CD2

(69 mins)

2/1

Leighland / Mrs Routley / chapel / church / services / faith / funerals / vicar

Leighland Chapel was built to serve the miners who were living in the area in the late nineteenth century. It also serves as the church for Roadwater; local weddings take place there.

The vicar of Old Cleeve looks after Leighland Chapel. There are services there three Sundays a month. MH not a Christian in any practising sense of the word, though he does attend the funerals of people who knew. [Back to top]
 

2/2

reception by locals / mileage allowance / starting up / general medicine / maternity / paediatrics / consultants

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He was generally very well received by the locals when he first came to the area in the 1950s, although he thinks there were some who considered him a bit of an upstart.

The mileage allowance he received was very good - it helped boost his profits!

When he first started out he went to certain places on certain days of the week but he found that people didn't get ill at your convenience! So he asked people who wanted him to come and see them to telephone him before noon - he would spend the morning at home dealing with correspondence before doing his rounds in the afternoon and evenings. Emergencies were very rare. He found this way of practising very civilised, never rushed - working as a house doctor he had experienced the set-up where you only had so many minutes set aside for each patient and he hated that. He thinks it's the lack of time that disillusions many doctors.

General medicine interested him most, although he enjoyed maternity work if he was starting again he would quite like go into child medicine. [Back to top]
 

2/3

post-grad courses / Brian Webb / single practice / wife / cover / holidays / winter

He used to enjoy going to Friday lunchtime postgraduate lectures at Taunton Hospital, which were arranged by Brian Webb, a paediatrician. They were useful for keeping him in touch. He also used to go away for week-long intensive courses. If there was something that couldn't wait for him to get back from his course, his wife would deal with it, as she was medically qualified too. When he went on holiday - usually skiing in Switzerland - he was covered by Dr Maycock, who lived in Stogumber but used to come over to Leighland once a week.

He did a lot of maternity work at Wellington Hospital, which was one of the best equipped GP unit in the area and excellent midwives. It closed down before he retired, so he had to use a unit at Minehead, which wasn't as good. If he was referring a patient to hospital they would usually go to Taunton, but Taunton had no maternity GP facilities. He performed quite a few home deliveries - he enjoyed that work. [Back to top]
 

2/4

home conditions / accidents and emergencies

Conditions for home deliveries were usually pretty good - people would tend to have plenty of sheets and so on. Nearly all the houses where he did home deliveries had electric light - there were just one or two that he had to do by lamplight.

He doesn't remember being called out to any really horrific emergencies but in any case the ambulance service was very good and they would usually arrive very quickly at emergencies. He never actually had to perform any surgical operations at the scene of an accident, though he did have to deal with cuts and contusions, which were relatively straightforward.

He had to deal with accidents on farms. One farmer he knew went into a bullring and the bull turned on him, breaking his arm and giving him bruising. [Back to top]
 

2/5

bad winters / Land Rover / Skilgate / call outs

His Land Rover was very useful for getting about - some of the farms were at the end of drives that a car probably wouldn't have managed.

When he started many of the families didn't have cars. One at Skilgate did not have a car for years and years. But he thinks the fact they were more isolated made them more self-reliant: doctors in towns get called out for all sorts of trivial things but that never happened to him. When a call-out involves a child he thinks that you should go, even if it might not sound that serious. [Back to top]
 

 2/6

1963 snow / skiing / Mr Priddy / global warming / solar panel / resources

In the bad winter of 1963 he visited one of his patients, who lived on a farm at the end of long drive, on his skis, which he kept strapped to the top of his Land Rover. He only did it once, but it has been talked about a lot. He also visited Mr Priddy, a photographer friend who lived in Roadwater, on his skis during that winter. Mr Priddy took a photograph of him on his skis which appeared in the Free Press.

He thinks global warming has been going on for a long time. Thinks it's appalling that in the space of a century we will have used most of the earth's coal and oil resources, which took millions of years to lay down, just to provide heat, when there are so many products that can only be made from coal and oil. In favour of rationing fossil fuels. He is all for renewable energy such solar power and wind generation. He has a solar panel in his roof which is surprisingly effective, even on an overcast day. [Back to top]
 

2/7

Brendon Hills people / self reliance / social life / wife / changes / isolation / accents

Increased car ownership and mobility means that the people in the Brendon Hills aren't as 'different' as they used to be 40 years ago. But they do tend to be very self-reliant - sometimes excessively so, and they don't call him out when they should.

Going round visiting his patients supplied him with all the social life he needed. He's never been that bothered about going to the theatre, and the arrival of television means that people on the Brendons are more in touch with what's going on anyway. But the fact that the people are less isolated means that there are fewer accents around - he doesn't know anyone anymore who has a good, broad Somerset accent. Television and radio have been part of a levelling-off process. [Back to top]
 

 2/8

friendships / wife / retirement / appointing successor / new Roadwater surgery

He has some good friends locally but is not that dependent on friends - his wife is more that way inclined. She's a psychiatrist and is always yapping away!

He was disappointed by the fact that when he retired he didn't have the last say in who would succeed him - the NHS did. He knew somebody who he would loved to have been his successor but the person in question did not have the right sort of background. After practising from Leighland for about six months, the new people set up a purpose-built surgery in Roadwater. They still have patients all over the Brendons but they now expect more people to visit them rather than the other way around.

He retired on grounds of age. [Back to top]
 

2/9

retirement / South of France / mini-stroke / socialising / vegetables / Priddy

It felt very pleasant to have retired. He owns a holiday home in the South of France which he likes to go to in the winter. It is a former hen house, on a farm owned by some friends, which he has converted.

Six months ago he had a slight stroke. Physically it only affected his right foot, which wouldn't do quite what he wanted it to for a few days. But is has affected his memory.

He enjoys growing vegetables, and has gradually become a vegetarian in the last two or three years. (Although he will eat meat if his wife cooks it for him.) He tries to grow salads of one form or another all the year round. His vegetables always taste the best! He finds digging a splendid form of exercise - it expends just enough energy to keep him fit.

Priddy the photographer died about four years ago. He was one of MH's closest friends and he does miss him. [Back to top]
 

2/10

selfishness / wife practising psychiatrist / Priddy / Mrs Priddy

He doesn't regret anything he's done but he thinks he is naturally selfish and does what he wants to do rather than what others want him to do.

His wife still practises psychiatry, even though she's way past retirement age.

He thinks Priddy's dislike of his father led to his refusal to accept authority. For example, he was in the army but could never march, he would always walk. Eventually they put him in the pay corps and excused him from parades [collapses into fit of the giggles.] [Talks about Mrs Priddy's last illness]. [DISK ENDS]

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