Day 10 of homelessness.........

.......to my new and temporary home. Here I am in Plymouth. The city has certainly welcomed me; there has been cloudless skies and brilliant sunshine from the moment I arrived. The people too seem nice so far and I think my time here will be ok - fingers crossed.

I'm staying in the doctor's residences of the main hospital - a 10 minute drive from where I'm working and for me, its a bit like stepping back in time. My ex- husband of long ago was a junior doctor when I met him and we spent many long hours in his flat at the hospital. It was very similar to this place apart from in his flat there was a separate bedroom, whereas here the bed is kept in a cupboard in the wall.

 I seemed to spend most of my time in that flat completely alone too! He would be, inevitably, on call and out on the wards and I would be waiting patiently (bored) for his return. I would do whatever I could to make his on call time a little more pleasant. I worshipped him then and he knew it; he allowed me to wait on him hand and foot and made it seem he was doing me a favour. At the time I didn't blame him. Being on call and knackered most of the time is hell on earth. Who in their right mind would refuse the attentions of a willing slave in those circumstances? Besides, it made me feel important in a way I had never felt previously. He needed me to make it better - isn't that every nurses raison d'être?

I was reminded too of something weird which happened 5 or 6 years after our divorce. I had the opportunity to return to the hospital where we had met and where I trained, to spend a day with a specialist nurse. It had been 20 years since I had been there and the whole experience felt a little surreal.  After following the nurse around all day she announced we had to go to a meeting. Off we went, through the hospital, out into the car park and across to where the nurses and doctor's residences used to be. As we walked I told her about living there and meeting my ex. She told me that 90% of the flats were now the admin offices of the hospital. When we arrived at the block where my ex had lived it felt so strange and when we arrived outside the very door of the flat I almost burst out laughing! Unbelievably, I found myself in a packed meeting in the very bedroom I had spent many a happy hour, in my ex's cramped single bed. Happy days.