From the BBC tonight:
"Croatia rose to the occasion in their crucial Euro 2008 defeat of England - after an apparent X-rated gaffe by an English opera singer at Wembley. Tony Henry belted out a version of the Croat anthem before the 80,000 crowd, but made a blunder at the end.
He should have sung 'Mila kuda si planina' (which roughly means 'You know my dear how we love your mountains'). But he instead sang 'Mila kura si planina' which can be interpreted as 'My dear, my penis is a mountain'."
Magnificent! And now it seems Mr Henry is a national hero in Croatia. He has apologised if he caused offence, but on the contrary it seems his wondrously unintended masculine boast completely cracked up the Croatian team with laughter making them so relaxed they could not but win the game!
I cannot claim to have come close in the wrong word contest - certainly in never so public an arena - but I have had my moment.
Many years ago I travelled the length and breadth of Greece with a dear companion of the times, asking - as I thought - for 'two of this' and 'two of that' in halting but determined Greek. As one would. Two tickets for the Acropolis or two beers with the meal. And so forth.
It was only many weeks into the journey that a kindly bi-lingual Greek revealed to me that my accenting of the word 'theo' had caused it to slide from the intended 'two' to the completely unexpected and utterly nonsensical 'Uncle'.
So there I had been asking for 'Uncle Souvlaki' and not a pair of national dishes as intended.
No wonder then we Brits stick to talking loud and slow in our own tongue when abroad. So much safer than risking a little local patois!
"My penis is as a mountain, tall and strong." Wonder what that is in Romanian!
Saturday, November 24, 2007
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
Safety In Numbers...
...is the one - pretty miserable for all that - consolation in all this data loss catastrophe that over 25 million records have gone missing?
Oh no! Croatia have just scored a third!
Anyway, back to the matter in hand. Out of the twenty-five million records, the odds of any one of us being hand, or even randomly, picked by the crooks for some pesky identity fraud are extremely low.
Not having many, if any, cash assets to nick I am not desperately concerned for myself. (All and any crooks reading this, please don't waste your time siphoning a dry well.)
But for this country I despair, as ever I did and do.
And not just for the football!
Oh no! Croatia have just scored a third!
Anyway, back to the matter in hand. Out of the twenty-five million records, the odds of any one of us being hand, or even randomly, picked by the crooks for some pesky identity fraud are extremely low.
Not having many, if any, cash assets to nick I am not desperately concerned for myself. (All and any crooks reading this, please don't waste your time siphoning a dry well.)
But for this country I despair, as ever I did and do.
And not just for the football!
Friday, November 16, 2007
The Butcher, The Baker....
...and the Oil Slick Maker!
Odd but true I am that one, the very maker of oil slicks to complement those other worthy and more established trades and crafts.
I have not forsaken the pastoring of souls for the captaining of tankers only to run them aground off Scarpa Flow or any such matter. I am though, if still incumbent as before, indelibly - note that word for it will come back to haunt me! - marked down as the one upon whom to call should ever the need for a goodly sized oil slick ever arise. As I doubt it shall. Indeed hope it won't in my time or vicinity, for I can assure you that one oil slick is one too many for any reasonable village locale.
It came about thus. Though first, before retelling the tale I needs must put the oleaginous matter in its proper context. When God created The Wolds - some short time after he had earlier practised by creating the rest of our goodly planet Earth - He decreed, as He might well, that there should be at least a single representative of every required art, craft and trade readily to hand. One per village was to be the normative distribution, making for a pleasant life for all.
Roof need mending? Call then at once on the services of John Thatcher resident of Mill Lane, where also dwelt - reasonably as it was by the mill itself - Mick Miller, close cousin to and of Geraldine Loaf, wife of Farmer Giles who were friends of Bill Brewer, etc., etc., etc. Generation would pass the secret of the craft unto generation - the usual father to son number though with the odd variant, we having a fine female carpenter and joiner at present in our midst - so that one could know that if George was one's waggoner then George's great-grandfather would too have been waggoner to one's own equivalent ancestor.
Quite reassuring to know that there was skill deep bred in the blood. Perhaps less happy the thought that George's great-grandson would one day be taken his due and decided place among the axles and the staves, if only because the fellow just might wish to be having other thoughts on the matter of a chosen career or indeed life.
You get the picture I am sure. On occasions down the centuries there may have been more than the allotted one person per craft, which did open the sometimes difficult can of worms of competition, leading to deep felt loyalties, adherences and sometimes even the spot of inter-craft feuding. Should then Mick's flour be off on any one day, then Sid Millerson from across the river would be the first to be suspected of sabotage. That poor Sid had not been quite the man he had been since that unfortunate accident when smacked on the head one of his mill sails - an 'accident my foot' according to Sid's people of course! - did little if anything to dampen the suspicions of Mick's folk.
Could be tricky all that, but we managed in our way. The one craft and trade where competition for local custom was legion was, mercifully, in the one matter where it did not matter - the brewing and the selling of ale. The logic was and is simple. When fifty thirsty souls require a decent seat for an evening pie and pint, there is little to be gained for any if all of them were to attempt to pile in together chez Ma Fuller's back parlour. Simply no room for all or any fun for any. But put ten down there, another twenty down the lane at Zachary's barn, with the rest making do with some benches outside of the Parson's Cook's kitchen and all will be well.
And from that necessary distribution and dissemination of custom arose other goodly and fine things, such as friendly rivalry on the field of sport and play. The 'pub team' was born, requiring continual and intense training and practice, the hard raising and wise - or not - spending of subscriptions, any number of committees to determine rules and watertight processes of appeal to the governing body should a 'ringer' be discovered in the opposing team or some such. And so forth and so forth.
Even on occasions resulting all this activity in an actual 'match' between two teams of the finest darts throwers, or bowls bowlers, or half-pennies shovers. Weeks of frantic preparation, agonies over team selection and discussion of tactics and then the day itself where legends were born and reputations made or lost. Weeks after of post-mortems, analysis and tall-tale telling, avoidance or otherwise of blame, the championing of success - much ale - or the equally thirsty drowning of sorrows.
Kept the men mostly off the streets and out of the houses of the womenfolk, an accomplishment generally of no less appeal to either street or womenfolk, both of whom being thus left largely in more peace than otherwise would be been their lot and portion in life.
What today would be called 'social cohesion', though we called it rather normal village life. But then of course it has all now changed, and not largely - as ever - for the better. Post-War saw the beginning - the First and then in turn for the generation of the Second - an uprootedness and a restlessness. Sons no longer would only follow fathers' footsteps and trades, daughters mothers'. A good moving in many ways, a stretching and a stirring, seeking something more beyond.
Too broad a story the decline of the English village in this respect, but simple truth that where once there was one of each - a butcher, a baker and even a candlestick maker - close to hand, those days are gone. Lucky indeed - as we are - the place that has some one remain, who can and does seek to offer more than the one in the hope of providing something for the many.
And thus our butcher. Seeing the demise of the grocery shop, the greengrocer, the baker in all of fewer than ten years, the butcher is pleased to supplement his selection of meats cooked and uncooked, not just with pies and the odd tin of soup, but with coffee, loo paper, cereals, jams, fresh - mostly - vegetables and near on an hundred other items a household might need. No alcohol and no newspapers, but those aside more or less enough for any family to survive at a generous pinch.
But then a year past, something of a fine yet troubling revolution. For a disused confectionery shop was overnight re-invented as a smart new baker's, with a wondrous selection of loaves of many countries. All right, most of the English or the French kind, but nonetheless it was grand once more to catch the scent of freshly baked breads of a morning's stroll.
Grand for all that is if not seen from the shopfront of said butcher, who at a trice watched a significant portion of his multitudinous trade skip out of his doorway and around the corner straight into the new baker's shop. A pound and a half of braising steak might remain safe in his hands, but the useful addition to his till-roll of 'three large cob and a small granary' has gone.
Thank goodness - the very Almighty himself even - for that corner. Had the new baker been in clear sightline of the butcher's shop I had hardly dare entered the place for fear of hurting dear Sydney and Son, purveyors of best beef and pork to the Rector these many a year. But round the corner it is, so I am largely safe in first purchasing the meats for the day then disappearing from view to pick up the breads. (The baker doesn't mind one bit this order of play - she doesn't do sausages after all!)
Then the other day it all went horribly wrong - and here we are beginning at last to close in on to the matter of the oil slick. For clever Syd and Son, having calculated that it is little gained if a man has his meat yet not the means of cooking it, have taken to selling olive oil as one of their many sidelines. And thus this fateful day one left Syd behind with two heaving bags of produce, including five pound best spuds, three or more tins of this and that and the centrally significant item: bottle, half-litre, oil, olive.
Entering the baker for necessary supplementary bread products presented no difficulties whatsoever. Purchase of same, none the more. It was though on exiting the premises that a loud smash as of glass smiting pavement caught my ever eager ear as herald of disaster. For yes, the butcher's wafer-thin plastic bag had sundered dashing the bottle and its oil to the ground, where now it lay in an ever widening circle on the very front step of the baker's shop, all encrusted with shards of broken glass.
I must say the ladies of the place were wondrous at once. Hardly had the awful sound of smashing ceased than they were on the case with paper towels, and cleaning fluids and mops and sympathy and so forth; my ineffectual contribution to the ablutions being no more than ceaseless apologies and witterings about 'mind your hands on that glass'.
Eventually - well soon really - it was time to flee the scene of the crime, thinking it not unreasonable to make a return call upon the butcher to mention - and no more - in a spirit of public concern the inadequacy of his plastic bags. Immediate restitution was proffered and accepted - more oil that is not another bag - and the tale could have ended there, had I not been so foolish as to mention the very spot where the oil had landed.
