Birthday blues

You're quite right Jenny (see comment on previous post), I have no real excuse for not blogging now. I can't blame lack of internet anymore, certainly - I suppose I've just got out of the habit. It is true however, that the past few weeks have been a whirlwind of training, working and snowboarding, so even when I have had time I must admit that the most I can do in the evenings is sit and stare at the telly like a zombie before crashing. It's pathetic. You'd think I'd never worked before!

So basically Isaac & I have both started work at our respective resorts, me at Cardrona and him at Treble Cone. In many ways I think I've got the better end of the deal, because Cardi is very similar to Sunshine in many ways, so it was easier to pick up for me, whereas TC has some fairly archaic systems. The ticket windows don't have computers, they sell pre-printed tickets by hand, which turns cashing up into a nightmare. It can take up to 3 hours for them to balance! I, in related news, was promoted during my training, when myself and an Aussie girl called Lisa were asked if we could help handle the 'money room'. Basically we have a woman called Margaret - English*, ex-banker - who handles all the money coming in and out for the whole mountain 2 days a week. The other 5 is now covered by Lisa & myself. It's nice to be trusted, and it's a bit more money, but it's also longer hours and very like being in an all-day maths class, which is hardly my idea of a relaxing time. Anyway. Treble Cone has more extreme terrain, whereas Cardi is more beginner/intermediate, so we get the lion's share of the family market. Plus we're between Wanaka & Queenstown, so we get people from both towns, whereas TC is a bit of a hike if you're not in Wanaka. We both work with some great people who we've been out with a few times, so that's nice, and working at both resorts means we get to play on both mountains. It's a good thing that Isaac's at TC really, as I'm rubbish on a snowboard at the moment and probably wouldn't be able to handle its steeps! We both get the opportunity to go on ride breaks most days, though I've realised that going for an hour by myself when I'm this new at it can actually be counter-productive, because I lose my confidence very quickly, so I don't go very often.

It was my birthday last week and I was working. I only had one card to open (thanks Toni!) in the morning and I had told Isaac not to buy me anything, since we were totally broke. However, getting up at 6.15am to make porridge before work, I suddenly, and without warning, burst into tears. Isaac naturally asked me what was wrong and I genuinely had no idea, but managed to blurt out "I don't WANT to be 35!" This pretty much set the tone for the day. I cried walking to the bus. I cried on the bus. I went for a ride break - just to be able to say I'd snowboarded on my birthday - and cried at how awful I was and how terrified I was at turning ('I know I've got to turn, I've got to turn, I've GOT to turn.....NO!' Cue falling over) and when I was asked to stay late AGAIN when everyone else was going home I ran off and cried in the stationary cupboard. I got dropped off by a bus driver who was heading up near where I live but he set me down in a road I was unfamiliar with and I got lost walking home, crying the whole way. A dog I passed in a garden went completely mental when he saw this howling figure! I made it home ahead of Isaac (the one and only time I have) and turned on the computer, only to see a whole load of happy birthday messages on my facebook, which made me howl even harder. Poor Isaac came back to find me in a heap on the sofa, sobbing my heart out. He was brilliant (as ever) - he hugged me, made me tea, listened to me wail for an hour about how awful I was at snowboarding and how I couldn't turn without falling over, gave me a present of a new jar of marmite and both a bought AND a homemade card (showing stick figures of us snowboarding together) and then took me out for dinner. We went to Amigos, the local mexican restaurant, for which we had a birthday voucher for $30, and the food was nice (I had a very bloody steak) but the service was TERRIBLE. It's a family-run restaurant, and they're very friendly, but the waiter that night was the owner's 13 year-old son, who slouches up to you and says in a bored voice 'Is everything alright with your meal?', which of course means 'Mum told me to ask you if everything's alright with your meal'. It took an hour to get our food after ordering and then we sat with dirty plates for so long that I eventually had to go up to the desk and ask them to clear our table. By this time I was so tired I was looking at my coat next to me on the bench and genuinely debating putting my head down and falling asleep. We ordered churros for dessert and ate them at breakneck speed before heading home - I'd barely made it through the door before I was undressing and falling into bed. So not a good day all round, and many apologies go out to the ever-lovely Isaac who had to put up with me being such awful company. The next day I woke up feeling fine! Go figure, as the Americans would say.

