A night shift

Here I am on a grey and cold miserable day in England. But one tries to keep positive yesireeee! Actually maybe I’ll just give up and be pissed off for once hahaha.

As there have been a few problems with new staff getting me work at my nursing agency, I took a night shift at Southlands Hospital for the first time in ages on Tuesday night. As night shifts go, it was quite busy, but quite enjoyable. I was on an orthopaedic ward, the patients are only there for a few days while they have their hip/shoulder replacements (or whatever) and then they go home as soon as possible. Compared to some places I work they mostly need a lot of monitoring, particularly after their operations. This involves hourly taking of blood pressures and temperatures which can get a bit tedious after a while, although the patients don’t seem to complain.

It can be a slightly creepy experience wandering around a large hospital in the early hours of the morning. At least I remembered to bring some half-decent food with me this time, it keeps you feeling half-human when you haven’t had any sleep. A couple of new admissions knocked on the door at 7.00 a.m. which kept us busy at the end of the shift. But just as we thought everything was done and the two staff nurses had started to handover to the morning day staff, we discovered a woman sitting in a mixture of her own faeces and fluid leaking from a wound. Clearing that lot up early in the morning certainly woke me up!

The main problem for me with night shifts is how they muck up your sleep patterns, unless you are doing them regularly. Otherwise I would probably do more as they pay better and are usually quite relaxed compared to day shifts.

One or two album reviews have surfaced on the net this week, and there’s been some very nice feedback indeed from several people who’ve bought a copy. That really does make it all worthwhile.

Some radio play and a review

The promo copies are still going out all over the world. Rob Leighton played “Here Comes The Great Collapse” on Radio Caroline which was a nice surprise, not the most obvious of tracks for radio play I would have thought?

The uncompromising and excellent magazine Organ had this to say: “TIM BURNESS – Vision On (Expanding Consciousness) – Another solo album from one time Burnessence leader Tim Burness, and a return to the melodic (polite) side of prog that originally brought Tim and his band to the attention the early 80’s UK prog followers (Burnessence were a regular part of that healthy scene alongside bands like IQ, Pendragon, Twelfth Night and such). Melodic prog, Porcupine Tree flavours, Pink Floyd textures, ambient hints of Gong – there goes the mighty Om riff again (as recently heard performed live by Cardiacs). An album that has a stand out moment or two, on the whole things are a little polite and pedestrian for our tastes – worth it for the early Marillion/Twelfth Night moments though and you followers of Pendragon, recent Marillion, Porcupine Tree and such will find this worth investigating.”