"On the baker's front step?", they cried as one in glee at the discomfiture of their rival. Not highly charitable a sentiment, but understandable if not entirely excusable. But then the killer blow. "So you were just passing by then Rector?" said Son of Syd with a certain interrogatory stance. And at once of course I knew what lay behind the question. Not a matter of the convenience of fate that had dumped my oil where they would most wish it to be dumped if it had to be at all, but rather a soul-piercing inquisition of my loyalty to them.
Had I, as it were, been consorting with the enemy was what Son of Syd wished to know. Well, he may have wished to know it, but blowed if I was about to tell it. Certainly not to his face and most assuredly not when his hand clasped as it did one of the keenest boning knives mankind can craft!
So I have made my oil slick - it's not a trade I shall adopt, just stick to the one I think - and I must pray no one, not least me, takes a tumble in it. You can see it still as a dark shadow on the paving. It will last for years. Oh dear!
Odd but true I am that one, the very maker of oil slicks to complement those other worthy and more established trades and crafts.
I have not forsaken the pastoring of souls for the captaining of tankers only to run them aground off Scarpa Flow or any such matter. I am though, if still incumbent as before, indelibly - note that word for it will come back to haunt me! - marked down as the one upon whom to call should ever the need for a goodly sized oil slick ever arise. As I doubt it shall. Indeed hope it won't in my time or vicinity, for I can assure you that one oil slick is one too many for any reasonable village locale.
It came about thus. Though first, before retelling the tale I needs must put the oleaginous matter in its proper context. When God created The Wolds - some short time after he had earlier practised by creating the rest of our goodly planet Earth - He decreed, as He might well, that there should be at least a single representative of every required art, craft and trade readily to hand. One per village was to be the normative distribution, making for a pleasant life for all.
Roof need mending? Call then at once on the services of John Thatcher resident of Mill Lane, where also dwelt - reasonably as it was by the mill itself - Mick Miller, close cousin to and of Geraldine Loaf, wife of Farmer Giles who were friends of Bill Brewer, etc., etc., etc. Generation would pass the secret of the craft unto generation - the usual father to son number though with the odd variant, we having a fine female carpenter and joiner at present in our midst - so that one could know that if George was one's waggoner then George's great-grandfather would too have been waggoner to one's own equivalent ancestor.
Quite reassuring to know that there was skill deep bred in the blood. Perhaps less happy the thought that George's great-grandson would one day be taken his due and decided place among the axles and the staves, if only because the fellow just might wish to be having other thoughts on the matter of a chosen career or indeed life.
You get the picture I am sure. On occasions down the centuries there may have been more than the allotted one person per craft, which did open the sometimes difficult can of worms of competition, leading to deep felt loyalties, adherences and sometimes even the spot of inter-craft feuding. Should then Mick's flour be off on any one day, then Sid Millerson from across the river would be the first to be suspected of sabotage. That poor Sid had not been quite the man he had been since that unfortunate accident when smacked on the head one of his mill sails - an 'accident my foot' according to Sid's people of course! - did little if anything to dampen the suspicions of Mick's folk.
Could be tricky all that, but we managed in our way. The one craft and trade where competition for local custom was legion was, mercifully, in the one matter where it did not matter - the brewing and the selling of ale. The logic was and is simple. When fifty thirsty souls require a decent seat for an evening pie and pint, there is little to be gained for any if all of them were to attempt to pile in together chez Ma Fuller's back parlour. Simply no room for all or any fun for any. But put ten down there, another twenty down the lane at Zachary's barn, with the rest making do with some benches outside of the Parson's Cook's kitchen and all will be well.
And from that necessary distribution and dissemination of custom arose other goodly and fine things, such as friendly rivalry on the field of sport and play. The 'pub team' was born, requiring continual and intense training and practice, the hard raising and wise - or not - spending of subscriptions, any number of committees to determine rules and watertight processes of appeal to the governing body should a 'ringer' be discovered in the opposing team or some such. And so forth and so forth.
Even on occasions resulting all this activity in an actual 'match' between two teams of the finest darts throwers, or bowls bowlers, or half-pennies shovers. Weeks of frantic preparation, agonies over team selection and discussion of tactics and then the day itself where legends were born and reputations made or lost. Weeks after of post-mortems, analysis and tall-tale telling, avoidance or otherwise of blame, the championing of success - much ale - or the equally thirsty drowning of sorrows.
Kept the men mostly off the streets and out of the houses of the womenfolk, an accomplishment generally of no less appeal to either street or womenfolk, both of whom being thus left largely in more peace than otherwise would be been their lot and portion in life.
What today would be called 'social cohesion', though we called it rather normal village life. But then of course it has all now changed, and not largely - as ever - for the better. Post-War saw the beginning - the First and then in turn for the generation of the Second - an uprootedness and a restlessness. Sons no longer would only follow fathers' footsteps and trades, daughters mothers'. A good moving in many ways, a stretching and a stirring, seeking something more beyond.
Too broad a story the decline of the English village in this respect, but simple truth that where once there was one of each - a butcher, a baker and even a candlestick maker - close to hand, those days are gone. Lucky indeed - as we are - the place that has some one remain, who can and does seek to offer more than the one in the hope of providing something for the many.
And thus our butcher. Seeing the demise of the grocery shop, the greengrocer, the baker in all of fewer than ten years, the butcher is pleased to supplement his selection of meats cooked and uncooked, not just with pies and the odd tin of soup, but with coffee, loo paper, cereals, jams, fresh - mostly - vegetables and near on an hundred other items a household might need. No alcohol and no newspapers, but those aside more or less enough for any family to survive at a generous pinch.
But then a year past, something of a fine yet troubling revolution. For a disused confectionery shop was overnight re-invented as a smart new baker's, with a wondrous selection of loaves of many countries. All right, most of the English or the French kind, but nonetheless it was grand once more to catch the scent of freshly baked breads of a morning's stroll.
Grand for all that is if not seen from the shopfront of said butcher, who at a trice watched a significant portion of his multitudinous trade skip out of his doorway and around the corner straight into the new baker's shop. A pound and a half of braising steak might remain safe in his hands, but the useful addition to his till-roll of 'three large cob and a small granary' has gone.
Thank goodness - the very Almighty himself even - for that corner. Had the new baker been in clear sightline of the butcher's shop I had hardly dare entered the place for fear of hurting dear Sydney and Son, purveyors of best beef and pork to the Rector these many a year. But round the corner it is, so I am largely safe in first purchasing the meats for the day then disappearing from view to pick up the breads. (The baker doesn't mind one bit this order of play - she doesn't do sausages after all!)
Then the other day it all went horribly wrong - and here we are beginning at last to close in on to the matter of the oil slick. For clever Syd and Son, having calculated that it is little gained if a man has his meat yet not the means of cooking it, have taken to selling olive oil as one of their many sidelines. And thus this fateful day one left Syd behind with two heaving bags of produce, including five pound best spuds, three or more tins of this and that and the centrally significant item: bottle, half-litre, oil, olive.
Entering the baker for necessary supplementary bread products presented no difficulties whatsoever. Purchase of same, none the more. It was though on exiting the premises that a loud smash as of glass smiting pavement caught my ever eager ear as herald of disaster. For yes, the butcher's wafer-thin plastic bag had sundered dashing the bottle and its oil to the ground, where now it lay in an ever widening circle on the very front step of the baker's shop, all encrusted with shards of broken glass.
I must say the ladies of the place were wondrous at once. Hardly had the awful sound of smashing ceased than they were on the case with paper towels, and cleaning fluids and mops and sympathy and so forth; my ineffectual contribution to the ablutions being no more than ceaseless apologies and witterings about 'mind your hands on that glass'.
Eventually - well soon really - it was time to flee the scene of the crime, thinking it not unreasonable to make a return call upon the butcher to mention - and no more - in a spirit of public concern the inadequacy of his plastic bags. Immediate restitution was proffered and accepted - more oil that is not another bag - and the tale could have ended there, had I not been so foolish as to mention the very spot where the oil had landed.
"On the baker's front step?", they cried as one in glee at the discomfiture of their rival. Not highly charitable a sentiment, but understandable if not entirely excusable. But then the killer blow. "So you were just passing by then Rector?" said Son of Syd with a certain interrogatory stance. And at once of course I knew what lay behind the question. Not a matter of the convenience of fate that had dumped my oil where they would most wish it to be dumped if it had to be at all, but rather a soul-piercing inquisition of my loyalty to them.
Had I, as it were, been consorting with the enemy was what Son of Syd wished to know. Well, he may have wished to know it, but blowed if I was about to tell it. Certainly not to his face and most assuredly not when his hand clasped as it did one of the keenest boning knives mankind can craft!
So I have made my oil slick - it's not a trade I shall adopt, just stick to the one I think - and I must pray no one, not least me, takes a tumble in it. You can see it still as a dark shadow on the paving. It will last for years. Oh dear!
Monday, November 12, 2007
Between The Woods And The Water....
...if you're not familiar with this fine book by the legendary Patrick Leigh Fermor then nip off now and make yourself so acquainted at once. This post will still be here when you return!
It is a wonderful evocation of a grand time in a young man's life as he travels largely, though not exclusively, on foot through pre-War Hungary and Romania; the largest portion of it being time spent among the glorious mountains and peoples of Transylvania.
Eastern Europe was to me a lost place when I was but a growing boy, locked into eternal dull captivity behind the wall of the Iron Curtain. Half my continent was gone. It has now come back to me and to itself, of course, it never left. But of it, its history, its struggles and its beauties I knew little if anything. An single relentless communist grey land.
But reading PLF one learned that there was magnificent life there before the War. Tremendous bottomless hospitality, deep held customs and beliefs, passions for politics, for life and for love, stupendous vistas and darn near perfect - because now half-decayed - castles and keeps. Families whose ancestry receded into the time of the Roman legions - by myth at least if not provable fact - loyalties to creeds and cultures that would shame a 'modern' country that lets slip the ways of a past generation before they are cold in their tombs.