The following Tuesday we both had the day off so we decided to have birthday #2. After a leisurely morning, we headed up to Cardi and spent the afternoon working on getting me over my turning phobia. I even took a demo board out, the Rossignol Diva, which has some fancy serrated edge they called Magnetraction, which I was assured was like 'cheating' at turning. Fine with me! I loved the board and want one badly. We had a very good afternoon and, though I'm still by no means elegant on a board, I finally got the hang of turning (most of the time) without being terrified. Hurray! We had a great day, with my favourite, corned beef hash, for dinner, so that is how I'll choose to remember my 35th birthday.

So all in all, work is going fine - if a bit frustrating/anti-social/exhausting for me - and we still love our little flat. We keep hearing awful stories from other people about how freezing cold their houses are, so we feel very lucky to be in one of the only warm places in Wanaka! Still, we haven't had a heating bill yet, so we might yet have a terrible shock awaiting us...

*as if I even have to say it. EVERYONE we meet is bloody English. Sometimes I feel like I'm in England, but an England where everything is a bit wrong and you can't get Pizza Express**
**my worst nightmare of an England then

Apples vs. Grapes: The Showdown

As soon as we quit the apple picking, I texted my friend Debbie to let her know and to tell her we weren't sure what our plan B was. We talked about just starting our South Island tour a month or two ahead of schedule, putting it on the credit cards and arriving early in Wanaka and getting jobs ahead of the ski season to pay it back. Wasn't ideal but we had to think fast. However, the following day Debbie texted me to say that her mother had been talking to a friend of hers, Margaret, who wondered if she knew of anyone who wanted a few weeks work on a vineyard? We got in touch with Margaret and arranged to start work on the Monday, in two days time. Sorted!

We had no idea what we'd be doing on the vineyard, but we knew we'd be getting $13 per hour, so we'd be earning a heck of a lot more than we were getting at the orchard. We hoped the work wouldn't be as back breaking, or as depressing, as the apples but thought we'd give it a go anyway and if we could stick it out for 4 weeks, we'd at least have some money to travel with. When we arrived bright and early at 7.30am on the Monday we were set to work: leaf plucking. This involves pulling leaves off the vine around the grapes so the thinning and harvesting is easier. You have to work quickly, so no time for thoroughness, just grab handfuls of leaves, pull down, drop them and carry on moving. We literally laughed - we couldn't believe we were being paid more to do this than the nightmare that is apple picking! It was literally the easiest work I've ever done - boring, yes, but we chatted or listened to our iPods which made the day pass quickly. Come 10am it was down tools (well, not that we had tools,, save our hands) for morning tea and 12.30pm signalled lunch. No afternoon break so we finished at 3.45pm. On Thursday we turned up only to see Debbie arriving - she was doing a couple of weeks work with us while she waited for the hospital to get their act together and get her job sorted! It was nice to work with her and have a good natter. Finally on Friday we finished the leaf plucking (across two vineyards) and were handed our big boys toys: our snippers. We had been upgraded to thinning and we actually really enjoyed the going through and finding rotten or unripe grapes which we dropped on the floor. It involved your brain a bit (a BIT), so it was more fun than the leaf plucking and we chatted to all of the older ladies who did this year in year out while we went along. In order to remember the things we were looking for to chop off I kept chanting them to myself: bot; second set; pinky wings. Yeah, that's what I thought when I first heard of them too. Bot is a mould that grows on the grape due to dampness. Second set is the second growth of grapes that will never ripen in time. Pinky wings are little wings of second set grapes that spring off the main grape stem. Aha! Now you know, in case you ever decide to go into winemaking.

Come Monday, after a very relaxing weekend at our favourite freecamping spot at the Aniseed Valley (where we had the place almost completely to ourselves the whole weekend so we lay in to our hearts content - lovely) we went to yet another vineyard* to do some harvesting of Chardonnay grapes, plus some Pinot Noir to combine with the Chardonnay to make a rose. Our tractor driver (and, I think, manager) was called Atilla, which is quite the coolest name ever, and was a thorougly lovely guy. Originally from Austria but has lived here for 52 years now - still has an Austrian accent! Anyway, the work has been reasonably enjoyable, the people lovely, the money far better and the thought that we never have to pick apples again has made us very happy campers indeed. The early morning starts are a bit of a bugger it's true, and we don't have accommodation so we're doing a combination of freecamping and paying for campsites as our need for showers and laundry facilities dictate.

