A life in letters: Work - Law Hospital

I always associate Hoddit and Doddit with the summer of Puppy Love, when for several weeks Donny Osmond’s hit song, riding high in the charts was played endlessly on Radio One as we worked in the General Store. In fact, however, I made their acquaintance two years earlier, in July 1970 when I began my first job as a (very temporary) storeman at Law Hospital near Carluke in Lanarkshire, where I was also to work for the two subsequent summers

I took no initiative in arranging this holiday job – the opportunity was set up for me by my father who was a member of the hospital’s Board of Management, and the fact that I wasn’t filling in for staff on leave suggests that the post was simply created for me as a result of his influence. Unlike some of my former schoolmates, also employed at the hospital, who worked for the entire vocation, I was, at dad’s suggestion – which I never challenged - only there for four weeks. He thoughtfully wanted me to enjoy the rest of the summer, but my short-term status always made me feel inferior to those who were working right through until the week before the start of the university and college terms.

The General Store was part of a long, low building adjacent to the hospital Pharmacy. Immediately inside there was a fairly open area with a workbench; the rest of the room housed double-sided rows of stock-filled shelves. On a ledge inside the front door stood a large whisky bottle full of a brown fluid which I was reliably informed was cold tea, and a series of risqué postcards.

On my first morning, after the novelty of clocking in at the gatehouse, I was welcomed by the head storeman, a cheerful character who could on occasion be seen dancing elegantly round the floor in time to the music of an imaginary band, leading an invisible partner.  But my two closest workmates were Hoddit and Doddit, Willie Flanaghan and John Orr, their monikers derived from a phrase in Scots ‘You haud it an’ I’ll dod it.’  Certainly Willie, who was Hoddit was less likely to take the initiative than John. Initially I was puzzled by the fact that their commitment to storekeeping was such that it spilled over into their evenings and weekends until I realised that the Old Store which seemed so central to their lives was in fact a pub in Law Village where they both lived.

The work at the General Store involved receiving deliveries of incoming non-medical goods, and then organising their distribution around the wards. The earliest parts of Law Hospital had been erected during the Second World War: all the buildings were single-storey structures, and the hospital as a whole consisted of four blocks, each with a central corridor from which, on either side, the wards branched out. The administrative facilities – where the General Store was located - were grouped in the centre of the site, and to help with our deliveries around the extensive campus  we had a couple of push barrows, and a motorised trolley which you walked beside and guided by a tiller. (I quickly discovered that you could in fact kneel on this trolley and still manage to power up and steer it!)

On my first morning a huge cargo of toilet rolls in large cardboard boxes, arrived, completely filling up the available space in the store. The rest of the day was spent moving this paper mountain, delivering a month’s supply to each ward. And so, from day one, I christened our operation ‘the bumf brigade.’

Every two weeks, we’d strap a cumbersome wooden unit, about five feet in height, on the motorised trolley. On each side, were deep, subdivided shelves, and before leaving the store we’d fill these with different cleaning products – bleach, Brasso, glass cleaner, polish, dusters. These shelves were protected by rubber curtains fixed at the top of the wooden framework at each side, and weighted at the bottom so that they both concealed the stock on each shelf, and kept it from falling out. On top of the unit, we’d load large plastic buckets of cleaning fluid before setting off for the first of the wards.

Two of us would slowly make our way up the central corridor of each block with this cumbersome contraption, stopping at each ward entrance. Our arrival was expected, and as soon as we appeared, we’d be surrounded by a bustling group of cleaning ladies from the wards on either side shouting out their requirements. We’d supply their needs, keeping a note of what they’d taken, and it was as we were doing this that I realised there was another reason for the rubber curtains. They made it just a little more difficult for some of the cleaners to filch unauthorised supplies from our trolley while we were distracted by their vociferous colleagues. 

I remember on one disastrous occasion loading the buckets of cleaning fluid too high on top of the wooden unit. I was steering my trolley confidently into ‘C’ Block, when one of my buckets struck a plastic sign fixed to the ceiling, and fell to the corridor floor, bursting open, and deluging the vinyl with a torrent of golden gunge.

