Summer Greetings to all, and welcome to my new readers – old friends and training alumni.

My retirement plans are stepping up a gear and to help me on my way, 2017 is the year of reunions. I’ve been to two this month and there are another four pencilled in over the summer and autumn.

It’s been great fun seeing people you trained and worked with over the last 40 years. Much has changed in society, of course, but we are, at our heart, still the same people we were when we were younger. 

Meditating on an exhausting working life that has now passed is punctuated with walks along the beach and cliff tops, dozing in the hammock, and working in the garden. It’s a soothing poultice but I am still haunted by the people I have encountered in the course of my work.

As a serial course attendee, a habit of a lifetime, I’ve been on a course about publishing, finding a literary agent, and all things complicated and new about making a book. “What is your book’s genre?” has been the opening question at each workshop and I have found myself a bit stuck. “Oh, it’s early days; I’m still finding my way,” I stutter in reply. Perhaps you can help me?

I could write an academic tome about dysfunctional organisations and people. Chapter 1 “About the Author” meditates on this approach and rejects it as it will be very dry and will probably gather dust on some library shelf, unloved and unread, for years before it’s put in the skip.

I’ve been trying to explain my work through a more light-hearted case study approach set in the mythical St. Angela’s University Teaching Hospital – a viper’s nest of political behaviours; see Chapters 2, 3, 4. I’ve had positive feedback but I’m at a moment of choice:

Should this book be more of a fact-based fiction, or should it be something with a feel of a thriller? Please let me know what you think.

I’m off to plan the veggies for this summer’s table and to prepare the next instalment of Chapter 5 – dealing with Prima Donnas. Then, it’s down to the beach for a stroll and a lemon curd ice cream.

Come back next time for another tale of Prima Donnas in action…..