AFTER 23 years as a GP working at Locking Hill Surgery in Stroud Jane Austin has retired from her part-time post.

From Gloucestershire originally, Jane went to school in Cheltenham and trained at Kings College London.

“I met a man at a party at Kings,” Jane said.

The man at the party was not her future husband, although she also met him there, but the man who got her onto a GP training scheme – her first job in Cheltenham.

Not long after she completed her training Jane married her now husband Nicholas Parsons who had trained as a lawyer at the university.

He went into the army after he graduated only going into law when the couple settled down in Avening with children.

Until then Jane did locum work trailing Nicholas round his posts in Aldershot and Sandhurst working as a civilian Doctor at Sandhurst and The Guards Depot at Pirbright.

But when her husband got a position as a solicitor in Cirencester she secured a part-time role at Locking Hill and has been there ever since. Although Jane never intended to specialise in women’s health, her work went in that direction.

Looking back at the highs and lows of her time at the surgery Jane added: “I’m going to say the highs were the patients, it’s been great fun, human nature is extraordinary and one feels very privileged working with people."

“And the lows, I would say the relentlessness, the waiting lists are always there. But it’s not a low really, it’s life in a general practice."