Call the midwife

[NimbleHiker]

The Christmas special of call the midwife is on bbc 1 in 2 parts again. The first part is on at 20:15 on Christmas day and the second part is on at 20:30 on boxing day. I am not a fan of the Christmas special been in 2 parts. I wonder how doctor Turner and his simpering wife will save the world.

You are right. Even when I had DC1 in the mid 1990s the midwives used to say miiiis Jones and Mrs Smith in very different tones.

The nun thing is entirely realistic for me. My gran worked in a school of nuns (primary and secondary) in a really poor area. They were incredibly non judgemental and supportive of contraception.

I was 7 in the late 70’s and sat in on the contraception classes for the 13+ year olds. Abstinence was not mentioned, love and good relationships and responsibility were mentioned plus a realistic idea of young women having to bear men’s choices.

The elderly nun was incredibly blunt and said that men’s desire for orgasm was strong and that lack of being able to control orgasm needed to be understood. It was so non blaming. I remember her saying that sex was a blessing and hard to resist.

the reason I remember all this was my parents were FURIOUS my grandmother allowed me to take part and it was talked about loads of the years

I put the exposure to these nuns down to me wanting to be a liberal Christian. They were bloody fantastic. So warm and loving, I remember all the hugs from them, they obviously had no children of the their own so they made all the children feel special.

I'm really surprised by that.

How kind to indulge me. ❤️

Do we know that the nuns are Anglican rather than just not Roman Catholic? I don’t remember the Bishop or anyone else visiting, apart from them having random clergy lodging with them a couple of times, but it could just be my memory.

Anyway: psalms in Anglican services. There are 150 psalms. In cathedrals and churches where the psalms are sung at some point or points every day, each psalm is sung every month. I imagine the Nonatus nuns do similar. There’s a timetable for this, so if they are singing Psalm 39 it was probably the second Wednesday in the month (I have lost the reference which I found yesterday). There’s a different pattern in churches which don’t have a service every day. It’s also often sung at funerals.

As to the tune, there are lots of ‘chants’, which is a 4-part harmony set of 8 bars. This covers every 2 verses. For verses 3&4 you sing them again, and so on. Psalms are marked up (‘pointed’) showing you where to move from one note to the next. This way it doesn’t matter that the lines and the psalms are not all the same length. If a psalm is very long you might change chants/tune halfway through.

The Nonnatus nuns just sing the top harmony line - the tune - in unison.

In some places just the choir sings the psalms, in others the congregation does as well. Usually there’s a ‘play over’ first, where the organ plays the chant once. I’m not a very good sight reader, but as long as I have the notes and the pointed psalm in front of me I can sing the alto line. It’s not hard, but it does need practice if you’re not used to it.

There’s a good blog article about it here.

If you want to hear some examples, listen to Choral Evensong on BBC R3 at 3pm on Wednesdays and Sundays. (The names after the psalm numbers are the people who wrote the chants, to identity them.) Even if you don’t want to hear a whole service, just listen to the start of this Wednesday or Sunday’s broadcast as it will begin with ‘Bethlehem Down,’ a piece which I think is absolutely lovely. It has the same unaccompanied beauty as the Nonnatus psalms. It contrasts the birth of Jesus with his later life, and Mary gets mentioned a lot. 😀

They are definitely Anglican nuns, was in the latest episode

Thank you.

They are based on a real Nursing Order...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_of_St._John_the_Divine

And definitely Anglican.

I had my dd in 2006 on my own and was judged then, my dd was in scbu when she was born and one of the nurses really looked down her nose at me. It came as a shock tbh as even I hadn’t thought people could be that judgmental! When I was pregnant one colleague said to another colleague in front of me ‘it would be your worst nightmare wouldn’t it’ about my pregnancy.

I think misogyny and fear of women being independent —of men— runs deep unfortunately.

Oh and I’ve worked as a district nurse for the last 20 years, any high risk or abusive patients get flagged and are definitely seen in twos. In some cases we take the police with us.

@WeaselsRising 7 years later in 1978 I was pregnant and unmarried. And yes i insisted that I was addressed as Miss. Not every family turned their backs or hid the pregnant girl away. My parents certainly didnt, this was in a small Dorset Market Town where my Father was well known in the community.

Yes i did marry the Father when DS1 was 6 months old ( and divorced him when he was 2) another thing that was not that usual in 1980.

My parents supported me through both events and a DS2's birth and death in the intervening 2 years. I also went on to Uni with their support. We were not all turned against.

I remember as a child watching the sitcom Miss Jones & Son which had Paula Wilcox as an unmarried mother. It started in 1977 & had two series.

Thank you. Interesting. I'll have a listen to that.

Channel four had sitcom Life After Birth back in nineteen ninety six about a single mum who lives in a council flat in Brent Cross

That's a lovely post about the nuns you came in contact with, @LaurieFairyCake . Thank you for posting it.

I taught in an RC convent school in the mid-late 70s. I was in the secondary school: the junior school was round the corner and the lay staff didn't have much contact with them.

I'm not sure the order in which these happened, but I heard that one of the junior school teachers, a single woman, became pregnant and had to leave. Another teacher, who was divorced, didn't have to leave because she was still Mrs Something so the parents didn't know she was unmarried.

Which also had Paula Wilcox in it as a nod to the previous series

When I was in the sixth form in the late 1960s one of my fellow pupils left mid-term. We were told she had moved away although her mother, a teacher at the school, carried on teaching there. We heard much later that she had had a baby.

One of my class also left school during the sixth form. I had a Saturday job in a shop, and she started to work there full time. I remember thinking it was a shame she had left because she was one of the brightest in the year. Yes, it became clear as the weeks went on that she was also pregnant. I think they got married before the baby was born, but I'm not sure.

It wasn't simple to get the contraceptive pill when I was at an all-women's college in the early '70s. We wouldn't have gone to the college doctor, with whom we had to be registered. Only a few years ago I heard someone on R4 reminiscing about his time as a student in the same city. He mentioned that GP and described him as 'violently (I can't remember the word, but it wasn't pleasant.) He said if girls went to the GP for the contraceptive pill he refused to prescribe it, and also refused to refer the girls to anyone else in the practice who would.

I'm surprised to hear that. I had DD in 2000 and was the only married women in my bay of 6 on the post natal ward.

I was on the pill in 1972 when I was still at school. I got it from the Family Planning Clinic although I had to pay for it.

That is shocking, and so incredibly rude! Especially from the NICU nurse, was she young, or a older generation? I have just had my first baby, am not married and I would say out of all of my mum friends only 3 got married before having children. I know it's very normal now in comparison but 2006 was only 20 years ago!!! I think I would struggle to not say something back😅

Was it common back then for women to stay on the pill or mini pill until fifty five like the NHS reccommends now?

It’s strange because I had my eldest at 19 in 2006 and no one battered an eyelid it was more the norm! I even had my 2nd 18months later and no one said anything and I’ve never been married.

I dont think the pill had been around long enough at that time for anyone to have taken it that long.

I agree. I thought nobody cared much by the 90s at most.

I don't know about the UK, and I have no idea what the advice is now, but I do remember that in the US in the earlier days women were generally advised not to take hormonal birth control after age 35. I remember being given that advice by my doctor, and I did not have any complicating factors such as being a smoker.

@AWintersDayInADeepAndDarkDecember I love Anglican psalm chant. It’s sublime! I love choral evensong. I’m glad it’s being considered for world heritage status. As living heritage. My freebie who is an RC bishop thinks Anglican chant is “peculiar” I think he’s a philistine. 😂😂