As far back as I can remember, way back to my very earliest memories, I can recall my Father’s workshop, housed as it was in a room in our house.  Fixed to the bench, was his metalworking vise, and the sound of the ring of steel against steel as the handle dropped through its housing, is a sound that brings back memories to my being allowed into his inner sanctum, and to turning that handle as a boy aged four or five.

For the last three years, that same vise has sat unbolted on my own bench, bearing the marks of time with rust and splashes of paint, but with the same ring as the handle drops to its stop.  As I start to gather tools for my future life and work, I felt a need to refurbish this old friend.  So, I dismantled it, cleaned off the rogue paint, the dirt-ridden grease, and wire-brushed the rust.  Then, I sprayed on coats of red primer and red paint to the non-moving surfaces.

It is a real heavyweight, weighing in at 63lbs, and with 6in jaws.  On its side is the lettering DAWN and 6”SP.  Thanks to Google, I discover that this vise was manufactured in Melbourne, by DAWN Industrial Tools – just a few miles from where my Father lived.  He had bought this vise in the 1950s, and brought it with him when he came to England in 1962 with his wife, who was carrying me.

Re-painted, re-greased, and  reassembled, the vise is not as good as new, but it’s as good as it should be for its sixty odd years.   It is now ready to be bolted to my bench, and to be put to use once more.  I like to think that Dad would be proud to see the value I place in it, and glad to see the use to which it will be put.

In 1962, my Mother imported her recently-acquired husband from Australia to England.  She had gone out a few years earlier on the ”£10 ticket” that so many took back then.  They had met in Melbourne, both working for International Harvester: he as a draughtsman/engineer; she in personnel/accounts.  Dad was living in Geelong, just outside Melbourne, with his parents, two brothers and one sister.

Like many Aussie rural lads of that time, he and his brothers had grown up hunting, shooting and fishing, as they explored the outback on their doorstep.  A love of guns and mechanics was inevitable, but it was only after Dad’s death in 2015 that I discovered he had been a licensed gunsmith.

In the autumn of 1962, my parents travelled by ship from Australia to England.   Mum was pregnant – carrying me – and I was born in the winter of 1962 … in what is still probably the worst winter in living memory.  Dad must have wondered what on earth he had come to: months on end spent thawing frozen pipes!

Apparently, the ship’s crew had been bewildered by the amount of crates that had been loaded aboard in their name.  Dad was not leaving without his tools, so his metal lathe and numerous tools and several gunsmithing books crossed the oceans with them. Fifty-three years later, I inherited a huge collection of tools and machinery, some of which, such as the metal lathe, he had brought to England in 1962.  With no expected use for that particular item, I passed it on, with a milling machine, to the Gosport Shed. (Ironically, the Shed Movement started in Australia – no surprise then that we had five sheds to clear out when my Father passed away!)

Now, as I ready myself for my new life in boatbuilding, I have started to bring order to the boxes of tools that I have inherited.  They will have an extra special place at my workbench, now that they are to be put to use in earnest.

After five weeks back at work, Sylvia and I are away from home, holidaying in Mill Cottage – a National Trust property. Set right on the edge of the beach at Wembury Bay, near Plymouth, our adopted living room looks out to sea, and to The Great Mewstone, a quarter mile offshore. When the sea mist obscures the view, our world is even smaller.

The soundscape varies according to the level of the wind, the level of the tide, and with them, the height and the breaking of the waves on the shore.  When calm, the sound is a gentle, smooth, whooshing rush, as the spume surges up the beach, and then sucks back.  With just a little strengthening of the wind, the taller, breaking waves crash, as they pound the sand and shingle.  The former lulls us to sleep; the latter disturbs our dreams.  I’d love to be here in a storm, with the waves crashing against the base of the cottage, spray flying up to the bedroom window!

For hours at a time, there is a wildness, a rawness to this place, undisturbed by man-made noise.  Even when the beach is no longer ours alone, the sounds are mainly of children laughing and shrieking with glee, as they play chicken with the waves.

In our cosy cottage, we are “off grid” – no mobile signal, no Wi-Fi with which to connect.  Even the payphone, set on a barrel by the dining table, is out of action!

