I have the deepest, deepest respect for the National Health Service, particularly as in about fifteen days’ time an amazingly capable and fantastically proficient NHS surgeon is going to drill a tiny, tiny hole into my leg and fix a lumpy-bumpy just above my dear little tummy button. Obviously, it would be preferable if doctors could bring themselves to use adult terms like keyhole surgery, navel and hernia, but they seem to find this kind of inane baby talk strangely comforting. Perhaps it helps them forget the gory butchery of the operating theatre.
I won’t bore you with the technicalities. Suffice it to say that the operation is immensely complicated, very hi-tech and – to use an unfortunate phrase – absolutely cutting edge. As far as can be gathered, it involves a miniaturized submarine crewed by a team of especially athletic and photogenic medical mariners. They nip in through the hole in my leg, travel up my thigh, navigate through the dark and stormy horrors of my pubic region and finally surface just above my diaphragm. There is then a spot of technical wizardry with lasers, photon torpedoes and a largish bit of sticking plaster. As long as that perfidious scumbag, Donald Pleasence, is kept out of the picture, I should survive.
Aside from the very, very slight possibility of dying young(ish), the only trouble with having an NHS operation is that one spends an unconscionably long time hanging about in garish neon-lit waiting rooms filling in forms. For most people, this doesn’t seem to be a problem; they scribble away for a few minutes then returns to the dubious delights of battered copies of Badger Hunting Life or Caravan Owing Fly Fishers’ Monthly. For those of a more ruminative literary-philosophical bent, the forms, coupled with the excessive amount of time one has on one’s hands to complete them, present something of a challenge and – let's admit it – an irresistible temptation.
It is with third question that I first stumble. Ethnicity? I scribble “Mainly Jewish” then pause for thought. I would willingly lay down my life for Israel and hate to admit this but, despite my mother’s laudably sentimental claims, I might not be technically Jewish. It is true that my grandfather rather looked the part but he had a brother called Rollo and did give my mother and uncles exceedingly odd names for putative Semites in the 1920’s (Clare, Eric & Frederic). I make the first modification to my answer: “Possibly part Jewish – maybe of Viking extraction”.
Then, there is the ethnicity my father’s side. His mother went by the name of Morfee (there was an accent in there somewhere) and, despite being a fervent Catholic, she claimed to be of Huguenot descent. However, I strongly suspect that she was really called Murphy and was of entirely Irish extraction.
There is more ethnic certainty on my paternal grandfather’s side. They came from North Devon and were smugglers, wreckers and utter bastards. One had been hung, drawn & quartered for following the family business; another, the infamous and deeply cretinous Edward Squire, suffered the same fate for attempting to poison Walter Raleigh and Queen Elizabeth I via their rectums. Doubtless I should fill you in on the Tale of the Notoriously Inept Bottom Poisoner, but I digress.
I finally decide that my ethnicity is “Possibly part Jewish – maybe of Viking extraction with pseudo- Huguenot probably Celtic undertones”. I support this with copious marginalia explaining that I might also have Iberian blood on account of much of the Armada being wrecked off the Irish coast and that I have always felt very Roman (Note: when I tell the receptionist that I think I might be the reincarnation of Nero and ask if this could have some bearing on my ethnicity, she gazes at me with an expression that is several degrees colder than friendly). I decide against mentioning the Celtic-Phoenician theory as this is, after all, merely an NHS questionnaire and no place for excessive prolixity.
Ethnicity out of the way, I move on to religion. This is not quite as tricky as one might think. I shove in “Lapsed Satanist; now wavering between non-Ontological Theism & Humanism” and put in a footnote (cf. Martin Buber and the later Wittgenstein). In fact, by this point there are so many annotations and footnotes on the forms that I have to ask the quite surly receptionist for a continuation sheet.
There are a few tricky questions. For instance, I wasn’t sure if snuff should be classed as a ‘recreational drug’. The receptionist wasn’t especially helpful when asked. First, she tried to ignore me and when I persisted said in an offhand manner “I have never really considered the matter”. I started to get the impression that she somehow found it in her heart to dislike me.
The minutes pass cheerfully and productively. I finally reach the penultimate question: “Is there any possibility that you might be pregnant?” Disdaining the paltry little tick boxes, I scrawl “Every possibility” then thinking this a mite brusque I add “Consider the power of the Paraclete”. A moment’s consideration has me worrying that they might think I am some kind of religious nut so I beg another sheet of paper from the exceptionally bad tempered receptionist. I pen a few paragraphs explaining why, as a middle aged man, I’d be more than moderately surprised if I were pregnant but that I couldn’t entirely discount the possibility. As a preamble, I discuss the possibility of surreptitious divine or extra-terrestrial surgical intervention. I then move on to the distinction between belief and knowledge. I conclude by presenting what I trust is a lively rehearsal of Cartesian scepticism and epistemology.
The questionnaire complete, I proudly hand it to the by now furious-looking receptionist remarking that she has really got her money’s worth this time. “You do realise that someone is going to have to type this lot into the computer” is her ungrateful response. I express the hope that she will find it illuminating and return to my book, the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius of Loyola.
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