Matron at Last

'When do you have a bath?' I asked Mrs Turgoose. 'I hope you're not suggesting that I don't look after meself properly,' she said crossly. 'There was a woman who used to use it, but that was because she was a bit stuck up. She soon went off the idea when it started to get cold.' After working as a nurse for thirty years, Evelyn left the hospital to become a full-time Matron of the Lodge - a home for elderly ladies of reduced circumstances. Evelyn was nothing like the matrons she had known and feared in the past. There wasn't even a uniform to give her status, but she was a shoulder to cry on when a resident lost her budgerigar and somebody to talk to when there was no one else to listen. In spite of broken nights and hot dinners left to get cold, Mrs Peters with her temper and Mrs Harrison with her 24-hour piano playing, it offered a chance to make a difference to her ladies' lives. Whether it was fetching milk stout for Miss May and brown ale for Mrs Hunt to keep their peckers up or helping Mrs James deal with of her extra-blue blue rinse, the ladies made a difference to Evelyn's life too. A Nurse Near By is Evelyn's funny and affectionate memoir of her years as a Matron, even if she was only in fact a nurse near by and on call twenty-four hours a day.