The hospital at night held infinitely more appeal for me. Most of the great institution’s staff were at home, sleeping off the toils of the day. The usually bright busy corridors with their gleaming black and white linoleum and lists of benefactors in gold lettering, were quiet and empty. I padded along them, wrapped in my red cape, happy in my role as a cog in the machine that ran the nocturnal world of the Royal Infirmary.

On Ward 22 the quiet was gently or sometimes abruptly punctuated by the ubiquitous sound of breaking wind. This happened so often we barely noticed, as we sat huddled round the angle-poise lamp at the nurses’ station, balancing fluid charts or writing “settled and slept well” or words to that effect, in the kardex. Never a mention of the copious volumes of wind. On the male medical ward it was not worthy of comment, whereas on a surgical ward the inability to expel it might necessitate the gentle insertion of a flatus tube to release painful pockets of gas, which would escape and bubble happily under water in a stainless steel kidney dish, producing instant relief to a grateful patient. No such procedures were ever needed for the elderly men sleeping in ward 22, who freely puffed out their bodily vapours all night long.
Every so often, we became the waiting medical ward, meaning that anyone in A&E who needed admitted, came to us. On such nights, Murray graced us with his presence. A long serving orderly, he was sent to help by the nursing office and was very proficient at emptying bins, settling patients and heading off to the day room for a sneaky “Disco Blue”, his favourite brand of French cigarette.
On waiting night, the passage of wind did become worthy of comment. Murray never failed to acknowledge a good fart.
After every loud phrrrrrrrrp, he would rise to his feet with the air of an attentive waiter and say, “more soup, sir?”
Even the gentlest fizzle was recognised. “Taxi sir?”
He had us nurses in convulsions. He delivered trays of tea and unparalleled NHS toast plastered in salty butter to the station and kept his watch throughout the night on his way back and forwards from the day room.
Murray’s whistling in the sluice could be heard above the whoosh of the bedpan washer, as dawn broke and the Meadows’ trees were once again filled with birdsong.