It’s an odd feeling, being unable to check the weather forecast; to find out when various attractions open; to access email … to post blog entries.  We are but 188 miles from home, yet almost on another planet, in a different dimension. How reliant have we become upon the Internet and mobile phone masts for our instant contact with family, friends, colleagues, work … the world!

It feels strange, but this is a rare opportunity – and a respite to be grasped – to escape from normal life, with all its stresses, pressures, and responsibilities; to experience the moment, uninterrupted with the normal daily ‘noise’ of phone calls, text messages and email; and to enjoy the solitude together.  Time to watch the ever-changing seascape, and to enjoy a dip in the sea.

Time to see (as Deepak Chopra put it) “ the underlying web of connections in life—connections that we are often too busy to notice.” 

Ironic then, that I will need to seek a web connection of a more mundane sort, as I look for somewhere with Wi-Fi in order to post this Blog today!

I had always planned to retire at 60.  That was the expectation … that was the plan that we all signed up to when I entered General Practice.  When John retired six years ago, and I became Senior Partner, I realised that I could not continue full-time to sixty, as he had done.  The recruitment and retention crisis was really starting to bite in Gosport, and our workload and the pressure of work was beginning to rise exponentially.  In my mind, sixty became fifty-eight and, in the last two years, I have even started to consider retirement as early as fifty-seven.

I turn fifty-six this December but, while I am determined to prove – at least to myself – that I can still do the job, I have decided to retire next year, at the end of February.  I want to retire from my desk, and not my ‘sick-bed.’  I want to go on my own terms.

The early weeks of my sick leave were spent working out what had happened to me and letting the stresses and the emotions slowly drain away.  Only then, could I start to consider my options.

I am employed as a GP Partner, so I could resign my Partnership, and become a salaried GP, but there is minimal difference between the two roles, so it would gain me little.  Anyway, I would be treated the same by staff and patients, and probably act the same too, so I would have to be in another Practice if there was to be real change, and I want to retire from the same Practice I had joined in 1990.  Doing locum work does not appeal.  Sure, there is none of the admin workload that takes up so much time, but I couldn’t bear to swap that gain for the loss of the longstanding doctor-patient relationships that I and my patients enjoy.  I could reduce the number of sessions I work, but that would not really address my tendency to overwork, and my income would then be little different to what I would get from my pension.

In considering my options, one thing was certain: I could not return to the limitless pattern of work that had made me so unwell, because I would surely hit the buffers again.

Over the many weeks that followed, there was much thought and careful analysis of my motives and of our finances.  Much soul-searching too: balancing the realisation that I could not return to work with the intensity I had given it for so many years; against my guilt at abandoning my colleagues, and depriving our patients, our town, of yet another GP. Looking back, I am ashamed to see how focused my mind was upon my work situation, and how blinkered I was to my work-life balance. The decision seems so much easier, so straightforward, now that I have woken up to the effect of my over-working on our family life, and the chance that I now have to start afresh, and to spend more time with Sylvia, our children and our grandson.

Sometimes there is a turn of events that grabs our attention, causes us to stop and think: “Wow … what a coincidence.”  We can all recount examples – and we usually vie with each other to give the most remarkable!

I experienced this very feeling when, on the eve of the IBTC’s Open Day, I let that anthology of poetry, fall open at a random page, only to find Judy Brown’s poem “Wooden Boats.”  It gave me a feeling of assurance, affirmation … that this venture was ”right.”

Having taken the decision to resign my Partnership, quit mainstream General Practice – if not primary care altogether – and to train to become a boatbuilder, I thought I would write a Blog about it all. In particular, I felt a compulsion to share the coincidence of reading “Wooden Boats” that evening.

Recognising the need to seek an author’s permission to use their work, so as not to breach their copywrite, I sent Judy Brown a request to add a hyperlink to her website (judysorumbrown.com) or to quote her poem in my blog.  Judy kindly replied, giving me permission to do either.

In her email Judy replied: “I was delighted to get your note, to know a bit about this season of transition that is opening for you.  And to understand why “Wooden Boats” seemed to represent a confirming synchronicity.   Deepak Chopra in an early book said that such synchronicity is an indication that we are on path, and that we are seeing the underlying web of connections in life—connections that we are often too busy to notice.” 

