"Eat, Drink And Be Merry...

...for tomorrow you shall die."

Thus, more or less, both the venerable Prophet Isaiah and also my beloved surgeon Mac the Knife. Precisely put, the Prophet didn't exactly go overboard on the whole merriment angle, or indeed my Mac make much ado about the whole dying thing either. Perhaps, then, best not to delve too far into finer detail, the essence being that life shall end fast we, feast we; that being so a feast trumps a fast any day.

Not wanton, reckless hedonism then, but happy sluicing and slicing as befits a man glad to be alive yet aware it shall pass in due season. Mac the Knife's point was, though, even more nuanced than that. When a fellow has been dangled over the very valley of the shadow of death - quite viewed every nook and cranny of the fell place - only thence to be plucked back to safer ground, he not unnaturally wonders if there is anything he could and should be doing to avoid treading there once more sooner than he must.

There are many - and who can blame them? - would take this at a moral dimension. No one 'deserves' cancer as a punishment for sinful living, but when the 'Why me?' question arises, as it surely must, each cannot help but consider their crimes against humanity and ponder the whole justice, mercy combo. The atheist may have his karma and consequences over which to chew; the believer perhaps picturing all that might be striped down agin' him in St. Peter's infallible, inexorable record.

From that challenging examination of conscience - as the monks would have it for a nightly exercise - comes firm purpose of amendment. Firm as firm can be in this case - if a little tremulous in the voice - "Let's us off this one guvnor and I'll be good as gold from here on in". I would say try it if you don't believe me, but believe me you don't want to have to try it if you needn't.

But anyway no, this is not our theme. 'Tis not the decent Old Religion of the soul our discourse, but the decadent New Religion of the body. Craving the numinous, yet abandoning the sacred, what does modern man do but exalt the profane to the profound? St. Francis's 'Donkey' has become our Balaam's Ass. Our temple is no longer the place wherein to encounter the divine, but the very stones of our bones and the mortar of our flesh are become the Godhead itself. We no longer worship another, but ourselves.

Rank idolatry of course, with seriously silly consequences. Daily we are bombarded with the latest super-food or diet or herbal cure that will not only keep us young, slim, sexually irresistible and all-round physically healthy, but also will enrich our very souls, make our spirits soar with the eagles and reveal to us the ancient wisdom of the indigenous tribes. We buy it every time, because we crave eternity in a pill-bottle to be taken with water three times a day.

No wonder then, when faced with such fell assault as cancer on the very temple of our solipsistic Godhead - our body - we are all too prone to seek an sympathetic oblation, a suitable sacrifice to appease the angry deity. We are all Manicheans now: our flesh good, cancer bad (never mind it is flesh of our flesh) - so better send in the Tibetan moon-juice to slay the beast within. All palpable nonsense of course as dear John Diamond knew so sadly and said so well.

But let us assume that we have been sensible enough not to seek survival and salvation in a jar of distilled arse-wipe from a thousand Amazonian Queen bees. Let us rather - as we would - submit to the surgeon's blade, allow ourselves to be nuked and poisoned all in a good cause by the medical oncologists. Giving then thanks that we were sufficiently humble to be conventional in our medicine, even then the thought, the question, arises - what now, is there anything I could be doing or should not be doing to turn treatment into a cure?

At the very least this seems reasonably and sensibly grateful to our doctors. We have avoided the Pelagian heresy - we have not sought to do it by ourselves for ourselves - but we are perfectly willing to lend a hand at this later stage. A smoker with lung cancer may not quit smoking, but they will at the least wish they could. 'Tis, in fairness, only fair. That sort of thing.

Even if not so clearly an obvious connection between deed and consequences, one is bound to enquire if there is any possible environmental hazard now to be avoided. (Agent Orange in my case, funnily enough, there being sufficient positive correlation between exposure to the lethal chemical the Americans so liberally drenched Vietnam with - I was not there - and one of my little numbers. Not much call for it round these parts, not being a war zone mostly.) Or indeed - the obverse of the same coin - is there anything one should be doing to build walls and fences against further attack? (Bit silly that one on the whole - rather like asking the Trojan guards to keep an eye out for more horses.)

Back then to the intro and Mac the Knife's quoted nostrum. "Dear boy," said he in reply the necessary question, "there is simply nothing whatsoever you can do about it. Either it will come back and it's 'Goodnight Vienna' for you or it won't, and whether you nibble on raw tofu burgers or chew half a roasted cow for breakfast, drink purest mountain water or a flagon of finest Chablis, won't make a ha'peth of difference to the outcome. Do then what comes naturally. Can tell you're sybaritic sort of cove, so eat, drink and be merry..."

All very well of course and sound advice as far as it goes. Absolutely with him on the whole eating and drinking malarkey. But, come on now, I hear ancestral voices calling. Have you ever tried telling a Swede to be merry!