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And thank you. Good afternoon, everybody. And I'd like to introduce Mr Charles Marks who's emeritus consultant neurosurgeon uh in Ireland, who previously has worked at Cork and after retirement took up a teaching post at University of Cork. Um Charlie. Lovely to meet you at lunchtime. Thank you. I'm going to be very brief. It's four o'clock on a hot Friday, Saturday afternoon and I was going to say just a few reflections as a trainee and what the trainees uh felt in Bristol. And sadly, I asked to speak at this meeting because I knew Mike Torrance and Hyuk. Okay, we're going to be here. And sadly, Mike Torrance has just disappeared to go and spend time with his family. So I told him the things I was going to say about him just before he left uh from a trainee's perspective. I mean, uh Corp was nothing brilliant to work in really and sorry. Uh I haven't, I haven't been at the points at lunchtime. Uh French, it was just, just a great place to work. I came as an sho in 1980 straight after my intern year and Brian Cummins interviewed me for the job and I was 30 at the time with a degree in history in a year and a year in the city behind me and Brian interviewed me in his inimitable way, had a wonderful way with words Brown Cummings. And he said, well, I've looked at your CV, you're a bit older and a bit more experienced in life. That could be a great asset or I could say here's a dilettante, hasn't a clue what he wants to do with the rest of his life. What do you say to that? And I almost wanted to say, got me in one sir. And, and I rather sort of lived up to his image of me cause after I left his an sh I went to, I went to Nepal for three months to sort of climb mountains and things. So that rather convinced Brown that I was this dilettante. Um But those days Hugh Griffith, we've all heard about Hugh Griffith today and I'm not going to say much more. He was a very big personality and a bit scary. Actually, when you were a junior, my wife had him, she was three years behind me. She had him as a personal tutor and she found that she just just couldn't get over how scary it was. And he was very nice to her. But, but she couldn't barely say a word to him, but he was a dominating personality. He was like an American chief of surgery. Really? And, and in, in the way, he's kind of ruled the roost in, in, in Bristol, in Bristol and even the neurologist deferred to him. I, I found him a bit hard to take when I was an ex actually until the final week and I was assisting him in theater and he, he in a rather pompous way. I was, I was scrubbed with him in a rather pompous where he said modest men like myself, Charlie. And then turned to me with a big wink and I liked him better after that because he, he wasn't modest and he knew it, but it was a front and an act. And actually, when I came back as a registrar, couple of years later, he treated me wonderfully and was a great friend and a great mentor. And, and I learned an enormous amount for him from him. And all the guys at that time, take, took huge trouble to teach you how to operate. And, you know, we've seen all this technology and, and wonderful image guidance stuff and all the rest of it. But the guys then taught me how to operate and they were endlessly patient with me, Brian Cummins as we all know huge personality, huge judge while the Aleve, you know, wonderful way with words and, and Brian, somebody told the story of Brian and Burr Hole to have the cranial pressure Ponant to put in. They didn't get it quite right. It was done. At nine o'clock in the morning under local, he then saw a few patient's in the clinic down the corridor. And then that afternoon, I had strict instructions to Dr Brian down to Southampton for a clinic, a path meeting. We got 100 yards outside the hospital gates and Brian said, take me home and I took him home just half a mile up the road. He said, get out the car. We jumped in his Ford escort boy racer Xr three and went at the usual 90 miles an hour down to Southampton the same morning, it had a burr hole, typical Brian. And the only other memory I have a big memory of Brian is he had to go at me once. I wasn't the most uh sort of necessarily the most together registrar. He had a go at me for being very casual and relaxed about things. And I admitted, I said I was a little bit laid back and he said, you're so effing laid back, you're nearly effing horizontal. He said, and that was my memory of Brian Mike. I just said to him a few words as he was leaving, saying, Mike gave me just the right amount of supervision in theater and the right amount of flying solo. Um I will say Mike was the best all round surgeon I came across anywhere in any specialty. He had a wonderful way of just making a whole range of surgery look easy and I do remember once we got a stereo system in the theater and I got, I brought in Shades, great song smooth operator and I put it on all I got was a black look from Mike, but it was meant as a compliment because he was a smooth operator, you know, and then Professor Coke um here wasn't, wasn't, it wasn't quite a professor when I worked for him, but he's but much revered, great surgeon, great research, great scientist. Always, there was a very witty and there was always a nice wicked side to Hugh Coke um underlying it. You always felt there was a wicked side trying to get out, but he managed to suppress it mostly, but it made it great fun to work for. Can you put on my first slide? Um II I started as an sho a month after, sorry, a week after coming out of this, I bust my neck on the downs in, in, in Bristol when I was in, I was on call at time, got somebody to cover for me for an hour. Unfortunately, I had to cover for me in the next two months because I, I had a post ear effusion and two months in that with a bit of bone graft. Fantastic result. Never had a days pain since one little bit of wire done with that fancy technology. Um Next picture, please. Um Hugh Coke um taught me this. We were on a ward round with the guy had been smashed up in the front seat of a car and bad facial fracturing. The eyes were asymmetrical and you said that's the Isaiah syndrome. Most many people know probably. But this is the original Isaiah because one Isaiah than the other. And this is Isaiah, this, this is Isaiah from the Guinea pig club. The Guinea Pig club were mcindoe patient's in East Grinstead. He was the guy that fixed all the RF crew who were badly burned and badly smashed up in the war. And he was one of the founder members of the Eye and they nicknamed and Isaiah because one of those I had, uh, the other, the other members of the Guinea Pig Club famously, the treasurer had no legs so he wouldn't run off with the funds and the secretary had no fingers left. They've all been burned off so he couldn't, wouldn't. Right. Boring minutes. So that was the Guinea Pig Club. Um, those are my memories of, of, of, of Bristol. And I wondered on, I, I managed to slide away for two months. If we put on my last slide, I managed to slide away for two months after I in between registrar and senior registrar went down like a lead balloon in London when they found out that rather than coming to do one in two in London, I've gone off to Nepal and India for two months. And that's me looking rather scruffy with Everest in the power background. Um And this is my second trip to of all. I went with my wife at that time and we had a wonderful time and London was a rude shock after the easy going ways of French, they had to work your butt off. But so long as you work your butt off, they treated you wonderfully as a friend and, and a colleague. And it was, and then I went to London and there were a funny lot out there. Many Londoners around. They, it was, it wasn't an easy place to work for me. So I wasn't terribly happy in London and I slid off to Jerusalem to East Jerusalem for my fellowship after 2.5 years in London where I spent a year in a Palestinian hospital. So, had a very good friend as Palestinian neurologist and it was actually, I didn't learn anything great there. And so it was a wonderful consultant apprenticeship because I then went to Cork where I was again on one in two and many people think of one and two was dreadful. But we were old fashioned in Cork. A couple of my old registrars are here. Um, I learned from Brian. Brian told me the 1st, 1st week with him, I'll teach you how to operate on today and you'll keep me in my bed at night. And that's what I did. I, I got blown. Rick. Rick blew me up in the, in some committee meeting in London for saying that it wasn't allowed to, you're not allowed to say that in the NHS anymore. You're not allowed to train your registrar's like that. But that's how I was trained and that's how I tried my registrar. So one and two wasn't that dreadful. So many, many, many thanks to Hugh. Anyone left posthumous. Thanks to the two are gone. Sadly. Um, I had a wonderful time and I would never have done neurosurgery if I hadn't started in court. You know, if I'd started in London, I think I'd have done something else. But, um, you know, you're responsible for giving me a good life. So, thank you. Thank you.