AN UNEXPECTED REUNION

By Peter Murchie
Contact the author via the editor by e-mail at christopher.johnstone@ntlworld.com

As the unknown Baltimore philosopher advised, I am gracefully surrendering the things of youth. My hairline recedes as to a Brandenburg concerto as my waistline proceeds like a duchess’s entourage. In all things I favour a more stately pace these days. I drive a Japanese 4x4, and perambulate of a morning after languid ablutions and flossing.

Even my sense of humour is becoming gentler. These days you’re likely to find me engulfed in a voluminous armchair, wrapped in a Richard Briers cardigan, chuckling gently to a Ray Cooney farce or Ronnie Corbett in the big chair, as my wife tinkles away with the tea things in the kitchen.

Ten years back it was very different. I’d have been in the front row of some sweaty comedy club, able to fit distressed leather, baring my incisors and howling with contemptuous glee as near the knuckle, “right on” comedians derided the mores of the middle classes. Before getting back to my pad that is! There it would have been my mum that was tinkling the tea things. I’m sure the comedians still do unswervingly deride the mores of the middle classes - when they’re not being obscenely overpaid for crap novels, counting their yachts, or simpering in the front row of the latest royal wedding. But me? Well, I’ve moved on. I change the channel and sigh with contentment as Frasier begins, relishing the coffee house badinage and log cabin palavers ahead.

So it was a remembrance of things past, a glimpse of blue remembered hills, a whiff of a long forgotten girl’s scent, when in a station newsagent I chanced upon the latest edition of Viz magazine. My tea-thing-tinkling wife being too close for me to inspect the top shelf, I glanced idly along the respectable publications. And there it was, winking at me from between Upholstery for Amateurs, and The Wanderer (a periodical for caravaners).

I picked it up gingerly. Immediately the flash backs began: banned from the school library for a month for my Johnny Fartpants impression; Annabel Jones tutting in “mature” irritation as me and Davie Ross recounted the exploits of Mickey and his monkey spunk moped; tears streaming down my face as the antique loving neighbour came round to inspect Finbarr Saunders mum’s “perfectly crafted milk jugs.” I read on and gratefully regressed. What had become of my old friends? Here they all were. Biffa Bacon may have become deputy PM but he still had time to appear in good old Viz. The Fat Slags, freshly evicted from Big Brother, were here too. Spoilt Bastard as well, but without his sister Kelly and drug addled father. All my favourites - save one. But he also was to return to me, albeit in strange fashion. So pin back your lugholes and I will recount.

Some weeks later it was my dubious pleasure to be working out of hours. A particularly unseemly scene lay before me. A rasping, wheezing lady threatening to expire at any moment, wild-eyed relatives, a whirling vortex of ECG leads. I scribbled, I dialled. “Medical receiving, please.” I anxiously asked. I anxiously waited. Eventually the handset spoke.

A long sigh. A curt “Yes?”
“Yes, hello,” I anxiously replied. “Is that Medical Receiving?”
A longer sigh. A curter “Yes.” Lots of sighing, I noticed. I was starting to regret putting the old dear out. Must have caught him between periods of protected rest.
I unfolded a tale of acute breathlessness to harrow up thine soul. I stated the PMH of PMR, IHD and severe COPD. I paused for breath between abbreviations. Not so my disgruntled inquisitor. He was like a camper with a stony pitch. Not happy.
“Severe COPD?”
“Eh, yes.”
“Is she on home nebulisers?”
“Eh……….??!!, I’ll check.” I interrogated the pirouetteing daughter. She shook her head. “No, she’s not,” I informed the Spanish Cardinal.
“Hmmmppphh. Well, that doesn’t sound like severe COPD to me!”
My mouth fell open, I felt dizzy and stunned. The receiver fell from my hand. My face cracked in a wide smile of grateful recognition. “Roger Irrelevant”, I cried. “As I live and breathe,” with the merest of sideways glances at the patient. She agreed, just.
“How are you, Roger?”
“Is she pyrexial?” he replied.
“What brings you to Aberdeen, you old rumtugtugger?” I teased.
“I would check for pronator drift and also do a pregnancy test.”

