Blog: Falling In Love With A Hospital

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As I near the end of my first week in a NEW JOB I find that it's all turning out surprisingly FINE. I'm gradually getting my Getting Up Time and Commute into some sort of manageable order, everybody seems very nice in the two (2) offices I'm based in, and though I'm still PANICKING every ten minutes that I'm going to turn a corner and discover a massive pile of STUFF that I don't understand at ALL I'm gnerally calming down and thinking that I might be able to DO this.

And alongside all of this something rather wonderful has also happened: I have fallen in love with a HOSPITAL.

For about half my time every week I'm going to be based at Charing Cross Hospital which, confusingly, isn't in Charing Cross (the other half of the time I'll be at Hammersmith Hospital, which isn't in Hammersmith, so maybe it's a thing) but in distant Barons Court. I went for a wander around the hospital on Thursday lunchtime and discovered that it is a thing of IMMENSE beauty - if it was any MORE 1970s then it would have to feature in a LADYBIRD BOOK about Modern Things. There are large comfortable seating areas, vaguely deco/modernist stair rails, MURALS everywhere, lettering that hasn't changed since the place was built, and an ACTUAL HENRY MOORE out the front! It's incredible!

Its's a long long time since I last worked in a hospital and so they have changed a bit, even in one so marvellously preserved as this one. It still SMELLS like a hospital and it's still impossible to find your way around, but it has got quite a bit more COMMERCIALISED i.e. there is more than one shop and, though I do love a good Friends' Shop (and this one has a PARTICULARLY fabulous example) it is nice to know there are OTHER shops selling things apart from boiled sweets and third-hand paperbacks. You can get coffee you can actually DRINK! Imagine!

Barons Court itself is also quite nice, and features a BRILLIANT cemetery which is the route that everybody uses to get there and back from the tube station. I did think it was a bit ODD when I first went that NOBODY seemed to be heading for the hospital, it turns out that the cemetery is more CROWDED than Père Lachaise on Jim Morrisson's birthday!

So yes, it is all rather lovely - the only shame, really, is that the other half the time I have to go to White City, which is quite a lot LESS lovely!

posted 15/10/2015 by MJ Hibbett

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Comments:

It's odd that a cemetery is the route both in and out. Normal only part of the route out.
posted 16/10/2015 by Fimbo

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