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

A satisfying afternoon of bean counting and register massaging completed, Dr Goode reached for his frock coat and topper. Fetching his sturdy cherry wood stick, he extinguished his desk lamp and exited the surgery. He chuckled and gave thanks 1050 times at how clever he was, the redundant skin at his throat jiggling in time to his glee.

"Mony a mickle maks a muckle," he chortled, recalling his father's favourite maxim.

Passing through reception he noted his salaried colleague Dr Crappedon still huddled over musty patients, and engulfed in an enormous cardigan. A small fan heater whirred nearby, losing a battle with the insidious cold of the evening.

"Enjoy your shift tonight, Crappedon," he said in passing, his high screechy voice like chalk on a blackboard. "Be bright and early, mind!" he cackled, like an arthritic magpie.

"Yes, Dr Goode, enjoy your fortnight off - and compliments of the season," Crappedon quavered, his breath sending icy tendrils into the air around him.

"Compliments of the season, indeed!" thought Goode as he exited into the evening chill, hunching his meagre shoulders and forcing them and his bald, frowsty brow ever further into his antiquated apparel.

Goode shivered, but from glee rather than cold. He warmly anticipated doing the practice accounts tonight. Between mouthfuls of parritch, the rows of figures would give him delight, not least all those shiny, sparkly quality payments. He chortled, rubbing together the bony fingertips protruding from his fingerless gloves.

It was as he inserted the key into the door of his house that Goode became aware of a strange, ethereal, grunting sound. He looked around anxiously, fearful of spying a carol singer or charity collector, damning all the while the local Round Table. At first he saw nothing, but as he watched, strange swirling strands of supernatural pink light appeared in the air around him. With sickening undulations they began to take shape as the grunting sound intensified. Before his disbelieving eyes a dreadful apparition appeared. There, three feet above the ground, hovered a ghostly trough, around it two phantasmal pigs shuffled, grunted and snorted, their snouts deep in some unearthly swill. Then, in spooky unison, both pigs turned dreadful human masques toward Goode who gasped in horrified recognition. He rubbed his eyes. He looked again. It couldn't be.

"Don't be a greedy bastard, Goode!" they wailed and cooed as only supernatural pigs can.

Transfixed, Goode goggled at this hell sent spectacle. They may have had pigs' bodies, but they had the heads of Henry McLeish and David McLetchie.

"Do you want to be remembered like us?" grunted Henry.

"Listen to our friends when they visit tonight," snorted Dave.

As Goode watched, the two fat pigs waddled off into the ether. Suddenly all that was left was a distasteful memory.

"What nonsense is this!" cried Goode, spinning on his heel and entering his house, muttering about undigested pieces of cheese and working too hard.

It didn't take Goode long to shrug off his encounter with the porcine phantoms, and before long he was gulping parritch and surrounding himself with beloved receipts, cheque stubs and all manner of returns. It was a happy man indeed that donned a Matalan nightgown and retired to an Ikea four poster shortly before midnight.

Goode nuzzled his soft pillow as the town clock struck twelve. As he luxuriated in the welcoming arms of Morpheus, he gave thanks for Tony Hart. Gradually, slowly he fluttered into downy sleep, his ravelled sleeve of care began to knit. It was as if a gentle melody like March from a Little Suite lulled him nodward. "Ahhhhhhhhhh" he sighed.

"Rouse yourself man! Yer late!" boomed a deep velvety brogue. "Dreaming about thon bonny wee nurse, I shouldn't wonder. Well up an' aboot! There's work to be done!"

Goode sat up like a newly vaccinated infant. Blinking fearfully, he regarded the stocky, tweed jacketed, rosy nebbed figure before him.

"Goode man! Come away wi me a while! Is it no obvious! I'm the ghost o' GP past!"

Shortly, as though wafted on an Aled Jones updraft, Good and GP (past) were soaring above a snow dusted rural hinterland. All Goode's questions where met with a gruff "You'll see soon enough, min!"

With a flatulent plumph!! Goode and GP (past) plummeted into a comfortable burgundy leather settee. Goode hastily arranged his disarrayed nightgown and looked around the strangely familiar surroundings. He warbled incredulously at seeing his own younger self before him. Goode watched tearfully as the young he dispensed nostrums and good festive cheer to cheery rustic folks as a pile of hampers, salmon and whisky amassed around him. As a long forgotten dusk coloured the surgery window and heralded a long forgotten day's end, he saw himself leap from his chair, grab his bag and tweed overcoat. As the young he strode from the surgery, he heard himself mutter about having time to deliver Mrs McPhee of twins in the next glen and still be back in time for the Watchnight service.

Time, tide, hoolet deadlines and word limits wait for no man. For that reason I feel certain that Dr Goode would permit his tri-spook epiphany to be concluded in about one hundred and fifty words.

Tweedy had no sooner deposited Goode safely back between the four posts than a handsome bouffant chap, all oily charm, polo-shirt and chino slacks, appeared like a vision of This Morning but introducing himself as GP (present).

They whirled through a vortex of ideas, concerns and expectations, shortly to hover above a disheartening scene. They watched poor old Dr Crappedon suffer through his Christmas Eve out-of-hours shift. Zip, zip, zip went he and his driver, hither and thither over an area like rural Russia, from one ill served citizen to the next.

At one stage he spied Crappedon phoning Goode's colleague, Dr Lifestyle, who, eyebrows never far from the ceiling or eyes from Changing Rooms, delivered huffy advice through mouthfuls of cocktail sausage as he jotted on a claim form. Meanwhile back at HQ, black cloaked figures shifted pawns around an enormous spreadsheet in various scenarios - more for less, shittier working conditions, as long as we appeal to their greed, and f**k the patients.

Reverse-vortexed back to the four-poster, Goode's nightcap had barely ceased spinning, when a sinister hoody poked his head round the curtains. Menacingly he decowled. A muscular, shaven headed brute with 6 weeks training and a misplaced arrogance that screamed Ross Kemp stood before Goode. He was clad entirely in a green boiler suit, his meaty left paw pointing meaningfully into the middle distance. Goode peered, and saw a tombstone. Upon it was inscribed, Goode GP, RIP. "Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh" he screamed.

He awoke next morning with a start. He leapt from bed and raced to his window. Snow had dusted the suburban idyll in the night. Two barefoot, unkempt children played below, giggling with delight as they constructed a giant snowman. As he threw open the window, Goode cried "Get off my grass, you little scumbags!"

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.