About Robin

And, too, I liked the idea of homeopathy being like a gentle compass for health with remedies guiding you back to your own individual best course when, buffeted by the storms of Dis-Ease, you have strayed slightly off track. When our energies go out of kilter, we need a friendly wind to fill our sails and there’s the apt line from Hamlet:

“I am but mad north-north-west: when the wind is southerly, I know a hawk from a handsaw”

- Hamlet Act 11, scene ii.

As for me and why I'm a homoeopath ? Well, my mother was an old fashioned GP widowed with 2 children in Old Swan in Liverpool where she was running single handedly a practice of 3,500 patients. After marrying a Liverpool rugby playing ship broker and pausing for 2 1/2 hours to have me before moving to Burton where we all still live, she ran a Well Woman's clinic in Neston, worked sporadically as a locum GP and, in her professional life, ultimately became a Clinical Assistant in Psychological Medicine in the Paediatric Department of Myrtle Street Hospital in Liverpol and in its In Care Residential Department at Heswall Children's Hospital on the Wirral. In simple terms she was a child psychiatrist and family therapist without the formal qualifications. I was much influenced by her last boss, a man called Philip Pinkerton; through feeling the good work done in the department where I often went in my childhood and teens; and through knowing many of the staff and patients at Heswall .

So I wanted to be a child psychiatrist. Arts 'A's, having a place at college to study law and being squeamish seemed with the arrogance of callow youth to be but minor barriers to this ambition. Upon, however, receiving permission from my tutors to study 1st year university zoology in two terms and, if I passed those exams, then being kindly being allowed to take up medicine the following October felt a bit more daunting since it entailed 5 years of clinical studies, 1 year researching, 1 year registering, 2 years doing a house job in paediatrics and 2 years being a registrar in psychiatry. There were also some interesting discussions with the Cheshire as to how they felt about funding me on a full grant for the 7 years of a rather more expensive study than the 3 years of Jurispudence they had already generously agreed to underwrite. 

Reader, I chickened, decided I didn't want to live in Toronto for 4 years doing medicine there since not only was that also prohibitively expensive but more importantly it was cold in the winter with a lorrra snow and a long way from Real Ale, Thatched cottages, Rugby, Football (pre Soccer Mom days), Cricket, Inger-Land and its countryside, Family and Friends and so remained a law student.  I learned muchly from my tutors about unconditonal love and support for weird perplexed undergraduates and without working too hard could do a bit of drama, journalism, sport, debating, wine tasting and the usual student activities of women and song. .

Like every other Wounded healer Archetype, my life led me inexorably to where I needed to be and entering my studies at the NWCH in 1996 simply felt lke coming home with a passio. I meet - and continue to meet- fabulous people with a range of diverse skills who are also interested in earning a crust or crumb in the healing world. Today I am still gobsmacked and eternally grateful to the man upstairs for being fortunate enough to have the privilege of being trusted to hear in full honesty and confidence the stories of the heroes and heroines who daily walk unbowed into my consulting room. I love what I do with a fierce passion and love learning from my students around the country. If I listen properly, I should simply be guided to prescribe my patients an energetic piece of themselves. They take that medicine and go away to get on with their own lives: I am merely a catalyst so that they can help themselves to do best what they wish most to do. I Treat You Well and even get paid for it. Wow - feels good to me.   

"There have been two great revelations in my life: The first was bebop, the second was homeopathy.."

- Dizzy Gillespie

Jazz Musician