MH Photos

Last weekend I went up to Edinburgh to visit friends. I had a fantastic time walking around the city centre, shopping and eating at lots of nice places.

Edinburgh is a beautiful city with loads of lovely buildings and elegant public lighting. I was really impressed with the number of boutique shops in the city centre, which is a real change from the repetitive nature of high street shopping in the UK as most towns always seem to have the same high street shops like Boots, HMV, Game, etc.

There are loads of cute little cafes and bars and I am looking forward to going back to explore the secondhand bookstores.

I went for a walk around Edinburgh Castle and saw the Stone of Scone. I found out recently from my parents that my grandfather used to do guard duty around the castle when he was in the Black Watch.

Here are some shots of Prudhoe Hospital, my 0.5 workplace. It's a large institution with many old buildings that are now empty and there is word that most of the site is about to be razed by a private developer. The grounds are vast with areas of forest and animals grazing in the surrounding pastures.

I found this sculpture on BoingBoing. Here's a link to the artist's website. Link

This is a photo that I have been working on. It's a sculpture by Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux called Ugolino and his Sons. It depicts Count Ugolino della Gherardesca who is a character on the ninth level of Hell in Dante's Divine Comedy.

Ugolino was betrayed by an Archbishop who accused him of treason and imprisoned him and his sons in the Tower of Hunger. According to the legend, Ugolino's sons offered him their flesh to feed upon. Driven mad by hunger and anguish, Ugolino feasted upon his sons and assured his place in the deepest circle of Hell.

The sculpture shows Ugolino's oldest child about to offer himself to his father who is tormented by the hunger and suffering of his sons.

I've managed to find a regular supply of internet so I'm back online now. I can only go so long without getting my fix.

On first appearances, Newcastle seems to be an interesting and attractive city. In many ways it's typically English: cold. It doesn't have an insulating layer of smog like London and it even dropped down to two below zero the other night. The city itself is a mix of old and new with medieval, Victorian, Gerorgian and Modern architecture. It's even been touched by the hand of the industrial revolution.

Here's a lovely little bit of trivia from Wikipedia: (Pinch of Salt Warning)
For a short time in the 17th century, Newcastle exported large quantities of urine down the coast to Ravenscar, North Yorkshire, to be used in the production of alum (a dye fixative) for the textile industry.^[1] The urine was collected from public urinals or barrels in the city and it has been suggested that this may be the origin of the popular (though mildly offensive) English phrase "taking the piss".

On Thursday night I walked down to the river Tyne and saw the Tyne Bridge. Here's a picture from Wikipedia, no doubt I will eventually take some of my own.
It may remind you of something.....
I'm pretty sure that this was built before that famous Australian bridge. But I think that the Sydney Harbour bridge is the finest example of a compression arch suspended-deck bridge in the world.

For those of you that don't know why I have moved up here to Newcastle here is the official version. The UK medical job market is in complete upheaval. There are too many junior doctors and not enough consultants so there is a lot of competition amongst doctors without post-graduate qualifications or college membership for posts. For me it means that the best job I could find was in Newcastle rather than in London.

I'm working in a psychiatric hospital outside of Newcastle in a little town called Prudhoe. My job is to provide some medical input on a ward for children with severe learning disabilities. It's not an area that I've much experience in but there would be very little opportunity for me to apply talk therapy as most of the kids are unable to communicate. I'm really there to do paperwork, take blood and make slow, small changes to medication regimes under the direction of my consultant.

Learning disability as a sub-specialty of psychiatry doesn't seem to be very widespread in Australia. It's a discipline that treats people with autism, epilepsy, genetic disorders and other types of severe cognitive impairment. The hospital provides practically 1:1 nursing for the kids so that they can get all the attention they need. We took some of the kids to the local pool on Thursday. It was touching to see these poor kids who live such anxiety-ridden, tough lives relax in the water. Yes, I did get in and splash around myself.