Written some fifty years after the events, Paddy allows himself the occasional regret for something missed - though much was not. One such regret was the necessary overshooting of Sibiu, a glorious city in the very heart of the place.
It seem only then fitting that someone should now volunteer to rectify that omission.
I leave tonight then for the very heart of Transylvania. Time methinks indeed for such a glorious adventure. I shan't be walking there though. PLF, bless him, trod that way. I shall fly.
It is a wonderful evocation of a grand time in a young man's life as he travels largely, though not exclusively, on foot through pre-War Hungary and Romania; the largest portion of it being time spent among the glorious mountains and peoples of Transylvania.
Eastern Europe was to me a lost place when I was but a growing boy, locked into eternal dull captivity behind the wall of the Iron Curtain. Half my continent was gone. It has now come back to me and to itself, of course, it never left. But of it, its history, its struggles and its beauties I knew little if anything. An single relentless communist grey land.
But reading PLF one learned that there was magnificent life there before the War. Tremendous bottomless hospitality, deep held customs and beliefs, passions for politics, for life and for love, stupendous vistas and darn near perfect - because now half-decayed - castles and keeps. Families whose ancestry receded into the time of the Roman legions - by myth at least if not provable fact - loyalties to creeds and cultures that would shame a 'modern' country that lets slip the ways of a past generation before they are cold in their tombs.
Written some fifty years after the events, Paddy allows himself the occasional regret for something missed - though much was not. One such regret was the necessary overshooting of Sibiu, a glorious city in the very heart of the place.
It seem only then fitting that someone should now volunteer to rectify that omission.
I leave tonight then for the very heart of Transylvania. Time methinks indeed for such a glorious adventure. I shan't be walking there though. PLF, bless him, trod that way. I shall fly.
Sunday, November 11, 2007
Open All Hours...2
To continue on from previous: I have never much cared for the slanderous notion that women have colds but men always the 'flu, carrying with it as it does a false propagandistic message that women are ever the more resilient gender quite content to seek to run off a broken leg, whilst men will collapse to a sofa for a week if a toe should be slightly stubbed.
This is not, I must assert, a slander ever uttered in the Palladas household for H and I completely recognise our respective personal stances on such matters: should she sense the slightest blemish to the skin it is off to Harley Street by the first available train for tests for skin cancer, whilst I, au completely contraire will sit on any given set of signs and symptoms for at least a fortnight, in the generally false presumption that time is the only, as well as the great, healer needed and that if you ignore any illness for long enough it will pass away of quite its own accord. (Regular readers are aware of course that this course was once even tried by oneself with what proved in the end to be one's very own cancer. There are then acknowledged limits to this masculine inspired stoical approach to sickness, and very much 'Tip for the Day' is, therefore, that time alone as a cure for cancer simply does not cut the, or indeed any, mustard.)
But today the subject is not life-threatening malignancy but rather a far less awesome matter of a swollen and deeply painful elbow. (OK well actually we are making a pitch for possible abscess tending towards - if unchecked - peritonitis and even mortal extinction. But that is to jump too far too fast for the purposes of this tale.)
An ever-aching elbow one has learned to live with as the consequence of some lazy ergonomics. One ought not continually to lean on it whilst typing away, but one does, one has for many years. I lean, it aches. It's a simple transaction. But then some four days ago the ache came accompanied by some serious and painful swelling. Let us call it, what is surely is, a modern fangled disease: 'Computer Elbow'.
And what should a fellow do in such circs? Well clearly, to follow the masculine line and ignore it. Change perhaps for a while one's usual slumped posture and then wait for sensible and long-overdue environmental adjustments inevitably to work their magic. A perfectly reasonable and proportionate reaction and response one would say.
One would, however, not in this case be right. Reasonable certainly given the known facts, but proportionate not at all it has transpired: for swelling - inflation - has but masked infection, and whereas an inflated elbow may subside all by itself once the irritant causing the swelling is removed, an infected elbow alive and kicking with all sorts of bacterial nastinesses needs active, immediate and, as we all know, antibiotic treatment.
All that though is but the diagnostic and subject context. The heart of the matter here is how and why one has journeyed from a Friday morning annoying ache to a Sunday night of waiting for the midnight hour to strike in order to hoick down the last dose of the first day of treatment.
Friday then ack emma status report: feeling a bit ropey and aware that resting heart rate is well above the norm for either age or man. Put both down to industrial-strength hangover from previous night of delicious excessive alcohol. Think, therefore, to self-medicate with Ibuprofen and strong coffee, and reckon neither will do any harm to raging pain in elbow now in its second day.
Headache and hangover subside as these things do, but pounding heart rate and raging elbow pain do not. (Note this, but no more, for now.)
Saturday ack once again emma. Poor night's sleep of restless wakefulness due to ever-present pain, interspersed with fitful dreaming of loud tom-tom beats and dark skies lit by dazzling displays of red-hot fireworks. Decide to take a stroll round to local pharmacy establishment for a swift chat with the resident Drugs Czar Harold. Harold does not hold himself to be medically qualified, has no ideas above his station at all, but is for all that a thoroughly knowledgeable cove when it comes to minor ailments of all sorts. Check, therefore, with him then if there is more to do than knock back the odd anti-inflammatory and suffer in silence whilst time gets to its work.
Sound notion but one blown clean away sadly by Harold choosing to have the morning off and substituting a sweet child in his place. Said sweet child mayhap be solid enough for the purposes of a locum dispensing powders and potions but not, as it turned out, of any substantial use when it comes to the matter of sound advisement. For, says she wrongly, there is no other course of action required other than the analgesics. No mention whatsoever of the possibility of a true infection that uncapped will rage throughout the whole body at the blink of a horse's eye.
One specifies the eye of a horse as it was in the equine context that one next made some progress. For the mother of one of E's stable friends happens to be a G.P. in her leisure time; that is, the little time that can be spared from the endless task of caring for a horse. One does not, therefore, ordinarily seek to burden her more with off-the-cuff remarks about human sickness, rather focusing on how one's horse fares and what is the latest news on its tendency to chuck its young rider if in mareish mood - as these mares so oft are.
Prompted though this time by ever increasing levels of pain, one did ask in purely general terms what might be the reasonable parameters of thought and action in regard to an elbow on the turn. It was then that other dimensions, previously unconsidered, hove into view. Abscesses were revealed as an optional extra, with necessary accompanying elements such as urgent medical treatment of both topical and systemic natures: get it drained possibly and most certainly get on board at once with the antibiotics.
Thought provoking stuff you'll agree. For the moment though nothing more than cerebral contemplation and no actual action following. One could leg it over to one's own G.P. for the full professional view, but then one couldn't it being Saturday and one's own G.P. doesn't do weekends. There is, instead, a telephone answering service that does not take calls, or if it does rarely replies to the simple request for urgent medical attention: "If you are breathing please don't bother us; if you are not breathing please phone your undertaker and stop bothering us." That sort of thing.
The alternative access to health services of any nature would be a by a trip to A&E. Through natural native cunning we have all learned that since the introduction of the false target god of a maximum four hour wait to be seen, no matter how trivial the matter, going to A&E is no longer something one only does when a limb is hanging off, or one is truly desperate, but is a convenient alternative to hanging on the telephone attempting and generally failing to book a G.P. appointment.
That's rather like those hotlines for buying tickets to popular music concerts so loved by E and paid for by her father: miss the beat of 9.00 a.m., when the box-office or doctor's reception opens for calls, and all you'll get for the next three hours is the engaged signal. Until finally you do get through only to be told all tickets were sold within the first nine minutes, or indeed all appointments for the day within that same short time.
But call me of the old school if you will, I tend to prefer not to trouble the hectic lives of Casualty staff until and unless the aforementioned limb off-hanging desperate pitch is reached. In which case waiting until the Monday when G.P.s returned from their weekend yachting breaks or whatever seemed the only choice.
Until of course one suddenly recalled that the local new hospital has something all the rage in the health service these days: a 'Walk-In Centre'. Just the ticket then for someone who simply wanted to walk-in, see a doctor, get a script and continue on with his busy life. And by the Sunday morning with arm rapidly - nay very nearly visibly - swelling by the hour a trip to the WIC was definitely on.
A swift phone call first though to check that the service actually operates on a Sunday morning seemed in order. Not a heck of point in trying to walk-in through closed doors. So one phones the main switchboard number for information. The flow of such information goes something like this:
Good Self: "I believe you have a walk in centre service at your fine new hospital. Could you tell me if it is open at this hour?"
Surly Operator: "Yes, but you have to make an appointment first."
GS: "An appointment for a WIC? That most surely belies the nature of the thing! The clue is in the title - 'walk-in'. One cannot need an 'appointment' for walking in can one?"
SO: "Yes one can, in fact one must. So there. Tell them about it if you like. I'm just following orders! Here's the number for appointments." (That last very much said in call central traditional accent of taking it or leaving it being entirely a matter for myself and of absolutely no interest or concern to the call centre itself or to its surly staff.)
So one did take the proffered number, if with some distaste, and made this use of it:
Good Self: Dials number given
Automated message: "This is the number for making appointments for the wonderful new WIC."
GS [thinks]: I frigging know that, that's why I'm phoning you dolt!
AM: "In order to make an appointment you must speak to an operator. Unfortunately all our operators are busy at present. Please do not hang on in the vain hope of speaking to one of them. Please don't even think of leaving a message as we won't listen to it. Please hang up now before we hang up on you."
GS [swears]: Frigg that for a game of soldiers!
AM [presciently]: "No point in swearing. I'm just a machine."
Machine hangs up.
