"Why haven't you applied for the Oncology job?"
"I don't want to." I can't deal with the emotional drain but I'm damned if I'm going to tell anyone that.
"Why not?"
"Honestly, it's not my kind of thing."
"Why not?" Here we go again. Deep breath Ravens.
"The fact that I fail to meet the three main criteria for the role might explain my reluctance to apply for it." Coupled with the fact that five of the current applicants have been there for 20 years, are keen to move up the fireman's pole and are nowhere near as cunning as I am clinches it for me. There's even a tray of cupcakes bet on the outcome. Yet her next statement made me bang my beak on the desk.
"You could learn."
"Not by tomorrow night I couldn't!"
"Well, I think you should show willing if you want a career here. You really must try harder." I heard the click of her heels all the way back to the stairwell where the carpet starts again.
"Indeed I must." But the thought of wasting valuable sunshine hours applying for a job I don't want and am unqualified to do fills me with dread. So I went back to the mountain of filing left by my apparent job-share partner MoBo who's so Raven, she keeps a pen stuck through her bun.
And I've developed an unhealthy fascination with some of the photos we get back from theatre. Yesterday I picked up an A4 sized graphic image created by an endoscope and wafted it in Nurse Volvo's direction.
"Wassat?" We've developed a guessing game akin to Anatomy for Dummies.
"Who's the consultant?" I divulged his name.
"Orthopaedics then." She nodded.
"Can you see the bone?" Yep ... it's a patella.
"Gristle in fluid. Got to be a knee arthroscopy."
"Y'know if you worked a bit harder, you could retrain as a nurse?"
"Thanks but no." Secretly, I'm working really hard on early retirement to the Caribbean Island where they film Death in Paradise with Ben Miller in a suit. And after seeing Alex Kingston on Dr Who the other week, I want whatever she's been drinking.
I find it really odd in an age where technology allows us to see inside the human body yet we're still using the same audio typing machines I trained on in college to send letters on paper from one consultant to another. I suppose it stops information going astray or worse, being hacked, but the process is still time consuming and increasingly complicated. I've been specialising in Orthopaedic clinics lately; a far cry from the 1970s when I learned the QWERTY keyboard on an Imperial manual typewriter and I've got the claws to prove it. I had my first taste of medical work in the 1980s when I was skint [yes, again] and temped in the local NHS typing pool. There were four of us hammering away on electronic machines in a draughty office where a steam-driven IBM word processor sat unused in the corner. It was the ultimate domain of the office management, a portly woman who also held an invisible job. We were all equally baffled by her ability to have meetings yet achieve little or nothing. One morning she sidled up to me saying,
"You've been working really hard lately and the consultants are very pleased with your output."
"Really? Thanks." Wait for it.
"So I've decided to give you one of my tapes. It's really urgent so you can use the word processor." The initial excitement was tinged with dread as I hauled myself over to the chair and waited for the lights to dim as I switched it on. Oh, the tape started well enough.
"Blah, blah, letter to so-and-so a couple of times, then next please on a separate sheet ...
Two pounds of potatoes
Green Beans
Cornflakes - Kellogg's
Apples
A large bottle of Tizer
Spangles ..." Spangles?
The dozy woman had recorded her shopping list and expected me to type it up, and when I expressed my displeasure at this utterly menial task she snapped,
"You really must try harder if you ever want a permanent job in my department." I didn't, so moved swiftly on to typing tenders for Norwegian oil rigs and fell in love with an Italian engineer. Sadly, I should have tried harder with that one too.
Tip of the Blog: I've been searching through my school reports hoping to bury the myth that I don't work hard enough, so imagine my disappointment when most of the end-of-term missives read "Raven Must Try Harder." Yet when I arrived at GCE year, I trumped them all and got a Grade 1 in English Language. Not English Lit though; I didn't care what Brutus was thinking when he stabbed Julius Caesar in the back. With hindsight, perhaps I would have tried harder and paid attention during the performance at Stratford, had I known the young actor playing Cassius was called Patrick Stewart.
Tip Two: *I know we also have invisible management but I've never met them. They have offices with names on the door but I'm damned if I can work out exactly what role they fulfill. Must try harder to investigate, then I'll let you know.
Raven
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