Dozens of colleagues past and present gathered to bid a fond farewell to Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham (QEHB) Laboratory Manager Chris Gaskin when he brought the curtain down on his 42-year NHS career.

Bio medical scientist Chris, aged 60, is looking forward to travelling around the UK, boosting his fitness regime and catching up with overdue decorating and gardening after hanging up his white coat in April 2015.

He had arrived in Birmingham from his home town of Ebbw Vale, South Wales, in February 1963 to start his first job as a lab technician in the immunology laboratory at the then East Birmingham Hospital and has never looked back.

Day release courses at Matthew Boulton College quickly led to ONC and HNC qualifications and within two years he had moved to the QEH.

“I always enjoyed the science side of things and I decided that I would like to go into laboratories,” he remembers. “I wrote to all the local hospitals in South Wales but no jobs came up.

“I had an aunt who lived in Castle Bromwich and she said, ’Why don’t you write to some hospitals in Birmingham and you could use our address’. So I did, and that’s how I got my first job.”

After initially living with his aunt, Chris moved into the QEH’s halls of residence at Norton Court and, revelling in his newfound freedom, set about working his way up through the ranks.

“Living at my aunt’s had been worse than being at home,” he said. “I always had to be on my best behaviour!

“But at Norton Court you had your own little room and shared a lounge, kitchen and bathroom. It was great fun and there used to be some great parties.”

Various rotations, secondments and restructures saw Chris work at many of the city’s major hospitals, past and present, while he became a Fellow of the Institute of Biomedical Sciences in 1982.

He has enduring memories of the many characters he has worked with as well as having to cover two hospitals single-handedly when on call and coping when power cuts disabled crucial equipment.

Throughout it all, though, he has no doubt about what has been the highlight.

“You’ve got to say, at the end of the day, what makes the place tick is the people,” he said.

“The technology has been great – to see it all advance has been wonderful. When I started if we processed 240 or 280 samples a day that was busy, today we’re probably processing about 3,000 a day. But really it’s all about the people.

“The big thing for me has been the move to our new home at the QEHB,” he went on. “Having a hand in designing it and getting the equipment we have got. Our accommodation at the old QEH and Selly Oak was well past its sell-by date.

“Although we always had a reputation as a good laboratory, when people came to see us you always felt a bit like a poor relation.

“So having this opportunity, particularly at the end of my career, what more can you do? We’ve been here three years now and what we’ve done here is wonderful.

“I feel like I’ve achieved all that I can achieve, so I am happy to be going now.”

Chris’s first few weeks of retirement will be taken care of catching up with neglected decorating and jobs in the garden before heading off to tour northern Italy.

“I don’t suppose it’s going to hit me until I come back from holiday,” he said.

He has no plans thereafter but intends to boost his keep fit regime, possibly do some voluntary work – and make good use of his recently acquired senior citizen’s railcard.

“I’m a traveller and I’ve seen a fair bit of the world in my years but I’ve not really been around the UK, I’ve never even been to Scotland, so I’ll be using my railcard to travel around Britain.

“I see retirement as the next phase of an adventure. I’m not one for sitting on my backside and letting life pass me by.”

Pathology IT Manager Colin Mason said: “It’s a great swansong for Chris, having been absolutely instrumental in moving us here, getting us settled and getting us established here.

“He’s well respected and well liked and his retirement will certainly be a big loss for the department.”