IS THERE LIFE ON MARS?

By Blair Smith
Contact the author by e-mail at christopher.johnstone@ntlworld.com

In former days it was traditional for Graham Watt, learned professor of general practice at Glasgow University, to begin an after-dinner speech by enumerating the three (sic) different kinds of people in the world: those who can count, and those who cannot. It was also traditional for us to indulge in a ripple of post-prandial laughter, and anticipation of further ribaldry.

In my world, however, society is divided into two human sub-species: toonsers and teuchters. The former inhabit large towns or cities, or retain the habits and attitudes associated with such living after moving to rural locations. The latter represent the obverse. Toonsers, for example, demand rapid and easy access to shops and entertainment, while teuchters’ habitual remoteness leads them to assume that they can undress without the need for curtains. Toonsers complain about the noise of roosters and the smell of manure; teuchters about the noise of traffic and the smell of humanity. Toonsers drive the merest furlong to the shops or school because they can, and do it aggressively because they have to. Teuchters drive everywhere because they have to, but do it slowly – at tractor speed, in fact. Both being terms of mild abuse, however, neither sub-species recognizes itself, only the other. Aberdeenshire, combining the riches of oil with the privations of agriculture and fishing, has an equal distribution of each.

When visiting football fans come to Pittodrie, one of their songs, aimed at the home fans runs like this:

I can’t read and I can’t write,
and I don’t really matter.
I am just an Aberdeen fan
and I can drive a tractor.

Rain distinguishes toonsers from teuchters. The merest suggestion of a spit produces a toonser’s umbrella as part of a primitive reflex, in order to protect hairstyles and raiment. A teuchter forgoes such implements as pointless, having neither a hairdo nor a costume worth preserving, and expecting the inevitable accompanying wind to render the umbrella’s intact state transient. When, following this summer’s drought, I expressed pleasure at seeing rain outside my office window, I realized from my colleague’s expressions, that I had marked my transition to teuchterhood. The reason for my joy, or relief, was that our neighbour’s well had recently run dry, and I knew that it was only a matter of a short dry spell further before ours did similar, depriving us of our only source at home. Previous experience informs me that such an event is not usually corrected spontaneously for several months, and our contingency plans had looked like needing activation until the rains came. In the country we take water for granted no more often than those in the city cross the road with eyes shut.

A few years ago, I noticed comet Hale-Bop adorning the sky on my way home from work. We happened to be playing host to one of our medical students, a bright young toonser. I took him into the garden and pointed out the comet, awaiting his awe. He was indeed awe-struck, but not by the comet, which he found only relatively interesting. It was the whole night sky that mesmerised him. He had never seen this in an environment free of light pollution, and the intensity of starlight signifying the magnitude and detail of the cosmos was a revelation. My teuchter habitude had made me guilty of ignoring this and focusing on only one of these stellar bodies; his innocence found the comet no less fascinating, but only as part of the whole. Let us not be blinded by habit.

Of course, as I write, Mars is all the rage. The other day, at 10:51, Mars came closer to the Earth than it has been for 60,000 years. Undoubtedly like yourselves, we were out there with the telescope, admiring its hues and exclaiming at its southern ice-cap. Mars will be with us for another month or two, gradually adding to the 35 million odd miles that currently separate us. Needless to say it has always been there, and frequently visible, but its present high profile reminds us of our neighbour, and that the universe is exciting. We are, as individuals, most unlikely ever to reach Mars. All we can do is look at it, and fantasise landing there, aiming to answer David Bowie’s generation-old question.

Will this be the same for our profession? The out-of-hours issue is something of a red planet. The removal of our responsibility for 24-hour care is a crucial component of the new contract whose elliptical orbit has swung the possibility nearly into reach. Across the land NHS Trusts and Health Boards are devising and costing more or less realistic plans to provide out-of-hours cover without GPs. We wonder how it will develop, secure in the knowledge that “they” will have to come up with “something”. The costs threaten to bankrupt the Trusts, but that need not concern us – we have faith in our negotiators and managers. And yet it must. For if we do not work together to solve the provision of out-of-hours care in a practical way, the issue will swing out of view again, never to re-materialise. At least, not for another 60,000 years.

Other hoolet online articles by Blair Smith can be found at:
hoolet edition 49 - Ethics and Repression in the Bloo Toon
hoolet edition 48 - May The Best Team Win
hoolet edition 47 - Hunting Pink Elephants
hoolet edition 46 - Predictive Texting
hoolet edition 45 - Role Models
hoolet edition 44 - Time To Go Killorglin'
hoolet edition 43 - Salt and Shake
hoolet edition 42 - Stepping up the Pace of Life
hoolet edition 41 - Smoking out the Irish Question
hoolet edition 40 - Not Cricket
hoolet edition 39 - Anniversaries and Predictions
hoolet edition 38 - Is There Life on Mars?
hoolet edition 36 - Onwards and Upwards
hoolet edition 35 - Goal of the Season‘s Greetings
hoolet edition 34 - Chickens and Eggs
hoolet edition 33 - On Shifting Goalposts
hoolet edition 32 - Period Zero
hoolet edition 30 - Annual Appraisal
hoolet edition 29 - Working Towards Scotland's Healthier Children For Us All 2020 and A Framework for Maternity Services in Scotland
hoolet edition 28 - In Memoriam Admiral Byng. A cautionary Tale

hoolet is the magazine of RCGP Scotland. It is supported intellectually, financially and emotionally by RCGP Scotland.

This issue maintained by Robert Hallam.