Our protracted, and in the circumstances, necessary, enjoyable and appropriate joust concluded, I gratefully packed the lady off in an ambulance and hung up the phone with Roger still muttering something about a PR and tinkling bowel sounds. I smiled. Good old Roger. Still completely hat-stand. I was just glad he’d chosen to be a medical SHO and hadn’t become an army radio operator. (“Yes, sir we’ve established that there are 4,000 of them, but is the leader wearing a hat?”) Or a fireman. (“Your house you say? OK, are they orange, pink or red flames?”) I was just sorry I’d forgotten to ask what happened to his wee sister Roberta. I’d last heard she’d joined a convent after Roger tried to elope with an armchair.

Two weeks later and I was working out of hours again. It had been a fairly quiet night in. Then the centre bell rang. In such situations I like to parody Peter Cook and observe that it is usually neither Jennifer Lopez nor cheery Mr Pickwick what has done the ringing. Indeed, it proved so. An anxious young lady and her mother stood before me. I beckoned them in. I took the history. For the second time in a fortnight I found my soul distinctly harrowed. A past history of angioedema it appeared, having required intubation and a week’s board in ICU not two years previously. And now feeling decidedly itchy and swollen round the nares. It was comforting to know we were only 25 miles from the nearest hospital!

I administered some adrenaline. I scribbled, I dialled. “Medical receiving, please.” I anxiously asked. I anxiously waited. Eventually the handset spoke.
A long sigh. A curt “Yes?” Here we went again.
“Yes, hello,” I anxiously replied.”Is that Medical Receiving?”
A longer sigh. A curter “Yes.”
Warmth oozed from the receiver. In the style of one recently struck by a curare dart, I gulped out the history, at the same time anxiously observing the patient, and holding up my left arm to protect my cranium from the imminent appearance of the Plough and Andromeda. My latest fan listened, apparently unimpressed.
“Hmmmm,” she said. “Is she taking an ACE Inhibitor?”
This was too much! It couldn’t be. It never rains but the vicar has a red top hat.
“Fit like, Roberta,” I bellowed delightedly. “Not you too! A medical SHO indeed!”
“What were the most recent pine nut titres?” she giggled coquetteishly. “Is she allergic to industrial bleach?”
After being closely questioned on toadstool exposure, the patient was finally whisked off into the north-east night, blue lights flashing.

Gratefully switching on the kettle, I reflected on my good fortune at having caught up with the Irrelevants again. Then I panicked for a moment. I’d forgotten to get the ward phone number to fix up a game of banana banana Volkswagen! Then I relaxed. It was sure to be in the discharge letter. I’d find it when I was searching amongst the diastolic BP phase IV, the breath sounds, the florid facies, 4th heart sound, mildly elevated JVP in a fruitless hunt for details on new medication.

Other hoolet online articles by Peter Murchie can be found at:
hoolet edition 49 - Sandyjim Saves the Day
hoolet edition 48 - And The Winner Is...
hoolet edition 47 - A Christmas Caper
hoolet edition 46 - The Edinburgh Festival
hoolet edition 45 - Struck By Enlightenment
hoolet edition 44 - The Pendleton Code
hoolet edition 43 - Christmas Eve at The Pole
hoolet edition 42 - An Unexpected Reunion
hoolet edition 41 - The Complementary Garage
hoolet edition 40- Up General Practice!!
hoolet edition 39- Ten Years From Now
hoolet edition 38 - Finlay and the Contract Summit
hoolet edition 37 - Johnny the Bow and the New Contract
hoolet edition 36 - Science For Football's Sake
hoolet edition 35 - Evidence-Based Golfing
hoolet edition 34 - Dr. Marlowe

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

This issue maintained by Robert Hallam.