*the people we're working for are contractors so we move around a bit

Creepy crawlies

Finally had a chance to bring my laptop into town and am sitting in a cafe, using their free wi-fi. Thought I'd give you an update while I'm here:

Isaac & I now have leopard geckos. Their names are Zoe - though we call her Zozza in tribute to my friend Zoe/Zozza back home (hi Zozza!) - and Mungo. That one was my idea. They're really cool, they sit on your shoulder quite happily while we potter around the house, though Zozza does have a habit of climbing up your hair and sitting on the top of your head. We fed them yesterday and watching them demolish a bag full of live crickets is far better entertainment than telly, I can tell you. Everyone loves them, except Isaac's mum who isn't too keen. Her thoughts on the matter were: 'I thought you two would have better looking children'.

I've now qualified as an aerial guide for the Treetop Trekking park and love my work.
Well, you can hardly call it work, I climb trees for a living! The guys I work with are fabulous and we have plenty of get-togethers planned over the next couple of weeks. Every day I get into my harness, put my helmet on, strap on my walkie-talkie and bugger about in trees all day. The insects can be brutal, but it's worth it. And hey, life is never dull when you have a veritable assortment of mosquito bites to scratch.

On the subject of insects, we have an ant infestation at the cabin at the moment and I have been advised by my friend Lisa that if I want to get rid of them, I have to ask them to leave. Hmmm. Well, the RAID doesn't seem to be working, and I'm getting desperate, so when I get home I'm planning to sit down for a little pow-wow with my anty friends and ask them if they wouldn't mind visiting someone else for a bit. The other night, just before I went to bed, I had a glass of iced tea (my new favourite drink). I didn't quite finish it so I put the remaining drink next to my bed in case I was thirsty in the morning. I got up at 6.15am, when Isaac gets up for work, to go to the loo and before I got back into bed, took a big swig of iced tea. A couple of hours later when I got up for work and it was now light, I glanced at the glass only to see about 30 ants swimming in it. Now, much as I'd love to imagine that they'd only just crawled in there, I think it's unrealistic to assume so; I could have freaked out at drinking ant-juice, but instead decided to think of it as a small protein shot. Still, I was sure I could feel wriggling in my stomach all morning.

Ride 'em cowboy!

Just a quickie to say both Chelsea & I got offered jobs at the Stampede as bussers (people who seat customers, chat to them, then clear up when they go) in the Budweiser tent, which was not quite what we wanted, but all the bartending & serving jobs had gone already, despite it only being the second day of 2 weeks of interviews! We've accepted them - there will be some tips though not the big bucks we were hoping for - but I'm also pursuing an alternative avenue of bartending jobs through a friend of some guy I met on the bus back from Sunshine a few days ago. Hey, you gotta try everything, right? But if that doesn't come off, we'll go with what we have. Incidentally, and much to my amusement, my job offer sheet actually says 'Position: Bus'. I do hope this doesn't mean I have to offer free rides...

In other news I've just finished A Spot of Bother (the new book by Mark Haddon, author of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time) which was absolutely superb and I heartily recommend it. Brilliant characterisation - the best written child I've ever read - great story, pin sharp observations and hilarious to boot. Utterly unputdownable, if such a word exists, which, if not, it should. It made me feel terribly nostalgic for home, because it's so very, very English, and as such, so dry I would have to advise you not to smoke around it.

The end and the beginning

The Slush Cup at Sunshine traditionally signals the end of the season and provides the opportunity for an enormous piss-up, for both staff and guests. This year was no exception.

I hadn't quite got my head around exactly what the Slush Cup was. I knew it was a bunch of competitors, who were dressed up in weird & wonderful ways, skiing down a hill towards a pool of water in the hopes of getting across it in an upright position. What I hadn't worked out was how big the run up was, how big the pool was and how wet I'd get sitting next to it. It was great, and I had enormous fun, but wished I'd remembered Susan's advice to bring a spare pair of shoes and socks. Frozen tootsies aside, the party afterwards with the hog roast and the fire in the car park was awesome.

