‘There is so much to do in this world’ says retiring practice manager Shiona James, with characteristic enthusiasm for life, as she leaves the Mizen Medical Practice in Schull, after 24 years of service.
BY TERRI LIEBER
Shiona is her in her final year of school at Kingsmead College, surrounded by her art.
Shiona, whose name in Irish means ‘kindness’, is a familiar face in the area from her time at the practice, but also from teaching in Schull Community College and her stall in local markets where she and her husband Nigel sell his popular pottery and paintings.
Shiona, née Kincaid, was born and raised in South Africa and met Nigel, who was born in Cork’s Regional hospital, at Pietermaritsburg University.
Graduating in 1980, they moved to Nigel’s family farm near Raffingora, Zimbabwe.
The couple farmed and helped build the local school where Shiona also taught, and they also set up a business to help support themselves and their two young sons, Nick and Sam.
From local clay, Nigel started to make floor tiles which became sought-after by safari lodges, hotels and householders.
Shiona began dying, painting and printing fabrics with traditional Zimbabwean-inspired designs.
They were made into clothes and soft furnishings, and sold to many of the same outlets as Nigel’s tiles.
In time, the boys needed to go to secondary school and Nigel had a grá to return to Ireland. An aunt in West Cork had left him money and he wanted to buy a cottage there. Walking near Ballydehob, he saw a ‘for sale’ sign being hammered into the ground outside a dilapidated cottage whose garden led down to the sea. He bought it immediately!
Shiona remembers, ‘It rained inside the house, but we adored it”.
The family moved in and began renovations and a brand-new life.
Shiona took a computer course in Rossa College, Skibbereen, followed by an administrative job in Schull Community College.
In time she was supply teaching and in 2001, Goleen GP Brian O’Connell employed Shiona to manage the practice that comprised Goleen, Ballydehob, Lower Town and Schull surgeries.
Back then, nurses were working in corridors and doctors’ notes were taken on a laptop computer that had to be returned each evening to the Goleen office for Shiona to organise. ‘Those days were incredibly busy, but great fun’, she recalls fondly.
In 2014, the Mizen Primary Healthcare premises opened and Shiona became part of the new streamlined healthcare delivery system on the Mizen.
She loved the new building and all her colleagues but, says she will miss the patients ‘more than anything’.
However, life goes on, and today Shiona is a devoted grandmother to her six grandchildren, Dylan, Lily, Jack, Alexandra, Ottie and Annabel.
Shortly after her retirement party she flew to London to care for two of them, while their baby brother was being born.
Shiona still adores markets and may create a new range of fabrics to sell.
Gardening and sea swimming are also her passions, and if she ‘takes a fit of baking’, she will make cakes for her many friends and well-wishers at the Mizen Medical Centre, all of whom wish Shiona, Nigel and the family great happiness in all their future adventures.
