Anthony Barker was a small man with a long straggly beard, glasses and a bow-tie. He was one of the most flamboyant figures at St George’s in the late 70s and early 80s. A surgeon by training, he was known as Dr Barker, because although he was a surgeon, he also had a MD. In […]
Archive | 1970s
Graduation Day
The last year at medical school was marked by a gathering sense of dread as Finals approached. Although we had had innumerable tests over the years, these were just way marks. Qualification rested entirely on the results of a heavy schedule of written and viva voce exams taken in late May and early June, and […]
Never work with children or animals
As soon as I finished my psychiatry attachment, my girlfriend and I got married. Obviously, Woolwich Town Hall first thing on a cold December morning would not be anyone’s idea of a nice day for a white wedding, but, like my grandfather’s funeral shortly before, we constructed a bespoke occasion that was congruent with the […]
Psychiatric Epiphany Part 3: The winter of discontent
Having decided to become a psychiatrist, I watched the autumn of 1978 fade into the notorious Winter of Discontent, the prelude to Margaret Thatcher’s first election victory. Leaving aside public sector strikes and severe cold weather, rather a lot of significant events in my life happened in the last three months of 1978. My long […]
Psychiatric Epiphany part 2: Formerly Surrey County Asylum
My wife has a habit of forgetting to tell me things. When she was at university, she neglected to tell me that her parents would be moving house before she came home for the holidays and I only found out by accident. She denies that this was an attempt to dump me and says she […]
Psychiatric Epiphany Part 1: Walking to Dartford Heath
When I was growing up, Bexley Hospital was the psychiatric facility for our part of London. “You belong in Bexley, you do!” was a regular childhood taunt. In 1968, when I was 12, my Auntie Peg was admitted to Bexley Hospital, where she was given a course of ECT and she was started on the […]
Freedom for Tooting Part 2: Desmond’s Hip City
At the start of the course, most of the medical students either lived in University Halls of Residence or, like me, with their parents. Over time, people drifted into shared flats clustered around the course of the Northern tube line through South West London. I had had enough of living at home, but I knew […]
Freedom for Tooting Part 1: The second worst job
I started the undergraduate clinical course at St George’s in September 1977, which necessitated a sensible haircut and the purchase of a tie. My grandmother bought me a stethoscope. We were provided with white coats that were the right size for nobody. Doctors’ ties and white coats were already known to be common vectors for […]
Northern Line Part 4. A bucketful of eels
During the two years that I attended King’s College London, I lived with my parents. Our relationship had been turbulent in my mid-teens. There had been pointless battles over hair and clothes, the common intergenerational battleground of the time. These things mattered to them because they retained a fierce working class pride. I thought that […]
Northern Line part 3 Skinhead Moonstomp revisited
My years at medical school coincided with a hugely exciting period in the history of British popular music. I was living and studying around central London, which was exactly the right place to be. Almost without effort, I saw many of the best and most exciting young bands when they were still on their way […]