition. Since there were no intensive care beds available at Sappington, the child had to be airlifted to a hospital on the outskirts of London, some 120 miles away, even though the accident took place a mere two miles down the road. It’s a cruel irony that speaks volumes about the way in which resources are currently being stretched in the NHS.

About time we thrashed out the day’s agenda (thankfully no more mops) and a scheduled visit by a DUFFF delegation of nodal facilitators and para-meta-linguistic design strategy consultants. Although still relatively unknown to the wider public, this type of partnership is typical of the way in which the NHS is adapting to the new challenges of 21st century healthcare. In an era in which a staggering 90% of terminally ill patients are diagnosed with a terminal illness, DUFFF is helping to radically alter perceptions. “With so many people wasting away on hospital wards,” Jill says, “isn’t it about time we started thinking creatively?”

Jill's clearly been on the brain juice. This isn’t just a question of alternative therapies – although of course homeopathic treatments have never been as popular as they are today. Instead, it’s more about turning the situation around and asking: “Am I really ill?”

Take Page 3, DUFFF’s resident artist. A deaf mute anarchist since birth, Page defied the medical establishment by opting for a career as a spontaneous bowel evacuation performance artist. Riana Baker, Page’s agent, recalls how the biggest hurdle lay in convincing Page that there was nothing actually wrong with her. “It took some doing,” says Riana, “but once the circus bookings started coming in there was no stopping her.”

So what hope the patients on Tahiti Ward might be able to harness the creative potential of their illnesses? Bill is a 53-year-old window cleaner who fell off a ladder while reaching for his shammy leather, and who now may never walk again. Would he ever consider performance art as a means of overcoming his handicap? “I suppose if they gave me enough injections I could fall off the ladder again,” says Bill. “Or they could drop you onto a trampoline,” suggests Peter, a former tax inspector suffering from chronic honky instep. “They could set fire to me for all I care,” he adds sourly. “Since my wife ran off with a landscape gardener life’s not been worth living.” I pass Peter’s details on to Riana.

The day ends with an exhilarating performance by Page 3, who sprays the ward with faeces. The patients are so enthused that they even get a Mexican wave started (apologies to the lady with her arms in plaster). That’s the spirit - laughing in a shitstorm shows the true potential of cognitive therapy. Even the nurses join in. “I never imagined doing a pooh could be so artistic,” says Pam (pictured, with some of Page’s work, bottom right). Nor did I. Time to reach for that mop again.

To find out more about DUFFF visit The Right Path Party.

(Originally published 20 July 2007)

I Won't Let Rail Fail Us Again

In light of the latest train tragedy, I have been impelled to rejig the Right Path Party's transport policies. I can remember British Rail. We didn't have any deaths on the long, undercrowded carriages; but neither did we have microwaves on board, continental snacks, sliding doors or comfortable seats in bright colours.

Previously, I had thought that encouraging the private sector to invest in railways would be a good way of encouraging women and the elderly to kick off their shoes and flop aboard a growth sector. In my wackier moments I even thought that it might help us reduce noxious emissions that harm the air we breathe.

But that was then.

With the death, nay murder in Cumbria of that 84-year-old woman, even the sterling work of Sir Richard Branson must be brought into question. As ever, it's a state-owned company, Network Rail, that is to blame for this killing (as Sir Richard so rightly implied during his state visit to the carnage); but it must be observed that the train fell off the track: the points may have failed but so have the trains themselves.

We need to look to open skies for better, more reliable and affordable forms of transport. That's where there's more room and where science is leading us. Sadly, the steam train, that great tribute to Victorian engineering, has been replaced by these fibreglass accordians. It is time, wistful nostalgia aside, to move on to transport pastures new. Maybe then we can stop the slaughter of innocent commuters and their elderly relatives.

The Right Path Party is now committed to ending the rail-life lottery by investing in the scientific solutions to our transport problems on this crowded island. Needless to say, our forthcoming brochure on immigration will also convince the right people of what needs to be done to ease the congestion on our roads, in our hospitals, OAP resorts and schools. Vote RPP!

Don't carry on up the Khyber Pass

VC Tom Graham's Tale of the Afghan War is unequivocal. Afghans, be they Pashto, Dari, Uzbek or the other lot, are savages. In his prescient tome, Graham accounts for the deadly excesses of the natives against the allied forces seeking to bring security and freedom to this godforsaken land.

It is irrelevant that this book was published more than 100 years ago, because the same bloody-minded determination to subvert justice and morality continues, to this day, from Kabul to Kandahar and up to Mazar-e-Sharif. I write this in anger after just learning that another suicide bomber has detonated his sixpack all over Bagram airport - the only import-export facility in the region. Our forces don't need this, especially when they are trying their damndest to put on a concert party dedicated to the life of Billy Dainty.

My own Great-Great Uncle, Horatio McClintock, also got involved in Afghanistan, but his diaries wistfully recount how he should have joined the exodus to South Africa like his agriculturally-minded brethren. Sadly, Horatio was gored to death by an angry hypnotist in Kabul in 1920 after his magic school went belly up.

Anyway, one of the few traits I share with the Rt. Hon. Anthony Blair MP is my passion for humanitarian intervention: the Bosnians needed it; the Kosovars needed it; the North Koreans still need it. Hell, even the Iraqis needed it (and the Iranians too!). But history shows us Afghanistan is not worth bothering with (and it's not even a country). When we bombed the Afghan lands back to the Dark Ages after 9/11 it should have been job done and get out. Dead or alive, Bin Ladin was operationally crippled despite the persistence of his jihadi PR campaign. But today you can't buy a poppy in Hemel Hempstead without being pounced on by the Drugs Squad.

As the Afghan's own saying goes: "Never do a deal with a man who can't spell business." Which just goes to show you’d need more than a Victoria Cross if you ever quelled these natives. Redeploy from Helmand Province, leave Musharraf to shore up the Durrand Line and let the tribes take care of their own business. And that's an order!

(Originally published 28 February 2007)