No longer registered as a doctor

I have voluntarily erased myself from the GMC register (see my GMC entry). As I said in a previous post, when I first qualified I thought I would be able to practise medicine for life. Not sure, anyway, I can now listen easily enough to patients, which psychiatrists should be able to do, with my current level of senile deafness, even with hearing aids! I seem to have finally accepted I am fully retired, in the sense that I do not intend to return to paid work, having flirted with the idea of going back part-time, even re-acquiring my licence to practice last year but not being able to find any such work.

Working class aspirations

Despite my predominantly working class origins, I gained access to higher education at Trinity College Cambridge (see eg. previous post). My mother’s origins were working class; my father’s half working class. His mother (my grandmother) was the daughter of a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) who travelled by pony and trap from his home in Boxted to Colchester station to take the steam train to work in the Patent Office in London.

I benefitted from the expansion of higher education by the Wilson government and my mother’s encouragement of my ability to excel at school. Social class still affects social standing and identity.