Good thing I don't drink, of course, because I had a job interview this morning for Canadian Mountain Holidays. After an hour of chatting about everything from midwifery to mechanical engineering over a nice cup of coffee, I was offered the job as Summer Exchange Co-ordinator, which is basically the person who gets guests and their luggage onto the bus in Banff, rides with them to the heli-pad and sees them off for their heli-hiking excursions. Then I will gather up the group of weary travellers who are arriving back from their trip, and bus them back to Banff, all the while on-hand to provide useful titbits of information about the Rockies and their inhabitants. Not difficult, but takes a certain kind of chatty, organised person*. Of course the fact that this is also the same company who does heli-skiing, and that they have already said that opportunities to work with the company over winter may well arise, has little to do with how excited I am about my new job; oh no, I was swayed by the fact that during the bus journeys I can eat as many muffins as I want. Read it and weep. I start as soon as I finish working the Calgary Stampede, assuming tomorrow's job interview goes well of course. As always, gentle reader, I'll let you know.

Slush Cup photos here.

*i.e. me

Hi ho, hi ho

Bit of an update on things generally. I've decided to go full-time at Sunshine, as I'm enjoying the work and everyone else I know is full-time there anyway, which makes it a sociable event. I really like my crew at Guest Services, the work is not too difficult and I think I'm pretty good at it. My boss jumped at the chance of getting me full-time, so I can't be too bad anyway! Today I was sat at the opposite desk (part of the Ski School desk) to where I normally sit, doing Direct-to-Lift pass conversions (don't worry what that means, but just know that it involves lots of paperwork.) However, whereas my normal desk is nice and warm, this one was directly in a freezing cold draught (and draughts here can literally be freezing) which set my Reynaud's off something chronic. Ever tried to type addresses & take payments with no feeling in your hands? With people staring at your dead white/grey fingers like you're some kind of freak? Then, when my printer broke, the queue moved firmly into the 'ridiculously long' category, and the people comprising the queue went into 'thoroughly pissed off' mode, it all became great fun! But the best thing is that when I walk out the door, I don't have to think about it. At all. Such a luxury I've not had for 7 years.

I've developed a bit of friendly banter with the guests that gets me through the day. You know, the little jokes that you say repeatedly in your job that make you laugh, if no one else? Well when I'm doing DTL conversions I have to take a credit card imprint and get the person to sign at the bottom. I've taken to saying "...and if you can just sign here, this authorises us to take the money from your credit card to pay for our staff Christmas party this year..." Usually raises a laugh, but some don't even react, which as far as I'm concerned is tantamount to permission. Today I had 4 people together, so I started with the Christmas party joke, then for the next girl I said it was for our beer fund for the next month. The next one I told we would take for a staff trip to the next Calgary Flames game (ice hockey) and with the final chap I thought for a while and finally ventured forth with "well, I do need a new pair of shoes..." They all seemed perfectly agreeable.

I did in fact buy a new pair of shoes on my way home today. Well, boots would be more accurate I suppose, and they are nice and warm, which is more than a bonus out here. It rarely gets close to freezing point now, normally bumping around the -5 mark in town but it was -16 the last time I was up on the top of the ski hill. My ancient Levi boots are lovely - and really warm considering they're not really geared up for these kind of temperatures - but as they're about 6 years old, they have no grip on the bottom anymore, which is a bit of a hazard. I totally stacked it on the icy stairs coming out of the boys' flat downstairs the other day, which would have been far less embarrassing if Rory & Andrew hadn't been outside smoking and saw the whole thing. I have an enormously impressive bruise on my left hip and another on my right arm, as well as the echo of the boys' laughter still ringing in my ears, to show for it.

Oh and for those who have been following the cough saga, you'll be delighted no doubt to know my bronchitis is now on its way out. The muscle I have pulled in my left side is still very painful (I actually wondered if I had developed a hernia, but maybe I'm being paranoid) but the coughing no longer keeps me awake at night (hurrah!) and is perfectly manageable during the day. I'm so happy I could cry.

