A Londoner in the North - Day 1

So after a long break from writing I've travelled to 'the North' to do a 2 week stint in GP land and have found some fodder for this here blog. Now I'm a city kid, lived in London all my life and coming this far away from civilisation home is a somewhat daunting process. I've long had a wish to live outside of London in a land where there are green things growing from the ground outside but after today I'm not sure how I'd fare...


After a 3 hour train journey from Euston I find myself in Cheshire. It's wet, and it's raining. I don't have an umbrella. Clearly, I'm a bit unprepared. If this was a film that would be major foreshadowing!

In London, you don't need to know where you are going, the tube will take you near enough, there are maps at every bus station and the bus even makes announcements at every stop. Even the directionally challenged (me) can make it from A to B in London without too much trouble (thank you tfl.gov.uk). Everything is different up North. Why there is more than one bus company in a town the size of Ealing only God knows but that's any-town-outside-london for you. After buying myself a bus pass that only lets me on 4 bus routes this week (that's all that company runs) I manage to get to my accommodation - the local hospital.

It's in the middle of nowhere.

I'm serious - nowhere.

Call me spoiled but my local hospitals in London are on roads with shops, people, public transport and food on them. This place is an eruption of brick in a wasteland. There is a bus stop at the hospital and apart from driving is the only way of going in or out of that place. (A bit like a prison.)

After settling in, I leave to get on my second bus of the day (fortunately covered by my bus pass). I hop on the first bus going to the GP surgery. Then after about 2-3 minutes I see a bus actually going to the GP surgery - I'm going in the wrong direction.
I then start kicking myself as I remember that this bus only comes once an hour. I don't know what the point is of a bus service that comes once an hour - to torment poor medical students.

I decided to get off at a bus stop with a landmark, like a railway station, so if I ended up taking a cab I know my location - clever eh? Unfortunately I still had to wait another half an hour for the bus to go back in the direction I came. Sad times.

I finally make it to my first day of placement at 4pm - the day is practically over. I should have given up. The practice manager wasn't expecting me since I phoned to tell her about my transport troubles at the railway station. And then I found out my GP tutor wasn't in.

Sometimes I feel like my life is a waste.

I got an ID card and signed a confidentiality agreement and then messed around on a computer (not checking facebook or visiting dodgy sites) before deciding to go back to my accommodation.

Realising I needed to go food shopping, I had a quick flick through my bus timetables I printed out to see what time the bus would leave the hospital to get to a supermarket of some sort. I spy with my little eye a 10 minute gap in between my bus getting to the hospital and another bus leaving to go to Morrisons. There was no choice in the matter. I had to get that bus - like all the others I had experienced so far it only came once an hour.

So I got off the bus at the hospital, and ran back to my accommodation to grab my tesco 'bag for life'. All in the name of saving the environment I risked missing my bus. I then raced back to the bus stop only to see the bus to Morrisons pull away from the stop well before I get there.

My heart sank. Not another bus for an hour, and only 15 minutes after that the last bus of the day leaves Morrisons to return to the hospital. I gave up. No food for me tonight.

I plodded along at snails pace back to my room. I despaired. Not for the lack of food but for the belief I wasn't going to cope for the next 2 weeks. It was about 6:30pm and the sun was sinking in the western sky making the buildings gleam in orange and gold. I saw light dappled on the trees and grass lining the road and around the hospital. I started to feel better. I inhaled deeply.  Ugh, cow poop. Just when I thought I was starting to enjoy this countryside lark.