Call The Midwife

[Daffodilly]

I'm sure after the Christmas special they said a new series would be starting in the New Year. So where is it?? [impatient]

Aaah many congratulations Marthas !!!

My Sundays will be bereft too

I'm pretty sure in the prologue to the book she says that Trixie is an amalgamation of several people she met.

All of us caring mums noticed the standing baby in the next cot! I really thought that they would take both.
I knew she left midwifery as I had read the books a few years ago but was surprised at the sudden change from loving delivering babies to changing direction. It all seemed to happen in about 5 minutes.

thank you ppeatfruit

Yes, I find that sudden change really odd. Wasn't it only last week she left the hospital because her heart was in working in the community? Yet she's now going to a hospital to look after the dying?

It is frustrating not knowing how much is true, but presumably some of these people would still be alive, and she might not have had permission to make them more identifiable?

I was another one who found the bit with Chummy's mother very moving. We sat up with my granny when she died and I wish it'd been at home (it nearly was and we wanted it to be, but we couldn't do the pain relief enough at home). So those bits struck a chord.

I find Shelagh and Dr Turner incredibly annoying, though. I know he's a 1950s (60s!) husband but he comes across as a right wanker. I wonder if the actor has been pissing his wife off, that he's made to come across as so utterly unsympathetic? Because she is the producer, isn't she?

And I find Shelagh bizarre. Too simpery.

I thought the leaving hospital work was more because she wanted to stay with her patients throughout their labour rather than work with them on ante natal and then never see them again, or even know what they'd had.

This isn't incompatible with moving to palliative care. It's a very different type of care but it's still being with your patient throughout a process.

I thought it came across as if she identified with aspects of patient care but not others - whereas Cynthia and Trixie are much more straightfowardly into midwifery. So maybe that's why she isn't a natural fit and isn't sure what she's going to do?

I thought when she was getting teary after the labour, that seemed pretty convincingly like someone who knows that they're not happy but hasn't yet figured out why, and also convincing of how a relationship might start that'd take you in a different direction.

In fact I thought her acting was much better this time (apart from the truly dire training montage scene).

MarthasHarbour: the article I read was in the Radio Times. There's a shortened version here:

www.radiotimes.com/news/2012-02-19/did-call-the-midwifes-chummy-exist

What's odd is that Jennifer Worth's daughters claim to have passed on a photograph of a group of midwives, including the real Chummy, to the makers of CTM. At one point the Radio Times said it was going to go in search of the identity of the real Chummy, but they never published the outcome. It's very curious.

Thank you for the link hackmum that is all so odd now given that in the book Jennifer Worth dedicated a final chapter to how everyone went on with their lives, she made a big thing about how deeply affected she was by Sister MJ's death - but by that link it seems that Sister MJ is a mixture of a couple of Nuns. The Chummy situation is odd too - given that apparently JW spoke to Miranda Hart before she died to specifically request that she be cast into the role - unless she just had that specific 'character' in her head... who knows.

I still bloody love the books and show though - as does my nanna who was a nurse from WWII through to the 80s and told me it is all spot on!

But she might still have been deeply affected by the death of someone whose real life she's had to disguise heavily? I mean, look how we're all moved by what is obviously realistic in Chummy's mother's death, even though that's entirely fictional. Maybe it's like that?

I do know what you mean, though.

I didnt think of that - fair point LRD

Whether it is all real or not it is obviously realistic and true to the era, as many have said who were there at the time (including our own thread midwife 2old )

Well, it's me hoping! I would love Chummy to be real and for her to come forward and tell her story.And of course it would still be lovely even if she is a composite character. But I would be sad, to be honest, if it were purely made up.

But you're right, it's clearly realistic and it's amazing reading this thread with people's real experiences on it.

MarthasHarbour - I felt like that too. I also felt that Jennifer Worth seemed to be an honest person of integrity and that she wouldn't have made people up outright, even if she disguised or embellished a couple of details. But I suppose we'll never know. It's odd that the daughters haven't come forward and said that she was definitely a real person (or indeed demanded the photo back!)

I remember someone on this thread saying that every nurse's house at the time had a Chummy!

Perhaps she is real but she doesn't want to be identified and that's why the Radio Times never published the outcome. I don't think the daughters would have ever met her - in the book she left before Jenny left and Jenny only married after she left the convent.