Call The Midwife Christmas Special

[PinkFrogss]

Anyone watching? Apologies if I’ve missed the thread.

I'm late to the party but the most eye-popping moment for me this series so far has been Saint Turner diagnosing porphyria, a very rare disease that was thought to be the one from which George III suffered, just from a urine sample! They don't need specialists in Poplar - Dr. Turner can diagnosie anything.

Earlier in the thread I predicted that Sister MJ would depart this mortal coil while watching man take his first steps on the moon, but it didn't happen despite her prediction to Fred that she didn't have long left to live (though she's being saying that since the start of the series anyway!) I still reckon that if the moon landings had happened late enough in the year for it to be the last episode in the series, that would have been the point for her to take her leave. Another poster suggested that the astronaut would turn to the screen and we would see that it was, in fact, Dr Turner. Almost disappointed that this didn't happen. 😁

😁
I thought SMJ might die after seeing the moon landings too.

Made me laugh the idea of the astronaut turning round & it being Dr Turner 😂

Sister MJ definitely needs to stop crying wolf about it being her time to shuffle off this mortal coil. As pp said it’s been happening since the first series!

Bit like the Oompa lumpas in Charlie and the Chocolate factory

He's omnipresent

I liked Rosalind sticking up for her friend and colleague. I also liked the fact that Joyce was honest about Trixie being distracted. It's very difficult to be honest when a colleague has made a mistake but it's so important when you are looking after vulnerable people.

A giant leap for mankind, but just a wee step for the Turners.

I have no problem with the writers making it clear that meals on wheels is not a substitute for a career for which she has trained and worked hard. It was the wording 'oh delivering mince dinners before driving home to look after their husbands' or words to that effect. It just diminished a very valuable public service.

Like many many PPs I think it has run its course now.

I agree the earlier series were gritty with raw emotion on show and it was a look forward too show every weekend.
Not now though and not for a long time,

Exactly the same at my school, had completely forgotten! 🤣

In the 90s my GP disapproved so strongly of me having sex at 18 that he refused to treat my cystitis properly. I had to see a doctor at the family planning clinic to get the right antibiotics. I was using contraception and in a long term relationship but he was very unimpressed.

All my children had their BCGs as babies in London in the last decade as TB is rife in some areas. My friend’s children tested positive for it not that long ago after moving away from London before they had been jabbed.

Mince dinners is exactly what people called them - not just Trixie. Budget meals for an elderly population who frequently had no decent teeth. Minced based mains with a few in season veg and variations on sponge and custard, jelly and custard etc for puddings.

People would say "the mince dinner woman" had arrived in exactly the way you might talk about the postman or the milkman. Most of the women doing the actual work were local women - the women who were already doing the double shift work wise but whose kids were older. Some of the women were MC women in need of occupation but women like Matthew's mother never came near communities like ours. She would have been doing the rotas, opening fetes to raise funds - officer class jobs. That is what someone like Trixie would be expected to do after a short stint on the rounds.

My SiL many years later used to do these deliveries in a different part of the country. They were still calling them mince dinners. I assumed the scriptwriters put this in on purpose.

Yes still plenty of sexism in medicine still but on the whole I think its less overt.

I remember GPs telling me in the 80s that I wouldn't get a good husband if I had sex, later that I should be having babies not a career (I was 23) and also that "God's will" for me was to stay at home and look after a man whilst having babies (that last a GP who apparently thought his job was evangelism rather than medicine.

I don't think my DC have had quite such direct sexism but they have certainly been dismissed for gynae problems which needed medical intervention. The prevailing myth of "everything is normal" however dysfunctional still exists and women have to fight too hard to get decent health care.

So so true. Virtually every woman I know has experienced dismissal from a GP over some element of her gynae health.

Mince dinners is the right terminology.
I helped my GM deliver them in the 1970s. Not London, but close.

When looking for something similar for DM recently, I was delighted to discover that the county where GM delivered meals on wheels is one of the few still doing so!

Whatever happened to Meals on Wheels? Was it a charity thing? I don't know much about it but I remember seeing it being delivered while playing out in the street as a child.

Its funny I was wondering if there were still Meals on Wheels. Sad for Trixie thought her and Matthew were lovely last season, but now!👎.
I remember the moon landing and I think it wasn't celebrated as much as CTM makes out(or I dont think so) might be because it was The U S A.
Nancy looks terrible in the clothes they put her in. Im sure you wouldnt wear stuff that didnt suit to be in fashion.
Surely if St Dr Turner was visiting a family with T B he would wear some sort of PPE. He was examining the poor man who had just coughed up bloody and giving CPR without gloves. Whould that be normal.
Vi Buckles hats make me laugh.

I was born in 1960 and remember the Moon Landings well. We were all obsessed and there was much stuff at school and at home.

Meals on Wheels, has largely been replaced with Wiltshire Foods. Ready meals and microwaves killed them. The social aspect is lost. They would have been great for MIL.

Yea I remember it being delivered to people as a kid.

I always thought it was via the Council, sort of like Adult Social Services provisions
Not so sure though.

I remember Meals on Wheels coming under auspices of WRVS in our area - local people prepared cooked and delivered them - I used to help my mother do so in school holidays 1969-1974. They were lovely meals cooked by former cook in stately home. Not a whiff of mince!In my area of north London, council delivered meals to housebound when first lived here - this post makes me realise that must have stopped. My mother hated Wiltshire Farm meals - M&S meals for one kept her happy

I wonder where Trixie will sleep at Nonnatus House. Haven't all the rooms been taken by the student midwives and Nancy/Collette?

Where did Trixie's brother go?

Wasn't he sleeping with the nuns too?

Wasn't he sleeping with the nuns too? <clutches pearls>

Sister Monica Joan has probably buried him in that little flower bed she is often working on. Trixie seems to have forgotten he exists.

Presumably Trixie could share with Phyllis?

Plus the only nuns seem to be SJulienne, SM-J and Sister Health Visitor... there used to be loads floating around, with individual rooms