I don’t know about you, whether you hold to fate, destiny, pre-ordination or have a faith in divine intervention.  Judy refers to these events as “synchronicity,” and I do like the idea that we can be so tied up in what we are doing that we do not see the links to things around us.  Certainly, my work, and the very pressure of work within the Practice, subsumed my thoughts, my energy … my life.  How could I have seen any other links or perceived any other threads?

Coincidence or synchronicity, chance or fate, happenstance or destiny, random events or divine plan … I don’t know, but it’s food for thought for sure.

It was at Easter this year that I hit the buffers.  Breakdown, burnout, work-related stress … it all amounts to the same.  I started breaking down in tears at work and continued to do so for the initial few weeks of my resulting sixteen weeks sick leave, until I could feel the stress and the emotions dissipating.

During this time, three ideas, three threads, came together.

For several years, I have said that when I retire, I would like to do a boatbuilding course at the IBTC (International Boatbuilding Training College) in Portsmouth’s Historic Dockyard.   One morning, I looked on the IBTC website, and saw that they had an Open Day coming up.  I booked a place, keen to see if the course was really what I had hoped it would be.

My Father was a mechanical engineer, then CDT teacher.  Metalwork, woodwork, blacksmithing … he did it all, and he amassed a large collection of tools and machines.  When he died in 2015, I inherited this collection.  I didn’t think I would get into metalworking, so I gave his metal lathe and other such items to The Gosport Shed, but I had a workshop built in our garden, to house my tools and bench, and my Dad’s wood lathe, and his many other tools and machines.

For some time now, I have been yearning to use these tools, and to make things in wood. Although I have started to do some woodturning, it has been hard to find the time to do this, what with the hours I have been working.  I resigned myself to the idea that I would have to wait until I have more time in retirement.

During those early weeks of sick leave, I sought advice, support and comfort from my family, and from close and trusted colleagues. One of my younger Partners – well, they’re almost all younger than me – suggested a book on Mindfulness: “Finding Peace in a Frantic World.  Knowing my fondness for poetry, she also recommended an anthology of poetry: “The Poetry of Presence.”  I ordered them both, and the latter volume arrived on the eve of my visit to the Open Day at the IBTC.  That evening, as I let the book fall open at a random page, I came across a poem, written by Judy Sorum Brown, an American lady, who does leadership consultancy work. Here it is:

Wooden Boats

I have a brother who builds wooden boats,
Who knows precisely how a board
Can bend or turn, steamed just exactly
Soft enough so he, with help of friends,
Can shape it to the hull.

The knowledge lies as much
Within his sure hands on the plane
As in his head;
It lies in love of wood and grain,
A rough hand resting on the satin
Of the finished deck.

Is there within us each
Such artistry forgotten
In the cruder tasks
The world requires of us,
The faster modern work
That we have
Turned our life to do?

Could we return to more of craft
Within our lives,
And feel the way the grain of wood runs true,
By letting our hands linger
On the product of our artistry?
Could we recall what we have known
But have forgotten,
The gifts within ourselves,
Each other too,
And thus transform a world
As he and friends do,
Shaping steaming oak boards
Upon the hulls of wooden boats?

As I read this poem, on the eve of my visit to the IBTC, it felt like something of an omen.  It resonated with all that I envisaged in the art and skill of boatbuilding.   Needless to say, I enjoyed the open day immensely, certain that here I would be a round peg in a round hole, happy and fulfilled again, but in a new way: by learning and applying newly-acquired skills; by the satisfaction of crafting something beautiful and functional with my hands, using age old techniques and simple tools – Dad’s tools.

Somehow, these three threads came together that evening: my ambition to work with boats, which I have always loved; my desire to make use of my Father’s tools; and my desire to craft things out of wood.  They came together with a poem so timely to my situation, and so resonant with my need, that its discovery seems more than just coincidence.

Today, I had two reminders of one of the greatest joys of General Practice: the shared value of a longterm family doctor-patient relationship, that comes with providing care across the generations.  I hope that this joy will be shared by my successor generations of GPs, even though continuity of care – so valued by patients and esteemed by GPs – is becoming an ideal for those with chronic illness, rather than the norm for all.

First, a lady in her sixties, who reminded me about how I had looked after her baby grandson, seeing him frequently because of his severe skin problems. “He’s in his third year at university now,” she said, and we laughed together at the shared memories and the passage of time.