So back to the first number:
Good Self: What is going on here? Just tried your wretched appointments line and got nowhere. Please suggest a viable alternative option.
Surly Operator Two: "As my colleague just told you" [clearly a marked card me] "you must have an appointment for the WIC."
GS: This is arrant nonsense and you know it. My Bro. Geo., whose professional life is spent designing health systems and processes that actually work, could if he were here put you right on this. A 'Walk In' service is precisely that. No more and certainly no less.
(At this point one must confess one pushed the boat out a bit here. For the actual words uttered were along the line: "I happen to work for the health service and let me tell you...etc., etc." But if a tad over the mark on strict truthfulness a veritable miracle cure for the impasse.)
SO2: [suddenly a lot less of the 'S'] "Sorry, did you say you work for the health service?"
GS: [plunging on] "Indeed so my good woman...."
Hardly 'S' at all O2: "Well in that case Sir, you may simply go down to the centre and indeed walk in!"
GS: "What!"
O2: [more 'S' for sheepish by now] "We've been instructed not to tell people this, but to use the appointments systems. Please don't say you heard it from me!"
Good self decides not to pursue this mystery any further but simply to grasp the chance, howsoever illegitimately gained, and get right on down walking into the walk-in at a trice and a pace.
So one does attend this our brand new hospital. (All gleaming bright and shiny, yet still filled with as much if not more MRSA and Clos. Diff. than its worn down predecessor, though that is for a later tale.) Great stonking signs point one the way to go. Handy that if you've not been there before. (Sadly the one place not to see any sign or signage is actually over the doors that actually lead to the desired destination. Assuredly smart post-modernist architecture doesn't do signs on buildings as such, though sadly of course decrepit patients-to-be still need them.)
By then perseverance and unwilting intent, one does find the very portal at which to enter. Across the wide, deep and terribly tall atrium one spots two desks of a reception variety. The first is labelled 'A&E reception', that being enough of a clue that this was not the one for us. The other has 'Urgent Care Centre' on offer, which sounds about right as indeed it proved to be.
Smiling lady behind the desk - a nurse perhaps if in any way someone with a duty of triage she must be - asks the broad outline of the circs. that brings one here and, on being satisfied one is not a certifiable loon or salesman chancing his arm on an off-day, immediately stripes one down on a very long list indeed then points to a doorway through which to pass.
"You'll be needing this too," says smiling lady/nurse handing me a torn off piece of paper on which she has written in biro 'UCC'. "Sorry about that," she says. "But we've run out of proper slips so tell reception you got this from me and they'll let you in."
So a gatekeeper of sorts clearly, if not a stricy triager as such. No slip, no entry. (Can immediately spot an opening for some sharp young entrepreneur: stand at entry to building whispering to entrants "Wanna UCC ticket. Five fera pound.")
Anyways, into UCC and up to further smiling lady receptionist. Circs. once more explained, name entered on viciously long list and place then to be taken in Waiting Room. So far so anticipated. What though had been less expected was to find said Waiting Room so packed, so bursting even, with waiting souls as to make days spent in any Calcuttan 'Black Hole' a positive lark.
Designed for maybe a dozen folk in comfort, it holds now some forty plus people - all of whom look up with that resigned sympathetic look as anyone new enters 'Bet you thought like I did that this would be a breeze!' - plus assorted pushchairs, wheelchairs and more mewling infants than one could throw a bucket of water over. (If, of course, one were tempted to take such a fluid approach to mewling infants in general, which - perish the thought - one never would!)
Alarming more - a terrible test of the very spirit of the man - there was, among all this heaving mass of humanity, one empty chair. ('Heaving' is perhaps not quite the right word, implying as it does some small capacity for anyone to move in any way of which there was in fact none whatsoever.) Around the walls were plastered some seven or eight plucky fellows and fellesses, all of whom might have given their Granny for a sit-down, but not one of whom wanted to be the one seen to take the last seat available when others might need it more. (And who said there is no hope for England while such wonderful self-sacrificing, embarrassed behaviour stalks the land!)
Turn away now then if any sensitive spirit must, for I am about to confess that I did not share either the manners or the sense of necessary sacrifice, but opted at once for the seat! Shame on me? I beg - and if I have to I shall - to differ. None of the standers actually looked on their last legs, whilst I most certainly felt to be on mine. Quite suddenly awfully unwell, not far short of a fainting fit I could tell. Maybe the 'roar of the crowd' and no more, but glancing down at the item in question - the inflamed elbow - one began at once to see other possibilities.
For lo, the thing that but an hour previous had been but a localised swelling had spread to a raging, ballooned, red-as-fire stiffness from veritable stem to actual stern! Lummy, this was serious stuff. Whatever was on the go was clearly up and running big time, with every intent on reaching the finishing line darn pronto. Time to wait? Not so. (Bro. George would have been so proud of what comes next.)
Two options opened for consideration. The first, to wait one's turn patiently - over the hour one was told by smiling lady mark two would be a decent minimum - and hope not to expire in the meanwhile. Option the second - and selected - was a swift return to reception, reveal one's woes and to plead for special consideration.
Can you imagine then my fright? Not only had I demonstrated to the room my utter disregard for Golden Rule of Waiting Rooms #1 - 'Never Take the Last Chair' - but here I was completely flouting the Great Precept of any British queue - 'Never Jump To The Front'! It must have been my fevered state that so emboldened me to overturn all known, understood and accepted principles of moral behaviour without even a single care to the likely opprobrium of others.
But whatever the morbid cause, the effect was pretty electrifying, for no sooner had one revealed sufficient of the flesh to convey the circs. than smiling lady was out of her chair calling for the nurse to come see at once. Nurse having viewed one was, on an instant, ushered into the presence of a doctor who opined that though neither swift amputation nor speedy removal back to A&E was required it was, in effect and fact, quite like the Battle of Waterloo itself - a close run thing.
That being settled and the alternative treatment of the expected dose of industrial strength antibiotics being prescribed, I could not but ask about the funny farce that had preceded my arrival here.
"Ah," he said, in a satisifed manner and one could immediately tell one had asked quite just the right question of the right man at the right time. It would take a man of Bro. Geo's. expertise and experience fully to detail all that then came forth, but the jist of the man's thoughts ran thus:
When the PCTs were handed the job of providing out-of-hours primary care some few years back it was a monster of a mess. The Government had predicted - if one can use such a scientific word for hopeless, random guessing - that only some small percentage of G.P.s would choose to opt out of their previous continuing and continuous duties to their patients.
When, however, most G.P.s legged it out the out-of-hours doors faster than you could cry "The surgery is closed. Haven't you got homes to go to?", there was not the funding, the capacity or the required planning to establish a viable alternative.
As a consequence, out-of-hours services have more or less imploded, with few doctors - apart from those flown in especially for the purpose from Dortmund or environs - willing and available to do the work, too few premises in which to operate the service and little or no money to pay for it.
The cunning native, not content with this absence and demanding its full accustomed slice of the NHS pie, had meanwhile spotted that you could now get a half-decent or better service from A&E, what with the introduction of four-hour waiting targets and all. Previously put off by the prospect of being told to wait a minimum of three days in a draughty, dank department, they discovered instead smart premises, with running hot and cold drinks, some magazines published in this very century and a waiting time of less than the average Tesco check-out on a busy Sunday.
What, however, worked for them did not of course work for the system, and A&E departments up and down the land were forced into over-drive and, worse, over-spend attempting to keep up with a demand that never really should have come their way in the first place.
So initial strategic foresight on the part of the wonks having fallen traditionally short of the mark - the world having gone to a place it had no right to be according to their predictions - they were forced to have another go. And that other go was towards these new beasts 'Walk In Centres'. Need a doc but not a stretcher as such? Then walk this way. Well again they did, these cunning natives, though not so much walk as stampede. Show them a narrow side-track on a Care Pathway and the ungrateful horde trample it into dust, with scant regard for the beauty of the design of the thing. Build a nice clean Waiting Room for twelve and be outraged when it fails to hold the forty plus who actually turn up.
We can't have this rank disorder think the wonks, we must impose order and structure and make people behave as we would have them. So the wonks design an appointments system for their supposedly 'walk-in' service. People may come if they must, but if they must then they must 'flow' not stampede. Can't have demand dictate supply!
That might work if the appointment system itself actually functioned, but even if it did it wouldn't because down at A&E they are still wrestling with the walking wounded who have walked into an 'emergency' department when all, at worst, they have is an 'urgency'. For them the 'Urgent Care Centre' is a godsend in a largely godless world and blowed if they are going to stop referring people to it just because the wonks want appointments.
So now there are two ways of getting into UCC - by legitimate appointment and by the side-door of A&E on demand. These two streams collide of course, and any person arriving having dutifully booked to be seen at, say, 11 of the morning will find twenty or so others who expect to be seen before then having themselves been waiting since before dawn.
More shambles to add to the farce of chaos. And what do the 'managers' of the skewed system do to fix the muddle? Why, instruct their front-line telephone operators to lie to the public. Appointments only is to be the party line to peddle to the great unwashed, and if they don't know any better then for Heaven's sake don't tell them!
Unless, of course, you 'work for the NHS'. Remember that trick. It may come in handy!
This is not, I must assert, a slander ever uttered in the Palladas household for H and I completely recognise our respective personal stances on such matters: should she sense the slightest blemish to the skin it is off to Harley Street by the first available train for tests for skin cancer, whilst I, au completely contraire will sit on any given set of signs and symptoms for at least a fortnight, in the generally false presumption that time is the only, as well as the great, healer needed and that if you ignore any illness for long enough it will pass away of quite its own accord. (Regular readers are aware of course that this course was once even tried by oneself with what proved in the end to be one's very own cancer. There are then acknowledged limits to this masculine inspired stoical approach to sickness, and very much 'Tip for the Day' is, therefore, that time alone as a cure for cancer simply does not cut the, or indeed any, mustard.)