Can't help but be a smug bastard

First day training for my new job today and this is where I now work. Don't all be jealous now. I mean, yes, it is very beautiful, and yes, I will get to go skiing for free, and yes, I do work with cool people, and yes... well okay, you can be jealous actually. It is very cold, but then that's the price you pay for all the snow I suppose. Today it was -8 degrees up at the ski hill (a 17 minute gondola ride up from where I work) which seemed pretty bloody cold to me, but that is small fry compared to how cold it's going to get later in the season. I think I will get those battery-operated boot warmers built into my ski boots after all...

Life in Beaver Street remains damn good. Every night the gang come round and we have a spot of dinner, or sit around and watch TV (Miami Ink marathon last night) or we just debate the pertinent issues of the day. For example, a couple of nights ago, we wondered aloud if you could actually get 2 people into Gravy's fatman trousers. As you can see, the answer was a resounding yes.

Tonight, in honour of the fact that it was Bonfire Night but fireworks are illegal to buy here and we live in a National Park so we can't build fires, I decided to cook a huge chilli, which was, in Zander's words, 'gold'. Or he might have said 'cold', I'm not quite sure. Anyway, it's safe to say I'm enjoying my time here immensely.

Oh and we've finally got our wireless internet working in the flat so I'm typing this from my bed. Hurray!

Au reservoir work

Well my last day at work didn't go quite as planned. I haven't finished my (yawn!) audit for starters, because I'm very lazy when it comes to boring data input, but I still need to finish it at some point. I can do the lion's share at home but will have to pop in to the hospital next week to tidy up. On top of this, I have a case conference (social services meeting) to go to on Monday, because it's one of my girls I've spent months working with and fighting for, so I don't want to let her down by not attending just because I've left work!

Today I was asked to meet Debbie at 1.30pm in the community office. This I did and was taken round to my 'surprise' leaving party, which was very nice, and I ate lots of food. Then I had to finish a report for the social services meeting on Monday. It took me ages, because I had a load of research to do for it, then I tried to email it to the social worker, but our email client at work is being migrated this weekend and it wouldn't let me log on. So I thought I'd photocopy a load for Monday instead. Half an hour and SIX jam clearances later, I'd failed to copy even one bloody report. I thought I'd give up and go home, so I went out to my car, only to find the sodding thing wouldn't start. It had done this the other day and I'd taken it to the garage, who said they'd sorted the problem. Obviously not. So I contacted Security and they came out to jump start me, bless their cottons. I noticed my phone had run out of battery and had a barrage of messages when I switched it on. One was from Claire, for whom I'm housesitting at present while she's in Portugal, who'd had a garbled message from her cleaner about something she couldn't understand, so she was panicking. I promised to get home asap to make sure everything was okay (which it is, it's just that the cleaner had shut the door behind her and left some documents in the house by accident). I put my car stereo in to relax me and, lo and behold, the sodding thing wouldn't do a dicky bird. Won't even switch on. No idea why. I have a CD stuck in it too.

Now I've got home I'm pissed off and bloody starving in that order, so I need to find something to eat and then syringe feed the hamster. Don't ask.

Bang to rights?

Just watched the Panorama programme 'Midwives Undercover', which aimed to highlight the problems in Britain's maternity units using secret filming by a journalist working as a volunteer. It was alarming stuff, but one of the problems with having a lay person looking for problem areas is that, unless you know what you're looking for, you run the risk of making an issue out of something that really isn't that big a deal and, as a result, missing the really important things.

Certainly there was a big fuss made over the fact that the journalist was asked to hold a baby's heart monitor transducer in place for a 20 minute period "without having any training at all". Now, it is certainly the case that interpreting a CTG (cardiotocograph) trace takes training and if mistakes are made, they have the potential to be catastrophic. BUT holding the transducer in place is a job more usually done by an elasticated strap. Only if the baby is in an awkward position, as presumably was the case here, do you have to angle it a bit by hand. The woman was not in labour, so it was highly unlikely that the trace would show anything requiring immediate action and the midwives were popping in to look at the trace every 10 mins or so, as they would normally have done. So is it really a major story that the volunteer was acting as an glorified bit of elastane? To my mind, it's far more appropriate that the volunteer was doing this, than the midwife who had plenty of better things to be getting on with.

