The huge heron who paid a visit on Christmas morning.
Christmas in our house was a lovely family time just as it should be if you are fortunate enough to have family and friends. Christmas Eve and finding that the gammon won’t fit any saucepan you have in the cupboard and the frantic phone calls to beg, borrow or steal one large enough to fit the beast – did a saucepan swop with cousin Pamela who saved the day. Christmas mid morning and one of the visiting pups got on her hind legs and pulled the pigs in blankets close enough to scoff most of them! Fell asleep in front of the fire Christmas evening and someone who shall be nameless but married to my daughter Susie, put the clocks forward three hours which completely threw me with my meticulous timetable, evening meal to be made and worst of all – missing EastEnders. Total screaming panic when my brother phoned From Scotland and asked me what was going on. I told him my iPad and my phone had gone crazy and were telling me 4.50 when it was actually 7.50 – it was the end of the electronic world, I never suspected the clock on the wall. Nearly had a total collapse when he said “Well in North Berwick it is 4.50.” Only then did the giggling begin and to calm me down an admission of a time shift prank became clear.
Did manage a zoom celebration in both Clonard and St Colmcille’s Holywood on Christmas Eve which set the tone for the blessed time which will never be a ‘holiday’ in my life, it’s a most beautiful time of grateful thanks for all we have received. Not so in all homes around the country where there is stress and strife and it is more important than ever to remember this and take our own responsibility to make a positive contribution wherever possible.
So we approach 2025 – do you remember the impact of reaching 2000? It seemed like something out of the space age, the millennium bug and all! We were spooked out by the media – all computer services would fail, the world would be in panic and darkness, no money would come out of banks, no communications round the globe. In the event, 31st December passed into 1st January without any fuss. The power of the press? I protect the press at every possibility, after all we only report on what we hear or are told by government, big business and showbiz! Very few journalists make it up, some embellish it but most are true to their principles of accuracy. Can you imagine a world without newspapers? Some of you can but most of you, certainly in the more senior population, would be lost without the miracle of a paper containing stories from round the world, analyses, considered opinions, the crossword, the racing cards and football results. You can’t tear an article out of social media page to hold for future reference. And over Christmas, local papers became paper sticks to get the fire off to a good start. Can’t to that with Facebook.
The mild weather has made it less like Christmas but it was lovely to escape the hot kitchen for a walk round the garden when the going was getting tough and enjoy a surprise meeting with a large heron who called with Christmas greetings. I know this unseasonably mild weather it a bad sign when it comes to global warming but let’s enjoy it while we may.
A HAPPY CHRISTMAS FOR LOCAL AUTHOR
Carol Ann Creagh
Sometimes a labour of love becomes a phenomena. It’s a lot like that with Angel City. This book is the third in author Carol Ann Creagh’s portfolio and she could never have imagined the reaction to this story about three friends nursing at Belfast’s City Hospital. It romps along from the minute Anya Corrigan pushes open the doors of the Italian restaurant in Botanic Avenue for a long awaited reunion with her two best nursing friends. Even before we pass through into the restaurant. Amya is reminiscing and so the story of training, socialising, nursing and The Troubles begins.
Her memories go back to 1975 when the teenagers meet and live together in Erskine house nurses home, these three very different characters immediately bond through the dreadful pressures of hospital life during the Troubles, however, being young energetic women, despite the rules they manage to sneak off to enjoy the nightlife of Belfast, romances come and go and work becomes a vocation. For the author of this book those memories are very personal, to all intents and purposes she is Anya.
Gardener Robb hospital as was.
Carol Ann Creagh is a retired Nurse Practitioner with 43 years experience in the health service. Her memories are deep rooted, fascinating, disturbing, funny and they came flooding back one day when she was sitting in the City Hospital cancer unit waiting for her partner.
“I was able to see Erskine House and my eyes went up to the 13th floor and the third window along and all of a sudden I was back there with my two friends about to embark on a career in nursing. The words just kept coming, I wasn’t about to write a book, I was actually sitting in the book.”
And so the story unfolded from finding her room in the nurses home to the wards in the City Hospital’s old workhouse buildings to her placement in Purdysburn working in the locked wards were her description of assisting in many agonising procedures, operations, lobotomies and ECT treatments for patients suffering schizophrenia, psychosis and paranoia, of Ivy who lunged at her drawing blood as she scraped her nails down the young nurse’s arms. The heartbreak of loosing little baby Joshua when working in the baby unit and her time in casualty where death and injury during The Troubles took their toll, being faced with a patient with a hatchet imbedded in his head was not easy.
Throughout this Anya grew close to two other student nurses Mary McClafferty who nursed in Africa after qualifying and Brigid McGorian, a live wire, a social butterfly destined to marry three times. Then there’s the bus outing to Donegal for Brigid’s 18th birthday. When the bus arrives at the border checkpoint the girls and their boy friends are confronted by ‘burley soldiers with blackened face and rifles at the ready.’ Not a pleasant chapter to put it mildly with shades of the Miami Showband killings.
Student nurse Carol Ann
Precious Memories
When the author of this book was doing a spring clean she re-discovered her memory box which triggered many memories but also contained something really precious, the cheque for £20 her father pressed into her hand dated 22nd September 1975, her first day in hospital. “That’s for emergencies,” he said and hugged me goodbye. There were many emergencies during the three years of training but I never cashed the cheque, it is priceless.”
Eventually the day came when the three Angels graduated, fully fledged in their chosen career.
Phenomenal Reaction
The book was written and published last month and since then Carol Ann has lived in a whirlwind. Mum of six and nana to six she has the backing of her family, indeed her son Conor designed the cover showing the old workhouse where it all began and where I had my first child! “I’ve become a commercial traveller as the books are flying out of the shops so I keep delivering more and more.“ She’s travelled to Cookstown, Ballycastle, Newry, Donegal, Lough Derg and Crossgar. Hospital shops can’t get enough and of the one thousand initial print run there are fewer than 50 left so talks of a reprint are urgently underway. It sold out in nine shops in the first three weeks, one bookseller taking Boris Johnson’s book off the shelves to display Angel City. Waterstones have reordered five times. “And I’ve a special friendship with the post office! I’ve sent copies to readers in Australia, Switzerland, all over the UK and Ireland north and south. Seems City Hospital nurses are all over the world and they are loving the memories.” And many of them nursed with Carol Ann, during a talk to a nurses group she was approached by one woman: “Remember me? You sold me your motorbike!” A woman of many talents.
Full details at carolanncreagh.co.uk
And so my final wish for 2024 is that this coming year will be a positive one, I wish you health and happiness, a year filled with friendship and love. Let temper pass rather than fester, talk rather than blank the world in favour of social media, use a new word every day and research life in other parts of the world. And if you have any time left over, plant a tree!
Thank you to Susie Hailes Harkin for the picture of a Donegal Sunrise.