But today the subject is not life-threatening malignancy but rather a far less awesome matter of a swollen and deeply painful elbow. (OK well actually we are making a pitch for possible abscess tending towards - if unchecked - peritonitis and even mortal extinction. But that is to jump too far too fast for the purposes of this tale.)
An ever-aching elbow one has learned to live with as the consequence of some lazy ergonomics. One ought not continually to lean on it whilst typing away, but one does, one has for many years. I lean, it aches. It's a simple transaction. But then some four days ago the ache came accompanied by some serious and painful swelling. Let us call it, what is surely is, a modern fangled disease: 'Computer Elbow'.
And what should a fellow do in such circs? Well clearly, to follow the masculine line and ignore it. Change perhaps for a while one's usual slumped posture and then wait for sensible and long-overdue environmental adjustments inevitably to work their magic. A perfectly reasonable and proportionate reaction and response one would say.
One would, however, not in this case be right. Reasonable certainly given the known facts, but proportionate not at all it has transpired: for swelling - inflation - has but masked infection, and whereas an inflated elbow may subside all by itself once the irritant causing the swelling is removed, an infected elbow alive and kicking with all sorts of bacterial nastinesses needs active, immediate and, as we all know, antibiotic treatment.
All that though is but the diagnostic and subject context. The heart of the matter here is how and why one has journeyed from a Friday morning annoying ache to a Sunday night of waiting for the midnight hour to strike in order to hoick down the last dose of the first day of treatment.
Friday then ack emma status report: feeling a bit ropey and aware that resting heart rate is well above the norm for either age or man. Put both down to industrial-strength hangover from previous night of delicious excessive alcohol. Think, therefore, to self-medicate with Ibuprofen and strong coffee, and reckon neither will do any harm to raging pain in elbow now in its second day.
Headache and hangover subside as these things do, but pounding heart rate and raging elbow pain do not. (Note this, but no more, for now.)
Saturday ack once again emma. Poor night's sleep of restless wakefulness due to ever-present pain, interspersed with fitful dreaming of loud tom-tom beats and dark skies lit by dazzling displays of red-hot fireworks. Decide to take a stroll round to local pharmacy establishment for a swift chat with the resident Drugs Czar Harold. Harold does not hold himself to be medically qualified, has no ideas above his station at all, but is for all that a thoroughly knowledgeable cove when it comes to minor ailments of all sorts. Check, therefore, with him then if there is more to do than knock back the odd anti-inflammatory and suffer in silence whilst time gets to its work.
Sound notion but one blown clean away sadly by Harold choosing to have the morning off and substituting a sweet child in his place. Said sweet child mayhap be solid enough for the purposes of a locum dispensing powders and potions but not, as it turned out, of any substantial use when it comes to the matter of sound advisement. For, says she wrongly, there is no other course of action required other than the analgesics. No mention whatsoever of the possibility of a true infection that uncapped will rage throughout the whole body at the blink of a horse's eye.
One specifies the eye of a horse as it was in the equine context that one next made some progress. For the mother of one of E's stable friends happens to be a G.P. in her leisure time; that is, the little time that can be spared from the endless task of caring for a horse. One does not, therefore, ordinarily seek to burden her more with off-the-cuff remarks about human sickness, rather focusing on how one's horse fares and what is the latest news on its tendency to chuck its young rider if in mareish mood - as these mares so oft are.
Prompted though this time by ever increasing levels of pain, one did ask in purely general terms what might be the reasonable parameters of thought and action in regard to an elbow on the turn. It was then that other dimensions, previously unconsidered, hove into view. Abscesses were revealed as an optional extra, with necessary accompanying elements such as urgent medical treatment of both topical and systemic natures: get it drained possibly and most certainly get on board at once with the antibiotics.
Thought provoking stuff you'll agree. For the moment though nothing more than cerebral contemplation and no actual action following. One could leg it over to one's own G.P. for the full professional view, but then one couldn't it being Saturday and one's own G.P. doesn't do weekends. There is, instead, a telephone answering service that does not take calls, or if it does rarely replies to the simple request for urgent medical attention: "If you are breathing please don't bother us; if you are not breathing please phone your undertaker and stop bothering us." That sort of thing.
The alternative access to health services of any nature would be a by a trip to A&E. Through natural native cunning we have all learned that since the introduction of the false target god of a maximum four hour wait to be seen, no matter how trivial the matter, going to A&E is no longer something one only does when a limb is hanging off, or one is truly desperate, but is a convenient alternative to hanging on the telephone attempting and generally failing to book a G.P. appointment.
That's rather like those hotlines for buying tickets to popular music concerts so loved by E and paid for by her father: miss the beat of 9.00 a.m., when the box-office or doctor's reception opens for calls, and all you'll get for the next three hours is the engaged signal. Until finally you do get through only to be told all tickets were sold within the first nine minutes, or indeed all appointments for the day within that same short time.
But call me of the old school if you will, I tend to prefer not to trouble the hectic lives of Casualty staff until and unless the aforementioned limb off-hanging desperate pitch is reached. In which case waiting until the Monday when G.P.s returned from their weekend yachting breaks or whatever seemed the only choice.
Until of course one suddenly recalled that the local new hospital has something all the rage in the health service these days: a 'Walk-In Centre'. Just the ticket then for someone who simply wanted to walk-in, see a doctor, get a script and continue on with his busy life. And by the Sunday morning with arm rapidly - nay very nearly visibly - swelling by the hour a trip to the WIC was definitely on.
A swift phone call first though to check that the service actually operates on a Sunday morning seemed in order. Not a heck of point in trying to walk-in through closed doors. So one phones the main switchboard number for information. The flow of such information goes something like this:
Good Self: "I believe you have a walk in centre service at your fine new hospital. Could you tell me if it is open at this hour?"
Surly Operator: "Yes, but you have to make an appointment first."
GS: "An appointment for a WIC? That most surely belies the nature of the thing! The clue is in the title - 'walk-in'. One cannot need an 'appointment' for walking in can one?"
SO: "Yes one can, in fact one must. So there. Tell them about it if you like. I'm just following orders! Here's the number for appointments." (That last very much said in call central traditional accent of taking it or leaving it being entirely a matter for myself and of absolutely no interest or concern to the call centre itself or to its surly staff.)
So one did take the proffered number, if with some distaste, and made this use of it:
Good Self: Dials number given
Automated message: "This is the number for making appointments for the wonderful new WIC."
GS [thinks]: I frigging know that, that's why I'm phoning you dolt!
AM: "In order to make an appointment you must speak to an operator. Unfortunately all our operators are busy at present. Please do not hang on in the vain hope of speaking to one of them. Please don't even think of leaving a message as we won't listen to it. Please hang up now before we hang up on you."
GS [swears]: Frigg that for a game of soldiers!
AM [presciently]: "No point in swearing. I'm just a machine."
Machine hangs up.
So back to the first number:
Good Self: What is going on here? Just tried your wretched appointments line and got nowhere. Please suggest a viable alternative option.
Surly Operator Two: "As my colleague just told you" [clearly a marked card me] "you must have an appointment for the WIC."
GS: This is arrant nonsense and you know it. My Bro. Geo., whose professional life is spent designing health systems and processes that actually work, could if he were here put you right on this. A 'Walk In' service is precisely that. No more and certainly no less.
(At this point one must confess one pushed the boat out a bit here. For the actual words uttered were along the line: "I happen to work for the health service and let me tell you...etc., etc." But if a tad over the mark on strict truthfulness a veritable miracle cure for the impasse.)
SO2: [suddenly a lot less of the 'S'] "Sorry, did you say you work for the health service?"
GS: [plunging on] "Indeed so my good woman...."
Hardly 'S' at all O2: "Well in that case Sir, you may simply go down to the centre and indeed walk in!"
GS: "What!"
O2: [more 'S' for sheepish by now] "We've been instructed not to tell people this, but to use the appointments systems. Please don't say you heard it from me!"
Good self decides not to pursue this mystery any further but simply to grasp the chance, howsoever illegitimately gained, and get right on down walking into the walk-in at a trice and a pace.
So one does attend this our brand new hospital. (All gleaming bright and shiny, yet still filled with as much if not more MRSA and Clos. Diff. than its worn down predecessor, though that is for a later tale.) Great stonking signs point one the way to go. Handy that if you've not been there before. (Sadly the one place not to see any sign or signage is actually over the doors that actually lead to the desired destination. Assuredly smart post-modernist architecture doesn't do signs on buildings as such, though sadly of course decrepit patients-to-be still need them.)
By then perseverance and unwilting intent, one does find the very portal at which to enter. Across the wide, deep and terribly tall atrium one spots two desks of a reception variety. The first is labelled 'A&E reception', that being enough of a clue that this was not the one for us. The other has 'Urgent Care Centre' on offer, which sounds about right as indeed it proved to be.
Smiling lady behind the desk - a nurse perhaps if in any way someone with a duty of triage she must be - asks the broad outline of the circs. that brings one here and, on being satisfied one is not a certifiable loon or salesman chancing his arm on an off-day, immediately stripes one down on a very long list indeed then points to a doorway through which to pass.
"You'll be needing this too," says smiling lady/nurse handing me a torn off piece of paper on which she has written in biro 'UCC'. "Sorry about that," she says. "But we've run out of proper slips so tell reception you got this from me and they'll let you in."
So a gatekeeper of sorts clearly, if not a stricy triager as such. No slip, no entry. (Can immediately spot an opening for some sharp young entrepreneur: stand at entry to building whispering to entrants "Wanna UCC ticket. Five fera pound.")
