Cushla McKinney
After twenty years as a nurse in the British National Health Service (NHS), Christie Watson is leaving medicine to pursue a literary career. But with the generosity that characterises the job to which she has devoted much of her life, she has taken the time to share what it has taught her.
In The Language of Kindness: A Nurse’s Story of Life, Death and Hope, which falls somewhere between memoir and manifesto, she offers readers insights into an essential but undervalued profession and provides a blunt assessment of the way in which decades of political decision-making have compromised the heath system in general, and nursing in particular.
Five thousand years ago Oman was the centre of the world’s frankincense trade. Frankincense was traditionally burned at funerals and to repel malaria-bearing mosquitoes in the coastal regions. Other uses included the treatment of wounds, nausea, blood pressure, fever and inflammation. It was in great demand by the Greeks, Romans, Egyptians and Israelites for their religious ceremonies. A whole year’s supply was burned at the funeral of Nero’s wife. As one of the gifts to the Christ child, frankincense was considered more valuable than gold. To transport frankincense across the desert, camels were domesticated in southern Arabia. At least one of the Magi is said to have started his journey to Bethlehem from southern Oman.