Tricked into nursing by dad but I loved it
RE: Memories of Coventry and Warwickshire Hospital (Remember When, May 12).
My dad had two bikes, one old and the other a bit older! Almost everyone had one in those days.
At the age of 15 I left school – all ready to look for work the next week. On the Saturday morning, Dad said: “Let’s go for a bike ride”, so off we went on each of his bikes.
After a while he said: “I’ve just got to go in here”. It was the local hospital – the Cov and Warwick – and I thought maybe he wasn’t feeling too good, so in we went. We sat in the corridor for a little while and then, what I presumed was a nurse, called us into an office and asked us to be seated.
“My daughter wants to be a nurse,” said Dad, much to my dismay. I was looking forward to a week going round town with my mates looking for a job! It was not to be.
This person, who turned out to be the Matron, not any old nurse, just glanced at me and said: “Right, be here at 9am sharp on Monday morning.” And that was it!
The crafty old wotsit had already been up to see this Matron the previous week. That was the end of the so-called bike ride and off I went home on Dad’s bike while he went off to the pub.
With trepidation I began work the next week, earning 15 shillings and two pence a week as a pre-nursing cadet, until it was time to go for preliminary training, and I had to live at the nurses’ home.
Maybe if Dad had not taken me on that ‘bike ride’ I would never have entered nursing – but I am so very glad that I was ‘conned’ into it. So many memories, some sad – but it really was great.
It was a lovely place in which to work. Even the buildings themselves seemed friendly. Margaret Parkinson Stoke