Anyways, into UCC and up to further smiling lady receptionist. Circs. once more explained, name entered on viciously long list and place then to be taken in Waiting Room. So far so anticipated. What though had been less expected was to find said Waiting Room so packed, so bursting even, with waiting souls as to make days spent in any Calcuttan 'Black Hole' a positive lark.
Designed for maybe a dozen folk in comfort, it holds now some forty plus people - all of whom look up with that resigned sympathetic look as anyone new enters 'Bet you thought like I did that this would be a breeze!' - plus assorted pushchairs, wheelchairs and more mewling infants than one could throw a bucket of water over. (If, of course, one were tempted to take such a fluid approach to mewling infants in general, which - perish the thought - one never would!)
Alarming more - a terrible test of the very spirit of the man - there was, among all this heaving mass of humanity, one empty chair. ('Heaving' is perhaps not quite the right word, implying as it does some small capacity for anyone to move in any way of which there was in fact none whatsoever.) Around the walls were plastered some seven or eight plucky fellows and fellesses, all of whom might have given their Granny for a sit-down, but not one of whom wanted to be the one seen to take the last seat available when others might need it more. (And who said there is no hope for England while such wonderful self-sacrificing, embarrassed behaviour stalks the land!)
Turn away now then if any sensitive spirit must, for I am about to confess that I did not share either the manners or the sense of necessary sacrifice, but opted at once for the seat! Shame on me? I beg - and if I have to I shall - to differ. None of the standers actually looked on their last legs, whilst I most certainly felt to be on mine. Quite suddenly awfully unwell, not far short of a fainting fit I could tell. Maybe the 'roar of the crowd' and no more, but glancing down at the item in question - the inflamed elbow - one began at once to see other possibilities.
For lo, the thing that but an hour previous had been but a localised swelling had spread to a raging, ballooned, red-as-fire stiffness from veritable stem to actual stern! Lummy, this was serious stuff. Whatever was on the go was clearly up and running big time, with every intent on reaching the finishing line darn pronto. Time to wait? Not so. (Bro. George would have been so proud of what comes next.)
Two options opened for consideration. The first, to wait one's turn patiently - over the hour one was told by smiling lady mark two would be a decent minimum - and hope not to expire in the meanwhile. Option the second - and selected - was a swift return to reception, reveal one's woes and to plead for special consideration.
Can you imagine then my fright? Not only had I demonstrated to the room my utter disregard for Golden Rule of Waiting Rooms #1 - 'Never Take the Last Chair' - but here I was completely flouting the Great Precept of any British queue - 'Never Jump To The Front'! It must have been my fevered state that so emboldened me to overturn all known, understood and accepted principles of moral behaviour without even a single care to the likely opprobrium of others.
But whatever the morbid cause, the effect was pretty electrifying, for no sooner had one revealed sufficient of the flesh to convey the circs. than smiling lady was out of her chair calling for the nurse to come see at once. Nurse having viewed one was, on an instant, ushered into the presence of a doctor who opined that though neither swift amputation nor speedy removal back to A&E was required it was, in effect and fact, quite like the Battle of Waterloo itself - a close run thing.
That being settled and the alternative treatment of the expected dose of industrial strength antibiotics being prescribed, I could not but ask about the funny farce that had preceded my arrival here.
"Ah," he said, in a satisifed manner and one could immediately tell one had asked quite just the right question of the right man at the right time. It would take a man of Bro. Geo's. expertise and experience fully to detail all that then came forth, but the jist of the man's thoughts ran thus:
When the PCTs were handed the job of providing out-of-hours primary care some few years back it was a monster of a mess. The Government had predicted - if one can use such a scientific word for hopeless, random guessing - that only some small percentage of G.P.s would choose to opt out of their previous continuing and continuous duties to their patients.
When, however, most G.P.s legged it out the out-of-hours doors faster than you could cry "The surgery is closed. Haven't you got homes to go to?", there was not the funding, the capacity or the required planning to establish a viable alternative.
As a consequence, out-of-hours services have more or less imploded, with few doctors - apart from those flown in especially for the purpose from Dortmund or environs - willing and available to do the work, too few premises in which to operate the service and little or no money to pay for it.
The cunning native, not content with this absence and demanding its full accustomed slice of the NHS pie, had meanwhile spotted that you could now get a half-decent or better service from A&E, what with the introduction of four-hour waiting targets and all. Previously put off by the prospect of being told to wait a minimum of three days in a draughty, dank department, they discovered instead smart premises, with running hot and cold drinks, some magazines published in this very century and a waiting time of less than the average Tesco check-out on a busy Sunday.
What, however, worked for them did not of course work for the system, and A&E departments up and down the land were forced into over-drive and, worse, over-spend attempting to keep up with a demand that never really should have come their way in the first place.
So initial strategic foresight on the part of the wonks having fallen traditionally short of the mark - the world having gone to a place it had no right to be according to their predictions - they were forced to have another go. And that other go was towards these new beasts 'Walk In Centres'. Need a doc but not a stretcher as such? Then walk this way. Well again they did, these cunning natives, though not so much walk as stampede. Show them a narrow side-track on a Care Pathway and the ungrateful horde trample it into dust, with scant regard for the beauty of the design of the thing. Build a nice clean Waiting Room for twelve and be outraged when it fails to hold the forty plus who actually turn up.
We can't have this rank disorder think the wonks, we must impose order and structure and make people behave as we would have them. So the wonks design an appointments system for their supposedly 'walk-in' service. People may come if they must, but if they must then they must 'flow' not stampede. Can't have demand dictate supply!
That might work if the appointment system itself actually functioned, but even if it did it wouldn't because down at A&E they are still wrestling with the walking wounded who have walked into an 'emergency' department when all, at worst, they have is an 'urgency'. For them the 'Urgent Care Centre' is a godsend in a largely godless world and blowed if they are going to stop referring people to it just because the wonks want appointments.
So now there are two ways of getting into UCC - by legitimate appointment and by the side-door of A&E on demand. These two streams collide of course, and any person arriving having dutifully booked to be seen at, say, 11 of the morning will find twenty or so others who expect to be seen before then having themselves been waiting since before dawn.
More shambles to add to the farce of chaos. And what do the 'managers' of the skewed system do to fix the muddle? Why, instruct their front-line telephone operators to lie to the public. Appointments only is to be the party line to peddle to the great unwashed, and if they don't know any better then for Heaven's sake don't tell them!
Unless, of course, you 'work for the NHS'. Remember that trick. It may come in handy!
Open All Hours...1
...H's late and wonderful father - and therefore by obvious extrapolation my father-in-law - was, as regular readers know, a G.P. of what was called 'the old fashioned school'.
Two things follow from that description in logical sequence. First, that the type of doctoring he provided is no longer the fashionable norm: it would not be old style if there were not a new. QED and so forth. Second - and this more a judgement than a matter of factual logic, though I aver it most certainly to be true - that his doctoring was better than that available, by and large, today.
Let us then consider some of the abiding qualities of the general practice of medicine that does differentiate the old from the new.
There was status, regard and respect. A G.P. of his generation would not expect to be shouted or cursed at in his surgery by angry, drug-fuelled patients; nor would he have found himself threatened or attacked on his rounds by roving packs of feral youths. On the contrary, not only society being more at ease with itself but also a doctor would then enjoy something of the aspect and perks of a minor deity.
Not quite doffed caps in the streets, or instinctive genuflection before the leather bag of authority and medicines he would carry; but if the actual sacramental action was missing the devtional thought would be present. Here passeth by a vocational professional filled with knowledge and saving power. To him therefore due deference be given and on him deference be stowed.
That there would be something of the native peasant cunning in this honouring is not to detract from the effect. Prayers to St. Luke - patron of healers - in late October for fine weather to complete the harvest and a warm winter to follow would be proffered as a matter of a bargain: grant us these wishes dear Saint now and you will not find us needing so much to disturb you when we are frozen, hungry and sick.
And if godlike form in being then as a priest in character. For the character of the priest may be perhaps in question - too fond of the whisky or the gaming tables perhaps - but as one ordained into the mystery of immortal or mortal, in this case, salvation the mission is ever more than the man. True enough a G.P. so befuddled with non-prescription alcohol - or even self-prescripted drugs - that he could not administer a decent injection without causing fright or hurt, would lose the grace of his office. But short of that he would be protected from disgrace.
Whether in depth and breadth of medical knowledge the old trumps the new is harder to say. There are advances in medicine that permit insights, understandings, treatments and even cures beyond the doing of the last generation. But whether the wisdom of use of these measures has kept pace with the knowledge of their existence is not so sure. But let us at least be certain that whatever tools were to hand for such as H's father, he would be utterly the skilled craftsman in all of them. His choices of treatment would not be taken from the latest drug sellers' manual or the computer screen, but be drawn from the head and the heart, and of the two choices I would opt for the latter any time.
And again reverting to the relationship of doctor to patient and patient to doctor, there were more clear and certain rights and responsibilities for each. It was not then that people would telephone the Fire Brigade because they would not understand the assembly instructions for an IKEA product. They would not summons the Police because a fuse had blown in their garage. Nor would they telephone for an ambulance or a doctor in the middle of the night to attend to a runny nose or a cat that had widdled on the carpet.
They would though phone in a real crisis or emergency and they would receive the right and only response - a house visit from H's father whatever time of day or night. (Not some automated telephone message: "If your right leg has fallen off press 3, if the left then 4" and so forth as it is today - or tonight.) H's father would simply not have comprehended or understood the concept of 'out of hours' doctoring any more than a priest would see his role thus. That was the vocational aspect. If a doctor was needed, then he as the doctor to his patients was their doctor at all times, in season and out of season.