Second, a young man who, when we agreed it was several years since we had last met, told me happily that, according to his mother, I had been present at his birth 26 years ago.  Back then, we regularly attended home deliveries but, after antenatal care was taken out of Practices, and home deliveries reduced, our involvement in the birth of our patients ceased.  Our role may have been peripheral, but it was greatly appreciated by the baby’s parents.  I’m glad, if not surprised, that it may also be appreciated by the newborn – especially when that appreciation is expressed some 26 years later!

In the early 1960s the Prison Service took over the site of what was to become Haslar Immigration Detention (and then Removal) Centre.  Early roles for HMP Haslar included the infamous “Short Sharp Shock” for young offenders in the 1980s.  In the summer of 1990, it became an Immigration Detention Centre, with a small number of Cat C prisoners.

Some of the buildings date back to the early days of Haslar Naval Hospital. The prison laundry was the Officers Mess for the unit that provided guards to Haslar Naval Hospital, and it is a listed building.

From its opening, the Practice provided GP cover to HMP Haslar, with Gordon Spink being the Part-Time Prison Medical Officer (PTMO).  In January 1991, I took over this lead role on Gordon’s retirement, and continued as PTMO for nearly a quarter of a century until Haslar Immigration Removal Centre closed in April 2015

The Prison Medical Service was, until the NHS took over prison healthcare in 2006, the oldest medical service in the world.  Biannual conferences were a highlight for me, meeting colleagues from high security prisons, all with stories of notorious inmates that could make ones hair curl.

The isolation of the Prison Medical Service from mainstream medicine became highlighted in the 1990s, and a variety of initiatives were put in place to address this, before it was finally decided to bring prison medicine within the NHS in 2006. One of those initiatives was the Diploma in Prison Medicine.  Initially, this was only available to full-time prison MOs but, eventually, places became available for part timers.  In 2002 I managed to get a place on what turned out to be the last diploma course. A two-year programme, with only seven of us meeting in Nottingham University Medical School a few times a year, it was an absolutely joyous learning experience.  However, one topic stood out above all the others: Prison Law. It excited and enthralled some of so much that two of us went on to do a Masters Degree in Medical Law.  My two-year part-time Masters degree course at Cardiff University, completed in 2008 whilst working seven sessions a week, was the hardest academic work I have ever done.  Writing essays and a dissertation in the small hours, reading cases and commentaries at weekends, and with me typically(!) chasing a distinction rather than accepting a pass, it is no wonder that Sylvia, my wife, said at the end that she’d divorce me if I ever did something similar again!  Although it was hard work, I enjoyed the course greatly and, even if it did not lead to any formal career change, it developed my critical abilities, and gave me a wealth of medico-legal knowledge that has supported me and colleagues through the succeeding years.

The other Prison Diploma student who did a Masters in Medical Law degree was a GP, Prison MO, Police Surgeon and an Approved doctor under section 12 of the Mental Health Act.  At his prompting, I too took up Police Surgeon work for a few years, and also became a ‘section 12 Doctor.’  This enabled me to undertake Mental Health Act Assessments and, when the Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards (DOLS) procedure came in place, I was able to undertake these assessments also.  The DOLS work dramatically increased as a result of a 2014 landmark judgment in the Supreme Court, known as the ‘Cheshire West case, which led to a widening of the scope – and thereby number – of people requiring assessment under the DOLS process.  Monies earned from these assessments, saved to fund an earlier than otherwise retirement, will be used to fund my IBTC course.

As a result of my experience of prison medicine, I became a Clinical Assessor for the Prisons and Probation Ombudsman (directly, and then through the NHS) for Deaths in Custody.  The case that particularly stands out in my mind was the first PPO-led Death in Custody investigation in Guernsey, as a result of which I was called as an Expert Witness for the subsequent inquest.

My work in Haslar also led to my doing consultancy work for the Immigration Service, assessing tender applications for the privately-run Immigration Removal Centres, and undertaking audits of healthcare in these establishments.

So, my arguing in October 1990 – before I had even fully joined the Partnership – that the Practice could ill afford to lose the income from the PTMO post at Haslar Detention Centre, led to a succession of opportunities to expand my education and career.  Definitely one of my better decisions!