A great pick-me-up SWITCH off the telly - ignoring such soapy sagas as Casualty, ER and Peak Practice. Instead, settle into a comfy armchair, put up your feet and enjoy a dose of the genuine 'within-wards' thing!

For Joyce Owen, former St Helens teacher and top nurse turned writer, has produced a little literary gem which is available in local bookshops right now.

Written in a pacy and unexpectedly entertaining style, considering the subject matter, it is called 'Healing Highways - A Nurse's Story' (the title being the only downbeat element within this true-life 241-page publication).

At £5.99 it is great value, and will be of special interest to all former patients of St Helens Hospital, where Joyce served through the 'fifties, and to ex-pupils of Parr Secondary School where she taught human biology and nursing-related subjects. The author, born Joyce Pursell in St Helens during a time of widespread poverty created by the 1926 General Strike, takes us right behind the scenes. She vividly recaptures the rich mix of pathos, humour, day-to-day drama, pettiness, tragedy and close comradeship to be found among the bedpans, surgical dressings, medicines and syringes.

She reflects on the surgeons she encountered - from living saints to the 'Gestapo.' And she also recalls some patients who survived against all odds, including a retired colonel's wife, given just hours to live with suspected stomach cancer. She survived major surgery to demand (and finally get!) a bowl of stew a couple of days after going under the knife. Then there was Ronnie Lyon, now retired from the St Helens Council's security service, who miraculously returned from the brink after being given no hope of recovery from a boyhood motorcycling accident which crushed his skull. Joyce and Ronnie were happily reunited 36 years later, while she was researching her autobiography. The casualty department, during Joyce's time there, seemed especially enriched by a breed of local characters. And a heavyweight among them was a hulk of a woman called Maggie.

Daily, about 60 patients were attended to for finger, hand and leg dressings. Splints were removed to inspect the healing damage, and injections given. There was no time to be bored. Yet despite all the hectic activity, it could also be "a favourite haunt of malingerers."

Big Maggie was the most frequent visitor - and you could smell her a mile away. "She seemed magnetised by the disinfectants we used," writes Joyce, "maybe it helped to disguise her own BO which always heralded her approach. She was a huge, fat, idle, untidy hulk of a woman. Always, she wore the same dirty black skirt fastened with the same bent safety pin . . . a dirty, faded red sweater was stretched tightly across her massive bosom which was always thrust under the chin of whoever was on duty at the time." Joyce could never understand how such an inert sort of person ever managed to cut a finger, twist her ankle or scald an arm (among reasons for repeat visits). For when not parked in Casualty, big Maggie seemed to spend the rest of her time propping up the corner of a grubby greengrocer's shop a couple of hundred yards from the hospital.

"Every nurse hoped to be off duty when Maggie arrived, but we all caught it in turn,"recalls Joyce. Routine politeness was always demonstrated to this persistent pest of a patient. But immediately she left, all windows were flung open to create as many through-draughts as possible; and special perfumed sprays were brought into liberal use.

Then there was the tough-guy approach adopted by a hefty six-footer who called in for a penicillin injection on his way home from work. He declined to be seated for this little procedure. Next moment, the chalky-faced patient was slumped over Joyce's feet and half-way across a chair. He'd fainted from a combination of lack of food and the sight of the needle in the hands of a 'new' nurse. On further visits, the fellow needed no reminder to sit down!

Despite all this, Joyce can report: "I loved Casualty from the word go!"

Yet it had been to the dismay of her parents and friends that she belatedly took up a nursing career. When she'd qualified as a teacher, her mother and dad were delighted that she had landed a well-paid and secure job. But Joyce had desperately wanted to be a nurse from the outset. She stuck it out in the classroom, giving it her best shot, for five years, resigning at the age of 26 to attend University College Hospital, London.

Concluding her training at St Helens Hospital, sport-loving Joyce won the Silver Medal for her year and then acquired midwifery qualifications at Edinburgh. Returning to her beloved St Helens Hospital, she went on to hold a number of major appointment, including Sister in Charge of Private Block, Sister Tutor and Night Superintendent.

In 1961 she married local schoolmaster Tom Owen, and after much soul-searching made the agonising decision to return to teaching - "luckily at Parr Secondary, a school of character and distinction."

Joyce tells me: "My book was originally written for girls I was teaching and who showed an interest in a nursing career. There just wasn't a down-to-earth publication to which I could point them.

"Incidentally, a substantial number of my girls eventually became successful nurses" Extracts from the book have featured on the BBC's Woman's Hour. And it has been enthusiastically endorsed by, among others, Margaret Greenall, former matron and now director of Fairfield Hospital, Crank; and retired head teacher Steven McKenna.

A TRULY remarkable true-life story from an extraordinary St Helens woman. And Joyce has a very special date on Saturday (March 7) when between 11am and 1pm she'll be signing copies of her book at Wardleworths in Westfield Street, St Helens.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.