All hours then were 'in' hours to H's father, for that was the chosen life of the G.P. as he knew it. There were surgery hours for the morning and the evening. There were day hours for house visits - every older housebound patient seen by routine at least once every week. And then there here were night or weekend hours either to attend him at his home where he kept a sub-surgery for that purpose or to be visited at the patient's home.
And was that heroic? As a professional of his time, not in the sense that is was unusual or 'above and beyond'; it was rather the accepted and expected norm. As a person then yes there was heroism in sacrifice, for it cost him quadruple heart by-pass surgery by sixty and an early death before seventy.
...This was intended to be but the prelude and introduction to a reflection on a modern piece of doctoring experienced today. That will come in the second part, but let this stand alone for now as a tribute to a good man, a thoroughly old-fashioned man.
Two things follow from that description in logical sequence. First, that the type of doctoring he provided is no longer the fashionable norm: it would not be old style if there were not a new. QED and so forth. Second - and this more a judgement than a matter of factual logic, though I aver it most certainly to be true - that his doctoring was better than that available, by and large, today.
Let us then consider some of the abiding qualities of the general practice of medicine that does differentiate the old from the new.
There was status, regard and respect. A G.P. of his generation would not expect to be shouted or cursed at in his surgery by angry, drug-fuelled patients; nor would he have found himself threatened or attacked on his rounds by roving packs of feral youths. On the contrary, not only society being more at ease with itself but also a doctor would then enjoy something of the aspect and perks of a minor deity.
Not quite doffed caps in the streets, or instinctive genuflection before the leather bag of authority and medicines he would carry; but if the actual sacramental action was missing the devtional thought would be present. Here passeth by a vocational professional filled with knowledge and saving power. To him therefore due deference be given and on him deference be stowed.
That there would be something of the native peasant cunning in this honouring is not to detract from the effect. Prayers to St. Luke - patron of healers - in late October for fine weather to complete the harvest and a warm winter to follow would be proffered as a matter of a bargain: grant us these wishes dear Saint now and you will not find us needing so much to disturb you when we are frozen, hungry and sick.
And if godlike form in being then as a priest in character. For the character of the priest may be perhaps in question - too fond of the whisky or the gaming tables perhaps - but as one ordained into the mystery of immortal or mortal, in this case, salvation the mission is ever more than the man. True enough a G.P. so befuddled with non-prescription alcohol - or even self-prescripted drugs - that he could not administer a decent injection without causing fright or hurt, would lose the grace of his office. But short of that he would be protected from disgrace.
Whether in depth and breadth of medical knowledge the old trumps the new is harder to say. There are advances in medicine that permit insights, understandings, treatments and even cures beyond the doing of the last generation. But whether the wisdom of use of these measures has kept pace with the knowledge of their existence is not so sure. But let us at least be certain that whatever tools were to hand for such as H's father, he would be utterly the skilled craftsman in all of them. His choices of treatment would not be taken from the latest drug sellers' manual or the computer screen, but be drawn from the head and the heart, and of the two choices I would opt for the latter any time.
And again reverting to the relationship of doctor to patient and patient to doctor, there were more clear and certain rights and responsibilities for each. It was not then that people would telephone the Fire Brigade because they would not understand the assembly instructions for an IKEA product. They would not summons the Police because a fuse had blown in their garage. Nor would they telephone for an ambulance or a doctor in the middle of the night to attend to a runny nose or a cat that had widdled on the carpet.
They would though phone in a real crisis or emergency and they would receive the right and only response - a house visit from H's father whatever time of day or night. (Not some automated telephone message: "If your right leg has fallen off press 3, if the left then 4" and so forth as it is today - or tonight.) H's father would simply not have comprehended or understood the concept of 'out of hours' doctoring any more than a priest would see his role thus. That was the vocational aspect. If a doctor was needed, then he as the doctor to his patients was their doctor at all times, in season and out of season.
All hours then were 'in' hours to H's father, for that was the chosen life of the G.P. as he knew it. There were surgery hours for the morning and the evening. There were day hours for house visits - every older housebound patient seen by routine at least once every week. And then there here were night or weekend hours either to attend him at his home where he kept a sub-surgery for that purpose or to be visited at the patient's home.
And was that heroic? As a professional of his time, not in the sense that is was unusual or 'above and beyond'; it was rather the accepted and expected norm. As a person then yes there was heroism in sacrifice, for it cost him quadruple heart by-pass surgery by sixty and an early death before seventy.
...This was intended to be but the prelude and introduction to a reflection on a modern piece of doctoring experienced today. That will come in the second part, but let this stand alone for now as a tribute to a good man, a thoroughly old-fashioned man.
Friday, November 09, 2007
No Laughing Matter...
You will have noticed - it has not indeed passed without comment - that there has been less here of late of tales of local jollity or peculiarity. Remote now seem the days of Patrick the absconder or feasting on badger pate and so forth. Some may argue - neighbouring voices not a few - that too much of a touch of Vicar of Dibley was never a good thing. Others, of a more bloodthirsty mind, have questioned whether H herself has been butchered in the Rectory cellar, it being so long since last she appeared in person here. (There is a point, perhaps, to the former thought, though none whatsoever I aver to the latter! H has merely been keeping her head well down since that unfortunate run in with the Colonel [see much previous].)
There was a change of note it is true and I can place the time and the occasion. It was on the news of the disappearance of sweet Madeleine McCann. That was then a shock and has not become the less with the passing of time or the bizarre twists to the tale. Above all, leaving utterly aside any question of who did what, she is still missing; possibly long while dead, possibly still long suffering some terrible torment. In either fate my God and my prayers remain close with her.
That is a shadow colouring all. It is, one may say, but one further loss, just one more crime, in a lost world. And it is not a symbol of anything - it is too wretchedly real to be anyone's or anything's symbol - but only a terrible thing in itself.
There are though symbolic connections in other forms and ways. We learn today that a thirteen year old boy has been charged with the murder of a man in Birkenhead, the victim subjected to - we are told in the news - a random and vicious beating at a Bonfire Night's party. Attacked with burning wood plucked from the fire, knocked senseless until - whether dead or yet, more horrid, still alive - his body is thrown on the fire to be found in the embers the next morning. And the whole thing - of course these days - recorded on someone's mobile phone.
I was talking to E about this today as we drove her to school. I said how it reminded me so terribly of the world of 'A Clockwork Orange'. She agreed that there could be hardly any harsher, more ghastly, validation of Burgess's and Kubrick's vision of a dystopic society in which UV - 'ultra violence' - was the playful norm. For they did 'play' at violence in the film and in the book - it was all a big game and a laugh to the Droogies - and that playfulness made the story all the more compellingly repellent.
And then a moment later - by symbolic happenstance - Malcolm McDowell was on the wireless talking about the film then and now, saying people who first saw the film some thirty or more years ago would leave the cinema physically wretching from what they had seen, repulsed and horrified, but that nowadays the audience would rock with laughter for they 'got' the dark humour of the piece.
He may be right that modern viewers are more cinematically literate, that they have the cultural sophistication to garner laughs in dark places. Possibly so, but I would fear that should this film ever now play in a Birkenhead cinema the laughter would be from simple, brutal enjoyment of the vicious violence, not some comedic distancing from it.
There was another great old film you may recall: 'The Devil Rides Out'. He does indeed. No laughing matter.
There was a change of note it is true and I can place the time and the occasion. It was on the news of the disappearance of sweet Madeleine McCann. That was then a shock and has not become the less with the passing of time or the bizarre twists to the tale. Above all, leaving utterly aside any question of who did what, she is still missing; possibly long while dead, possibly still long suffering some terrible torment. In either fate my God and my prayers remain close with her.
That is a shadow colouring all. It is, one may say, but one further loss, just one more crime, in a lost world. And it is not a symbol of anything - it is too wretchedly real to be anyone's or anything's symbol - but only a terrible thing in itself.
There are though symbolic connections in other forms and ways. We learn today that a thirteen year old boy has been charged with the murder of a man in Birkenhead, the victim subjected to - we are told in the news - a random and vicious beating at a Bonfire Night's party. Attacked with burning wood plucked from the fire, knocked senseless until - whether dead or yet, more horrid, still alive - his body is thrown on the fire to be found in the embers the next morning. And the whole thing - of course these days - recorded on someone's mobile phone.
I was talking to E about this today as we drove her to school. I said how it reminded me so terribly of the world of 'A Clockwork Orange'. She agreed that there could be hardly any harsher, more ghastly, validation of Burgess's and Kubrick's vision of a dystopic society in which UV - 'ultra violence' - was the playful norm. For they did 'play' at violence in the film and in the book - it was all a big game and a laugh to the Droogies - and that playfulness made the story all the more compellingly repellent.
And then a moment later - by symbolic happenstance - Malcolm McDowell was on the wireless talking about the film then and now, saying people who first saw the film some thirty or more years ago would leave the cinema physically wretching from what they had seen, repulsed and horrified, but that nowadays the audience would rock with laughter for they 'got' the dark humour of the piece.
He may be right that modern viewers are more cinematically literate, that they have the cultural sophistication to garner laughs in dark places. Possibly so, but I would fear that should this film ever now play in a Birkenhead cinema the laughter would be from simple, brutal enjoyment of the vicious violence, not some comedic distancing from it.
There was another great old film you may recall: 'The Devil Rides Out'. He does indeed. No laughing matter.
Wednesday, November 07, 2007
All At Sea....
Do you - did you rather perhaps - know of Donald Crowhurst? 'In Deep' the other evening on the television would have given you the story well and poignantly told.
You could call it the tale of a 'Mr Pooter Goes To Sea', but written as tragedy by a Joseph Conrad and not as a gentle hoot. For a man died - suicide most certainly - and many others suffered, his family most of all. It should really have been a story in a book, for then there would have been no real agony, mental dissolution or pain for so many. A 'Lord Jim' and an 'Almayer's Folly' in one.