The other thing that crops up time and time again, whenever anything is reported about maternity services, is the inevitable 'my baby died/had brain damage because of what they did' story. I apologise if that comes across as heartless, it's not intended to be. The fact is however that babies do die, they do get brain damaged, and whilst we should never become complacent about it, and we should of course do everything we can to prevent it, we will never be able to save every baby. I cannot comment on the two cases discussed on tonight's programme, for the obvious reason that I wasn't there and I don't have any of the details, but warning bells always ring for me when phrases such as "So & so was already having problems before they arrived on the ward" are heard. Many - if not most - cases of brain damage are due to antenatal insults, meaning that the care in labour does not directly contribute to the outcome, the damage has already been done before you get there without anyone being able to do anything about it. Proving it one way or another is often impossible though and often results in hospitals offering (substantial) out-of-court settlements to parents. Whilst I have a lot of sympathy for parents who are naturally devastated and seek to apportion blame in someone's quarter, but I also have a lot of sympathy for those involved in the care, who often did their best, with an outcome that was inevitable.

It is definitely beyond question that there is a shortage of midwives in most units though and, yes, this can contribute to the kind of problems detailed above. Much much more often, however, it contributes instead to women - or whole families - having a thoroughly miserable and rather crap experience. This may be the poor cousin of the catastrophic events we love to hear about, but if you ask me, it's a much bigger problem. Women who've had crap care are more likely to have had unnecessary interventions (expensive to the NHS, detrimental to women's bodies), develop postnatal depression, be overly anxious about subsequent pregnancies which results in more unnecessary interventions - if they go on to have any more children that is. I often wonder how many women never go on to have the families they would have wanted because they were badly treated the first time; I have a friend who is finally having her second baby now, 14 years after her first, because it's taken her this long to pick up the courage after having such a horrible time with her first.

Ah well. It's only a job, eh?

Trying not to let the bastards grind me down

Well, this has been a challenging week. Of my current team of four midwives: Debbie is on long-term sick with a dodgy knee, unable to walk without crutches, and is awaiting surgery; Sophie is building up her hours again after being on long-term sick after some heavy duty surgery but is on two weeks annual leave at the moment; Karen only joined up 4 weeks ago but has had 1 week on annual leave and this past week has been on the Trust Induction programme (this is what you do when the infusion pump makes this horrible noise/this is how you give someone a blood transfusion without killing them/this is what you do when you suspect someone is beating their child to a pulp/when someone threatens to kill you this is who you call. All thrilling stuff) so I've been all alone this week. This basically means being on-call 24/7 for all four caseloads.

I spoke to my manager and explained I'd be on my own and asked if I could get some help with the routine daytime work so I could concentrate on on-calls and emergencies. I was told that everyone was too busy so, basically, no. The previous week I had walked in on a member of another team- let's call her 'Rita' - slagging me off for always asking for help*, so my avenues were becoming rather blocked. I managed to rearrange most of my work till the following week and get 2 immovable visits covered, would just have to do the rest when I could.

Then the carnage begun. On Sunday, my car had broken down (overheating) so on the Monday, as well as helping my mum get up to Kings Cross so she could take the train home to Yorkshire, I need to limp it over to the garage to be repaired. As a result, I couldn't do a booking that afternoon and, as no one else would cover it either, poor hopalong Debbie took a taxi in to the hospital to do it for me. I spent the day fielding calls from one of Debbie's women who was in early labour. I returned from Kings Cross to find my car had been issued with a parking ticket, despite being parked perfectly legally**. I was called in later to look after the labouring woman, who had a nice waterbirth at 5am. The birth centre (midwifery-led, low-risk unit) was jammed though and my friend Nia, who was all alone there, had a birth which had a few complications so I was helping out. Labour ward (consultant-led, high risk unit) was also packed and I somehow ended up having a HUGE stand-up in-your-face shouting match with one of the co-ordinators from there, who was unbelievably rude to me and acting like a child. I got a call at 8am from one of my girls to say her waters had broken and I finally left the hospital at about 10.30am to go round and see her. I knew I had to hand my phone to someone as she may well labour during the day but, after catching Rita (who would have been the first choice to call) slagging me off, wanted reassurance from my manager first I was doing the right thing. I called her, only to have her have a go at me, saying that of course my colleague should be covering me, she didn't know why I was calling her, I should be able to deal with this. I cried for about half an hour. I then got a call to say my car was ready to be collected so when I got home I caught a bus which took an hour after going all round the houses and dropped me half an hour's walk from the garage. I got there to find it had cost £150 and I'd been blocked in by a van. I ended up shouting at a perfectly friendly man and crying hysterically all the way home. Finally got to bed at 3pm but woke again 3 hours later.

