Forever grateful for memorable moments

Last week saw me take a walk down my memory lane. My beautiful dog Cello, died, suddenly but peacefully last week. He was 17 years old. His death stirred up all kind of memories, some good, and some not so. But, lets get to memories later. Whilst regular readers of this blog will know I try and steer clear of politics, but it is hard to ignore the news this past week from the US. America has chosen Trump once more as their president. I have no interest in commenting on this, but my eye was caught by a Trump related story. It involved Rowan Mackenzie, a so-called Doomsday fanatic.

Although I have never heard of her, she is apparently quite famous for sharing survival tips in preparation for apocalypse-level events. Over the years, Rowan had spent over £270k on both building an underground bunker in her basement and stocking it with food, water and other essentials necessary to survive for a long period underground. Following Trump’s election, she now feels she doesn’t need to keep her stockpile going as in her words, he is the ‘hero’ who will ‘save us all’. Time will tell, I guess.

Her story piqued my interest, as I too have been a long-time hoarder. It started when I lived in a remote part of rural Wales, where each Winter and on a regular basis, we would get snowed in for weeks. Despite being mocked by others over the years, I have kept up my hoarding practice. As I do our weekly shop, I try and buy one or two extra things on top of what we need. These go into our storage room. When the pandemic struck, our storage room was renamed the Covid cupboard. As a consequence, and fortunately, we had no need to buy any of the things that due to panic buying, suddenly became hard to find on the supermarket shelves. The room’s name changed to the Brexit cupboard in preparation for leaving the EU. However, these days, J still refers to it as the Covid cupboard.  

One other nudge down my memory lane came from being asked by a colleague for advice on getting a paper published in one of the international mental health journals. We met and discussed what she wanted to say and how she might best construct her paper, what was an average word length, references and so on. We also talked about the peer review process. This can be brutal as well as rewarding. I can’t recall ever having a paper accepted without a reviewer (or two) suggesting an amendment for me to consider.  Of course, you never know who your reviewers are.

I have long ceased being a reviewer myself, but the anonymity of the process allows all reviewers to say whatever they want without any fear of any repercussions. Although you can, as the author, address any challenges made to you, the anonymous reviewer has the advantage of being able to recommend or not, your paper being accepted for publication. At conferences and meetings, I have often wondered curiously if the person I’m sitting next to ever reviewed one of my papers.

Last week also saw me finally revising and updating a chapter for a new edition of one of the best textbooks for mental health nursing ever published. The first two editions were edited by Professor Phil Barker*. It was his brainchild. Phil was a phenomenal nurse and academic, and was the first professor of psychiatric nursing practice in the UK. He was well known for his bright patent leather red clogs, his ZZ Top beard and being fabulous company. I met him at conferences in many places around the world, including Manchester, Alice Springs, Dublin and Turku. On the first occasion we met in person I discovered that we both wore clogs as our chosen footwear, both liked to wear black, and both had a penchant for silver jewellery.

As an academic, he was a generation ahead of me, and his work inspired my desire to find a voice in mental health academia. Fortunately, I found an equally likeminded colleague, someone who not only became my long-term co-author, but my best friend too, Professor Sue McAndrew. We enjoyed great success in getting our ideas published, and for many years enjoyed presenting our work at conferences around the world. These days, we don’t tend to write many papers, so it was a refreshing change to revise our chapter, a chapter first published in 2017.

The first two editions of the book saw chapter contributions from some of the best mental health academics ever.  I’m not sure how well known some of these authors are outside of mental health circles, but just look at the author list here. Many of these folk have become long term friends and colleagues to Sue and me. One of whom is Professor Mary Chambers.

Mary took over from Phil as the book’s editor. It’s great that the third edition (and now fourth edition) contributors continue to develop and build upon the work of the previous generation. I felt inspired and will meet up with Sue soon to discuss how we might revise our edited book ‘Using Patient Experience in Nurse Education’ and in so doing, increase the number of service users and carers contributing their experiences.

 

*Phil retired from active academia in 2008 to pursue a new life as an artist – have a look here at some of his work – in my opinion, it’s simply as brilliant as his writing