As a character in a book, you would cast Donald Crowhurst as a fallible Everyman who stumbled, then took a wrong step on - or perhaps rather off - a path, who then found there was no returning but a necessary, relentless continuance into falsehood until the heart, the mind and the soul was in utter darkness. Conrad again.
A fall from grace, as men - though not God - may see it and with that a last fall into the obliviating sea.
He was mired into and in deceit, spiritually and mentally caught in a trap of his own making. Fixated on symbols and portents in his clear madness, appropriate then - intended maybe - that he came at the end to the still slough of the Sargasso Sea, whose corporeal weeds symbolised the chains that bound him.
Does that sound overmuch for a man who faked a journey round the world, who pretended he had raced with others to gain a prize he could never have won? For that is how the world largely would recall and call the man - a fake and a faker. But watch do please 'In Deep' and you will find a far sadder and more morally, humanly complex story - again if only it were just that and no more - of one man, who could indeed have been one of so many, who was in every sense all at sea in his life and perhaps in his death.
There was a significant end note - separate perhaps as belonging to a more readily recognisable world of goodness and generosity, yet in some way - I am sure utterly - empathetic as from one mariner to another, one other sailor who knows too how perilous the sea can be beyond mere physical extinction.
The race winner - Robin Knox-Johnston - on learning of what had happened, knowing too the circumstances, donated his prize money to Donald's widow. That is a fine thought to celebrate when next reciting the Benedicite Dominus.
You could call it the tale of a 'Mr Pooter Goes To Sea', but written as tragedy by a Joseph Conrad and not as a gentle hoot. For a man died - suicide most certainly - and many others suffered, his family most of all. It should really have been a story in a book, for then there would have been no real agony, mental dissolution or pain for so many. A 'Lord Jim' and an 'Almayer's Folly' in one.
As a character in a book, you would cast Donald Crowhurst as a fallible Everyman who stumbled, then took a wrong step on - or perhaps rather off - a path, who then found there was no returning but a necessary, relentless continuance into falsehood until the heart, the mind and the soul was in utter darkness. Conrad again.
A fall from grace, as men - though not God - may see it and with that a last fall into the obliviating sea.
He was mired into and in deceit, spiritually and mentally caught in a trap of his own making. Fixated on symbols and portents in his clear madness, appropriate then - intended maybe - that he came at the end to the still slough of the Sargasso Sea, whose corporeal weeds symbolised the chains that bound him.
Does that sound overmuch for a man who faked a journey round the world, who pretended he had raced with others to gain a prize he could never have won? For that is how the world largely would recall and call the man - a fake and a faker. But watch do please 'In Deep' and you will find a far sadder and more morally, humanly complex story - again if only it were just that and no more - of one man, who could indeed have been one of so many, who was in every sense all at sea in his life and perhaps in his death.
There was a significant end note - separate perhaps as belonging to a more readily recognisable world of goodness and generosity, yet in some way - I am sure utterly - empathetic as from one mariner to another, one other sailor who knows too how perilous the sea can be beyond mere physical extinction.
The race winner - Robin Knox-Johnston - on learning of what had happened, knowing too the circumstances, donated his prize money to Donald's widow. That is a fine thought to celebrate when next reciting the Benedicite Dominus.
Friday, November 02, 2007
Up In Smoke...
...Infrequent, as you know, are my forays to Town. Not my sort of place at all, too many unhappy angry people jostling for space. So many sad, mad stares; mumbled voices of grizzly protest at some perceived injustice. A desperate sense of imminent violent outburst. And all that before even one alights from the train!
But go one must on occasions. The Bearded Bard does so like keeping close to the front-line that he must from time to time summons the troops for a purposeful chat about 'Whither This...' or 'Whether That...' And he being the one whilst we are legion, it does of course make logistical sense for us to travel to him rather than for he to assay some mighty, endless round of visitations.
Also thereby minimising the risk the bearded one should ever come a-knocking on the Rectory door some unannounced, unexpected and generally unwelcomed evening. If that sounds harsh and not a tad uncharitable to an honoured guest, it is more a sound notion that should he ever thus appear out of the blue then H, E and I would all fall at once into a terrible funk, rushing round the place to iron the spare bedding or slaughter a fatted calf, whilst the while casting a mental eye over the Parish accounts to check they were not too egregiously muddled to pass muster or audit. (He wouldn't care to be the cause of so much frenzy, nor we to be the frenzied.)
So to Town one travelled, practising the engaged and thoughtful yet questioning with a twist of concerned look that we clerics tend to adopt when confronted with a subject of which we know little and care less. (Non-Exec Board members could learn much from their local pastors.)
Chat duly done (one does not linger, it was something about re-engagement through innovation or innovation through re-engagement - one or the other I forget quite which) I hastened to treat myself to a visit to the most tiny, poky and gorgeous old emporium of all things tobacco, in order to recharge the pipe jars with a suitable mix of wondrous fragrances, aromas and tastes. I could - and often do - have these items posted up-country like a Somerset Maughan demi-hero taking supplies from the river station, but a chance given to visit in person is a chance taken.
One used, before these beastly new laws of prohibition, to sit and sample; to puff a small Churchwarden of best baccy before buying. Now sadly of course one may not and purchases are reduced to the merely functional - an ounce of this and a twist of that, if you please.
Chat though has yet to be banned - it will surely come, soon no doubt conversation between two consenting adults will be revealed to be highly carcinogenic - and thus ordinarily a certain light banter on the downward spiral of the world and all its ways would lace the moment.
Not yesterday though. Oh no it didn't at all. Poor X - a lugubrious cove at the best of times - was totally down at mouth and out of sorts. Not a smile flickered, not a light josh flittered. 'Til, indeed, at the asking of a generalised question on the potency of a certain Turkish blend came the astonishing reply "Frankly Sir, I really have absolutely no interest in the matter whatsoever."
Well, knock me down with a pipe spill! One at once sensed that this rebuff signalled not a narrow personal disinterest in a boringly dull customer - as indeed one might have so been perceived - but more an utter world weariness and an aching of a torn soul.
"We've all just been given our redundancy notices, Sir. The shop is to close at the end of the year. I have served loyally for X long years and at the advancing age of X have little if any prospect of future employment. All, after all, may come to nothing and be lost."
O Lord. How one mourned for the fellow. Has happened to Bro. Geo. twice these past ten years (the first time on a Christmas Eve of all things rotten!), and one knows how much it hurts. A real pain of rejection and loss, a terrible sense of unwantedness, all coupled to an absolute fright about what if anything a future might hold.
The jars are filled, but the pipe remains unlit. Cannot quite yet face a good smoke thinking of the poor fellow and his uncertain fate.
But go one must on occasions. The Bearded Bard does so like keeping close to the front-line that he must from time to time summons the troops for a purposeful chat about 'Whither This...' or 'Whether That...' And he being the one whilst we are legion, it does of course make logistical sense for us to travel to him rather than for he to assay some mighty, endless round of visitations.
Also thereby minimising the risk the bearded one should ever come a-knocking on the Rectory door some unannounced, unexpected and generally unwelcomed evening. If that sounds harsh and not a tad uncharitable to an honoured guest, it is more a sound notion that should he ever thus appear out of the blue then H, E and I would all fall at once into a terrible funk, rushing round the place to iron the spare bedding or slaughter a fatted calf, whilst the while casting a mental eye over the Parish accounts to check they were not too egregiously muddled to pass muster or audit. (He wouldn't care to be the cause of so much frenzy, nor we to be the frenzied.)
So to Town one travelled, practising the engaged and thoughtful yet questioning with a twist of concerned look that we clerics tend to adopt when confronted with a subject of which we know little and care less. (Non-Exec Board members could learn much from their local pastors.)
Chat duly done (one does not linger, it was something about re-engagement through innovation or innovation through re-engagement - one or the other I forget quite which) I hastened to treat myself to a visit to the most tiny, poky and gorgeous old emporium of all things tobacco, in order to recharge the pipe jars with a suitable mix of wondrous fragrances, aromas and tastes. I could - and often do - have these items posted up-country like a Somerset Maughan demi-hero taking supplies from the river station, but a chance given to visit in person is a chance taken.
One used, before these beastly new laws of prohibition, to sit and sample; to puff a small Churchwarden of best baccy before buying. Now sadly of course one may not and purchases are reduced to the merely functional - an ounce of this and a twist of that, if you please.
Chat though has yet to be banned - it will surely come, soon no doubt conversation between two consenting adults will be revealed to be highly carcinogenic - and thus ordinarily a certain light banter on the downward spiral of the world and all its ways would lace the moment.
Not yesterday though. Oh no it didn't at all. Poor X - a lugubrious cove at the best of times - was totally down at mouth and out of sorts. Not a smile flickered, not a light josh flittered. 'Til, indeed, at the asking of a generalised question on the potency of a certain Turkish blend came the astonishing reply "Frankly Sir, I really have absolutely no interest in the matter whatsoever."
Well, knock me down with a pipe spill! One at once sensed that this rebuff signalled not a narrow personal disinterest in a boringly dull customer - as indeed one might have so been perceived - but more an utter world weariness and an aching of a torn soul.
"We've all just been given our redundancy notices, Sir. The shop is to close at the end of the year. I have served loyally for X long years and at the advancing age of X have little if any prospect of future employment. All, after all, may come to nothing and be lost."
O Lord. How one mourned for the fellow. Has happened to Bro. Geo. twice these past ten years (the first time on a Christmas Eve of all things rotten!), and one knows how much it hurts. A real pain of rejection and loss, a terrible sense of unwantedness, all coupled to an absolute fright about what if anything a future might hold.
The jars are filled, but the pipe remains unlit. Cannot quite yet face a good smoke thinking of the poor fellow and his uncertain fate.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
