First published in 2018 by Oberon Books Ltd
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Copyright Mark Thomas, 2018
Mark Thomas is hereby identified as author of this play in accordance with section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. The author has asserted his moral rights.
All rights whatsoever in this play are strictly reserved and application for performance etc. should be made before commencement of rehearsal to Mark Thomas c/o Lakin McCarthy Ents Ltd, PO Box 724, Ixworth, Bury St Edmunds, IP31 2XR. No performance may be given unless a licence has been obtained, and no alterations may be made in the title or the text of the play without the authors prior written consent.
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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
PB ISBN: 9781786825018
E ISBN: 9781786825025
Cover design Greg Matthews
Photography Steve Ullathorne (cover, )
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Contents
Acknowledgements
Thanks go to the Wellcome Trust for their support and to everyone mentioned in this play, as well as the many others who contributed ideas and help and gave their time so generously:
Professor Hashim Ahmed, David Cahill, Dr Barbara Cleaver, Professor Prokar Dasgupta, Michelle Dixon, James & Nicola Forrester, Dr Mike Gill, Leyla Hawkins, Dr Caddy Kroll, Professor David Mabey, Dr George Peck, Sarah Jane Marsh, Dr Peter Bennie, Red Threads, Nicholas Timmins, Ron Singer, Paul Atkinson, Mick Duncan, Allyson Pollock, Bex Cowell, Alan Duddy, Everyone at the Stratford Activists Forum, Isaac Madge, Lee Beech, Katharina Lochmann, Timothy Reichardt, Emily Fuller,
Church of the Holy Spirit.
Everyone at Lakin McCarthy: Mike, Warren, Debra, Kate,
Sharron, Catherine, Jamie
As always Jenny, Charlie, Izzy and Ralph.
Introduction
H ello, if you are reading this you have probably come to the showor had a friend who came and got you the play scriptor you are in a bookshop with a theatre sectionor a charity shop with no central vetting for booksor you have stolen itanyway, anyway it doesnt matter even if you stole the book Welcome and I hope you enjoy it.
In making this show Id talk to anyone and everyone who would have me, and each evening I would come home and regale my family with the stories and conversations I had just witnessed. To retell all the stories would take a stage show that lasted two days, I do not have the skill and you do not have the patience to do that. And as yet no theatre has had the inclination either, leaving a heap of discarded tales that have influenced the show but never get to bask in the spotlight of the telling of them.
Then I was asked to write an introduction
One of the things that really struck me making this show was how much people were prepared to give up their time for this institution. Whether it was the group of people fighting the governments new plans for ACOs and STPs through the courts or the radiologist who overheard me talking to a friend on the tube and said, I might be able to shed some light on your discussion, she then made contact through my website and later phoned me to talk me through the crisis in staffing for radiologists (part of which is an increased work load and no increase in staffing levels).
I attended one meeting of activists in a community centre in Stratford. It was an incredible hour and a half, listening to junior doctors, consultants, GPs and patients talk about the stresses they faced in and with the NHS. One paediatrician spoke of a situation where parents with sharp elbows found it easier to navigate the NHS and the inverse law of health meant that those who needed it most would be the ones who found it hardest to get the help they needed. The room was brought to tears by a young oncologist movingly explaining how privatised cleaning staff would barge into the room when she was delivering bad news and how angry that robbing of dignity made her. Not with the cleaners. They were just doing their job under the terms theyve been given. Someone else spoke of the under staffing and the strain it was putting on everyone we are 40,000 nurses understaffed in the NHS and 10,000 doctors short too. The last person to speak, as the clock ticked on and community centre staff began to mutter about stacking chairs, a man who had been silent all evening said, I take the fact we have not mentioned mental health as indicative of its low priority in the NHS. We had barely time to register what he said before it was time to leave.
After the meeting had finished and we had left the building I chatted to this man, a psychologist, by a duel carriage way in Stratford catching the evening sun and the nitrous oxide. He is so outraged that the NHS is failing so many mental health patients that rather than just moan about it he has abandoned his own practice. He now runs free therapy for the unemployed and low waged. He does not limit the number of sessions to the usual eight sessions of CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy) as the NHS does but has open ended treatment. People can come for as long as they need to. He runs this free service out of community centres and at one stage a shopping mall. He organises other psychologists to give up their time to follow suit, most cannot give up their practice entirely but they can offer one or two sessions a week and a small community organisation is beginning to build up.
I asked him what it was that inspired this and he said, The Occupy movement.
I just wanted to take this moment to point to this story that for reasons of time will not make it into the show. A man so frustrated by the state of mental health provision in this country that he treats people for free in shopping centres.
The NHS is a magnificent entity that is in crisis and is held together by the incredible good will of the staff, now more than ever it needs proper funding levels, proper staffing levels and critical friends.
Salut and thanks to all those in the NHS who allowed me to witness their professionalism and kindness.
Mark Thomas
Preface
T his show has been two years in the making. It came about through a chance meeting in 2016 when Mark Thomas came to see Drones, Baby, Drones which I had directed at the Arcola, and casually said we should work together and did I have any ideas? I jumped at the chance and told him that I was very interested in doing something about the NHS for its 70th anniversary little suspecting this anniversary would become a huge national event.
