When I arrive I can sense the atmosphere – if there’s lots of tape, coffee cups, and newspapers scattered around I know it’s been a stressful day.There’s very little personal stuff kept here – my only possession is an English / Spanish dictionary which I’ve noticed other people have been using because of the well-thumbed pages and dirty fingerprints. He’s been telling me about how he’s been painting his flagpole and I’ve been winding him up because it’s taken him three nights to complete.Eva MilletRadio producer on Europe Today, BBC World ServiceHours: 9pm-8am on a rota systemResponsibilities: producing Europe Today, BBC World Service news and current affairs programmeoften I can’t believe that this quiet and lonely office can be so packed during the day. I also get three calls a night from another night worker at Teddington Lock, called Brian. He’s very chatty and friendly – being in the same shoes we can identify with one another. Some just want to chat me up because they think I can get them last minute fishing licences. I’m a nosy bugger really.During the night I get calls from the emergency services and from the public who are worried about the colour or state of their local river.

I also lift up the photocopier to see if anything interesting has been left there by mistake. The chap next door sometimes leaves his rods in his office so I know he’s been fishing during the day. But sitting here alone I feel like this is my own building and that I can do whatever I want. I like to wander through the office to get a feel of what goes on while I’m not here.

Paul Aplin
Communications Officer for the National Rivers Authority, Thames RegionNight shift hours: 10pm-8am on a rota systemResponsibilities: co-ordinating responses to river pollution reportsthis is a particularly noisy building and things that go bump in the night are scary. The sound of the roofing tiles moving can really get me moving. Coming in to work in the dark, when everyone else has long gone home, means he or she knows colleagues only from the debris on desks abandoned in a silent, gloomy office. The solitary night worker often longs for some sign of recognition and support from his daytime counterparts Their fascination for us can be as strong as ours for them. The night worker is a mysterious and ghostly figure – and also a lonely one. Patients of fundholders were operated on within six to eight months, he said “I have stopped putting people on waiting lists.

I have to face people every day who have received letters telling them their operation has been postponed until April 1996 at the earliest.” He said one patient with a potentially life-threatening condition was treated only after he intervened directly with the consultant.Dr Dougal Jeffries, from Salisbury’s Bemerton Health Centre, who referred Mrs Newstead for treatment, said the consultant who saw her confirmed that there were in effect now two waiting lists at the hospital, one for the patients of non-fundholders and a “fast-track” list for fundholder patients “I feel angry and frustrated on behalf of my patients. It told the trust last month that it cannot pay for non-emergency treatments for its population. John Nicholas, a senior executive, blames a 17 per cent increase in emergency admissions in the past six months for the financial problems.Christopher Mould, the trust chief executive, admitted there was a “slowing down” of treatment for patients of non-fundholders. “This is distressing but we have to work within the constraints. We have over-worked and treated more patients than we said we would, but I cannot spend taxpayers’ money I don’t have.” The hospital had also instituted bed closures, a job-freeze and reduced its locum staff by half.However, hospital consultants and local doctors are incensed by the trust’s decision to discriminate against patients with similar clinical needs on financial grounds, something the Government insisted would not happen when it introduced fundholding.They have also criticised hospital management for continuing to take in patients for whom payment is guaranteed from Dorset, Hampshire and other parts of Wiltshire, while Salisbury residents face long delays before being treated.Dr Hugh Bond, of The Three Swans Health Centre, a non-fundholding practice said: “It is in effect a four-tier system, with the patients of non-fundholders in Salisbury at the bottom of the heap.”I’m powerless to do anything for my patients.