Another regular task was delivering beds to wards – the sisters (only one a male - I referred to him behind his back as 'Mister Sister' seemed to make a habit of urgently requiring to admit new patients just before it was time for me to clock off, and I had to set out hurriedly with my trolley to the bed store. This was on the remotest extremity of the campus, behind locked doors, off the ill-lit, dingy corridor leading from the Nurse’s Home, in a part of the hospital which had housed prisoners of war during WWII. The wards on either side, built of decaying red brick were graveyards of chairs and beds and screens shrouded in rust-streaked sheets. The eerie silent mustiness set your nerves on edge.

In one of these wards there was a haphazard collection of bits and pieces of bed: the challenge was to identify a set of bed parts which you could fit together, with the aid of a hammer if necessary, to form a robust whole, and then load it on the trolley and wheel it through one of the side doors into the welcoming sunshine before silence-induced panic overcame you. Then you’d deliver it to the ward where it was required. I don’t think in those days we ever heard of bed shortages – there always seemed to be room to shoehorn in one more patient.

I sometimes had occasion to visit the sewing room which was up the same corridor behind the Nurses’ Home. This was the workplace of a dozen or so ladies who spent the day sitting operating sewing machines – I presume repairing bed linen and white patient gowns - under the direction of a formidable supervisor with an impressive string of names, of which I can only remember four - Maria Theresa Donohue Johnston (but I suspect this esoteric nomenclature was a successful attempt to pull my ever-gullible leg.)

I imagine any interruptions to the dull sewing room routine were welcome and I found my habitual, defensive zaniness encouraged. I’d be invited to burst into song – perhaps my old stalwart ‘We were not born with true love to trifle’ from Gounod’s Faust declaimed with dramatic tunelessness, with the final ‘still on the bough is left a leaf of gold’ sustained much longer than was appropriate.

When it was wet we tried to stay in the Store as much as possibly, although we were provided with wellies and greatcoats for use should we need to venture outside. Indoor tasks included posting out replacement hearing aid batteries to folk who requested them, and stamping individual items of cutlery with one or other of the first four letters of the alphabet to indicate which of the hospital blocks they belonged to. Our days were enlivened by visits from colleagues who’d drop in, including eccentrics like the mortuary attendant who always appeared to have fresh blood stains on his white coat.

I remember the year of the Great Piano Bonfire. It seemed that the hospital had been in the habit of welcoming donations of ancient pianos without asking too many questions about their condition. As a result, the day-room in almost every ward cherished at least one decaying specimen from the late Victorian period, embellished with carvings and iron candle-holders. Visually these instruments retained something of their former grandeur, but their rusty strings were untuned, their keys stained and uneven. Management decided to wage war against the piano invasion, and we in the General Store were in the front line. 

I was on despatched in a van pulling a low trailer to round up these unwanted geriatrics. The colleague at the wheel was best known to the ward staff as the driver of ‘the meat wagon’ as the old ambulance which moved corpses from wards to the mortuary had been christened with typical hospital black humour. More than once, on arrival at a ward, we were pointed towards a bed where a still form lay beneath a white sheet rather than to the mouldering piano.

Once we’d collected a trailer-load of pianos, we’d drive them to a piece of waste land beside the POW block where we dumped them. It was decided that the funerary bonfire for these would take place one Saturday morning, and that overtime would be paid. I was asked if I would like to come in on the Saturday, but for some reason I declined. I don’t know whether I felt that Saturday should be my own after my week’s work, but even the lure of standing watching pianos being reduced to a pile of ash, the strings sheering in anguish from the white-hot iron frames and getting paid for it into the bargain was not enough to drag me back to the Store when my week’s work was finished. When I was adamant that I wasn’t going in, they looked at me, pityingly perhaps, and said ‘We only wanted to give you the chance to earn a bit more money.’

The other revealing episode centred on the boss’s request that I go across to the hospital canteen to buy him a packet of cigarettes. I refused to go, on the grounds, I suppose, that I didn’t believe in smoking, or that smoking was bad for you. The boss kindly sat me down, and gave me a gentle talk about the need to respect other people’s points of view, and to support them even though you didn’t necessarily agree with them. It was a valuable lesson for me, and I’m glad I wasn’t too proud to learn it. I went to the canteen and returned with a shrink-wrapped packet of Capstan.

At the end of each day at the hospital, I’d hang up my grey overall, and walk with the others to the gatehouse, where we’d clock out. Then I’d wander across to C Block, go in the side door, and make my way to dad’s small office – just big enough for a desk, two chairs, and an X-ray viewing box on a side table. There I’d wait until he’d finished work for the day, and he took me home.

(See here for my next post - as Trainee Librarian)