Got called back in that night to look after the girl whose waters had broken. She was only in very early labour but she had lots of family with her who were being a nightmare and refusing to take her home. I ended up being there with them all night till 9am, before we persuaded them that at 1cm, she really needed to be at home. I then went and found the (very scary) labour ward manager, who had been complaining about me starting this row with the co-ordinator the previous night by throwing my weight around and making demands (completely untrue), so I did my best to calmly sort out the disagreement. Called Rita to take my phone for the day only to be told she'd spoken to our manager the previous evening who had said that of course they shouldn't be covering my work and that if I was off, my phone should be covered by the hospital. This completely contradicted what I'd been told the previous morning and what I'd been shouted at for even questioning. My manager of course hadn't thought to let me know this new piece information however. I left around 10am.

Got woken at 3.3opm by the birth centre saying my woman was back in and they were too busy to take her so could I come in and look after her? Errrmmmm....no actually. I explained that if they couldn't take her, she should go to the labour ward (fate worse than death in my book but I had no option). I then spent the rest of the afternoon worrying about her.

Came back in to labour ward at 10pm to take over. Her care had been somewhat shambolic but I managed to pull this back in order. The whole family were exhausted, having been awake for nigh on 72 hours, even though we'd all made it perfectly clear for the previous couple of days that she wasn't yet in active labour and the best thing they could ALL do was to get some rest, but instead the poor girl had had 4 people standing round staring at her for the whole time. No wonder the labour took so bloody long to establish. It took every ounce of my strength to remain the very epitome of calm and supportive to every last one of them. This notwithstanding, her tired and stressed mother - who kept telling me she'd had 5 children and really should have known better - ended up shouting at me that she "didn't care about the baby!" and I can't tell you how close I came to walking out. I didn't though and, despite the best efforts of the doctors and her family to interfere, she had a nice normal birth at 4am. The mother immediately backtracked and said I'd been "very brave and very patient". Managed to do a quick turnaround with the paperwork and left around 6.30am. Got to bed at 7.15am and then up again at 12pm, racing into London to meet my cousin Camilla who was over from Denmark for a couple of days and was leaving that night so only had that time to catch up. Came back from London to go to the opening night of the new Gourmet Burger Kitchen in Walton, which was guest list only and I practically fell asleep in my (free and delicious) burger. Come 8pm I was supposed to come back on call but realised I was not fit to look after a flea. Called a lovely colleague on the birth centre who agreed to take my phone that evening. Went home and slept - aaaaaaaahhhhhhhzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Next morning I found out that my girl had gone into the high dependency unit over night with breathing difficulties, which turned out to be nothing, but if my phone had been on I'd undoubtedly have been called in. I spend the day running around trying to sort her out and fit in all the visits I hadn't been able to do all week, before heading into London to go to a friend's Hen night at The Sanctuary and FINALLY TURNING MY PHONE OFF FOR THE WEEKEND.

It might amuse you to know that, to add insult to injury, I had just finished writing this when my computer decided, for reasons best known to itself, to delete it all and I had to write it all out again.

Anyway, I can quite honestly say that if I wasn't leaving in August, I'd have handed in my notice this week. It's one thing working hard and feeling tired all the time, but quite another to have to deal with a face-full of abuse from all and sundry at the same time. Sometimes I really hate my job.

*Unsurprisingly, since I've not had a full team of six for a YEAR now and for the past 6 months have been running the team with a maximum of 3 and often only 2 midwives. What does she expect me to do?
**I appealed, supplying lots of photos as support and had an email on Friday saying it had been issued in error and had been cancelled. Finally, some good news.