Climb Every Mountain: make a difference

It’s great to be retired. Last week, on Tuesday and Wednesday, I had just a couple of meetings each morning, so as the weather was good, I took myself off for a decent walk. I walked 12 miles the first day and 8 miles the next. Both were along the coast and the sunshine and sea were incredibly uplifting. I am so fortunate to live by the sea and yet have the hills of the Lake District in view and within an hour’s drive away. Indeed, yesterday J and I returned to Helvellyn and completed the Striding Edge walk we had to abandon a couple of months ago due to bad weather. At 950 metres high, it is the third highest peak in England. The Lake District hills have stood for millennia and thousands of people have walked and climbed them throughout all that time. As a National Park, the Lake District is truly stunning.

Their appeal has been their undoing as well. A new sign has gone up on the motorway on my journey to work that declares ‘It’s a National Park, Not a car park’. This refences the problems visitors and more importantly local residents have with huge numbers of cars that pitch up in The Lakes most weekends and during school holidays. Unlike London’s new high peak, the Marble Arch Mound, which proudly stands at a magnificent 25 metres high, giving ‘striking views of London, and the park, and a new perspective of Marble Arch itself’. Despite the longevity of the hills in The Lakes, this new green mound will only be there until January 2022. Unlike the popularity of the Lakes, the Marble Arch Mound is facing an uphill struggle to attract visitors.

Perhaps those on the Marble Arch Mound, like the hills in the Lakes, at times you can feel like you are the only person for miles around. It can give rise to a profound sense of being alone and at one with the landscape. Being alone and loneliness are not always the same thing. Last week I heard an emotionally challenging and heart-breaking tale of real loneliness. It was also a tale of great courage, determination and service to others. It was Steve’s story, a story told on the wonderful Radio 4 New Storytellers series. You can hear Steve’s story here, but the title of the piece, ‘He’s only a cleaner’ perhaps gives you a sense of how the story is told. I listened to it while driving home the other day and had to pull over and stop to give the story my full attention. Steve’s story is what it was like to work as an industrial cleaner during the pandemic.

Just listening to his description of donning and doffing his PPE brought me out in a sweat. Having to do this often several times a shift must have been very difficult. He describes the isolation he encountered when he was fully kitted out, unable to verbally communicate with others and the necessary reliance on hand signals to keep him and his colleagues safe and protected. And please don’t judge me as facile when I say I shall never think about gaffer tape in quite the same way again.

Steve’s sense of isolation and loneliness continued even when he finished work. The UK was in a national lockdown and facing hours alone in his flat was very depressing. His plea for us all to obey the rules, get vaccinated and get us all over the finishing line was heart-breaking. We have sometimes only thought of the more traditional professions as being the important key workers and heroes during the pandemic. They certainly were, and continue to be to this day. Steve’s story, however, also brings into sharp relief the army of other folk who, while many of us isolated during the various lockdowns, carried on and kept us safe, fed, warm, and secure. Many of these people, like Steve, were also among the lowest paid members of the workforce.

These hidden members of the key worker workforce was something I was able to discuss with a Councillor friend last Thursday. We sat in splendid isolation in the magnificent surrounds of Stockport Town Hall. It was completely deserted apart from us. The public are still not allowed in. The building is a fabulous testament to times gone by. It was opened in 1908 by the then Prince and Princess of Wales. The Prince was later to become George V, King of the UK, the British Dominions and Emperor of India. His reign saw much change. George witnessed the rise of socialism, fascism, communism and, in the UK, the establishment of the supremacy of the House of Commons over the unelected House of Lords. Ok, we are done with the history lesson. However, given the recent news stories about the Sunderland Nightingale Hospital (cost £23 million and never treated a patient) and the numbers of refugees crossing the English Channel, I found it interesting that the Town Hall Ballroom, (see it to believe it), served as a hospital during WW1 and was used as a home for refugees from across The Channel during WW2.

Seeing the Town Hall, was like witnessing a golden thread that runs through our nations approach to how we have long reached out to help others.  I say that in full knowledge that many folk have some justifiable concerns over many aspects of our Empire and colonial past. And last week I thought there was another golden thread to see. It was in the appointment of Amanda Pritchard as the new Chief Executive of NHS England. She has, in her previous role, demonstrated a values-based approach to leadership. For me, her appointment is hopefully a symbol of continuity and stability in a still turbulent post-pandemic world. She may have a mountain (higher than Helvellyn), to climb in terms of leading the NHS and social care, but if anyone can do it, ‘this girl can’. That said, leadership at her level can be a lonely place to be. Unlike Steve’s experience, I hope Amanda has plenty of good people around her, to be with her, and support her in taking those first few leadership steps on our journey into the known unknown.   

 

Ps – many congratulations to Iavad Forough, a male nurse and first time Olympian, who last week, successfully climbed his own mountain, and gained the first gold medal for Iran in this year’s Olympics – well done from all of us in the international community of nurses