"I told you I was ill"

In Iolanthe, W.S. Gilbert’s Westminster sentry ponders the mysterious fact that every child born into the world alive “Is either a little Liberal, or else a little Conservative”.

This was, of course, before the Labour Party, let alone UKIP or the Greens, had been invented.

Conservatives possibly outnumbering Liberals in this scene from Iolanthe

Yet I increasingly think that there is indeed a fundamental two-way division in humanity, between the optimists and the pessimists.

Whether it is determined biologically or by environment I cannot say, but I do know that the pattern is set early. Because my two sons are both under six, and I definitely have one of each.

The elder, like me, approaches every proposal with a mindset of “What could possibly go wrong?” He is likely to spend his life wondering “What’s the catch?” and turning down opportunities that might, through a concatenation of infinitely remote possibilities, lead to disaster.

The younger, like his mother, has an altogether sunnier disposition. For him, the glass will always be half full rather than half empty.

I am not sure that I can do anything to change their respective attitudes. What interests me is which of them is likely to be happier.

It might seem a no-brainer. The pessimist will live his life in a perpetual fog of gloom and shy away from such possible excitements as space travel, cosmetic surgery or voting Labour.

Not one for Charlie Hann, I suspect

Yet I am a pessimist so extreme that I have never yet boarded an aeroplane without a deep conviction that it is much more likely to crash in flames than to reach its destination.

Which, since so far it has always managed the latter, has given me periods of elation that I am sure no normal traveller could hope to match.

Always expect the worse, and life will throw up regular pleasant surprises.

We spend a lot of time wondering about the time and manner of our death, us pessimists, so I naturally pitched up at Wansbeck General Hospital a week ago fully braced for the worst.

My mood had not been lifted by receiving a summons from the Department of Elderly Medicine, even if I could detect the hand of some well-meaning PR looking for a kinder way to express “Geriatric”.

Nor was it helped by seeing a doctor in a room that bore a sign reading “Pre-Surgical Assessment”.

But then, as it turned out, while I have indeed got a long list of things wrong with me, so would most 60-year-olds subjected to the same battery of tests.

In particular, I am no more likely to keel over with a stroke tomorrow than any other comically overweight and inactive non-smoker of my age.

True, this left the doctor with no explanation for the symptoms I have been experiencing, though he did kindly offer to refer me to another specialist for yet more tests.

However, in the week of Groundhog Day, it seemed better simply to draw stumps and add a few more irritating conditions to the long list of things one just has to learn to live with as one gets older.

Receiving this good news should have lifted me onto the sort of high that I normally experience only after stepping off a plane alive and making it through Arrivals without being the subject of a terrorist attack.

However, a new attack of pessimism soon kicked in as I realised that I could no longer put off a long list of important decisions that I had put on hold in the light of my clearly imminent demise.

I resolved to be nicer to everyone if I were to be spared, and I think it lasted about as long as most such resolutions. But I will keep trying.

In the long run, my pessimist son and I will be proved right, and can only hope that we have enough dying breath to utter the magic words “I told you I was ill.”

The humourless Church establishment prevented Spike Milligan’s family from having those words engraved on his tombstone, until they proposed putting them in incomprehensible Irish.

Since I lack Spike’s Irish roots, I wonder whether one of my readers might be able to assist my preparations by supplying a suitable Latin translation?

www.blokeinthenorth.com

Originally published in The Journal, Newcastle upon Tyne.

The consoling power of favourite quotations

It is sad but true, as William Hazlitt famously observed, that “The least pain in our little finger gives us more concern and uneasiness than the destruction of millions of our fellow-beings.”

Given my privileged opportunity to comment on any of the huge issues facing the world today, from climate change to the electability of Ed Miliband, it seems rather pathetic that the only thing of really gripping interest to me is today’s appointment at Wansbeck General Hospital to learn the outcome of some recent tests.

But there comes a tipping point in all our lives when death ceases to be a distant and theoretical concern, mainly affecting others, and comes to command our attention with the same sort of force as an oncoming juggernaut, careering madly towards us on the wrong side on the road.

It seems like yesterday that I was constantly making forward-looking suggestions and being frustrated by an older generation’s shrugging acceptance of the status quo, usually with the words, “It will see me out.”

Now I am firmly in their camp, my short-sighted selfishness tempered only by a sense of duty to my two sons, who could easily still be around in 90 years time. If anyone is.

Although constant awareness of the Grim Reaper’s stealthy approach is unnerving, age does have its compensations over and above the Senior Railcard. Perhaps the greatest of these is a sense of perspective, and the growing realisation that the Tory Prime Minister Arthur Balfour was right when he declared that “Nothing matters very much and few things matter at all.”

A.J. Balfour, nephew of Lord Salisbury: "Bob's your uncle!"

We are just moderately intelligent monkeys clinging to a rock spacecraft as it hurtles around a dying star. Our stay aboard is remarkably short and the best we can do is to make it as enjoyable as possible, both for ourselves and for our fellow travellers.

I have already tuned out the long-running general election campaign as so much white noise. It doesn’t look as though anyone can win it outright and it is hard to see any of the possible permutations of coalition making a material difference to our lives.

Particularly when you consider that many of the things Labour attacks most bitterly, such as the growth of private provision within the NHS, are simply the continuation of policies they themselves pursued when last in power.

We should always beware of anyone who presents us with a big plan to change things for the better. Socialism, communism and fascism all did that, and look how well they went.

The creation of the European Union and the euro were similarly billed as vehicles to prosperity and peace. Those of us who argued that they were likely to create just the opposite were cried down as reactionary fools.

Now that the continent is economically stagnant and mired in debt, with extremist parties on the rise across it, it is interesting to note how little we hear from those who screamed that Britain would be massively disadvantaged if it let the euro train leave the station without us on board.

Though they are the self-same voices issuing dire warnings of the fate that will befall us if we are mad enough to vote to leave the EU in a referendum, if we ever elect a Government so foolish as to hold one.

I’d like to think I might live long enough to vote for my country’s independence but I have to accept that the country I fondly remember has vanished forever, and no vote is going to bring it back.

So I’m off to see my consultant resolved to try and be a bit nicer to my fellow human beings for as long as I am spared; and I will endeavour to stick to that resolution even if what he mainly diagnoses is a bad case of hypochondria.

At the very least I will have had a salutary warning that should inspire me to try harder. For, as Dr Johnson observed, “when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.”

While if the worst comes to the worst I can always console myself with another favourite quote from Evelyn Waugh: “All fates are worse than death.”

www.blokeinthenorth.com

Originally published in The Journal, Newcastle upon Tyne.

Accept reality: there is no Santa Claus

Most of us now view politicians much as my younger son began to regard Santa Claus last month.

Two-year-old Jamie had a series of meetings with Santa at a variety of events. At each he was asked what he wanted for Christmas and replied, unfailingly, “a race car”.

At which Santa asked whether he had been a good boy and then handed over a small package that clearly, from its shape and size, contained either a book or a cuddly toy.

Each time Jamie eagerly unwrapped it and his little face fell as he surveyed the contents.

“Oh,” he said with infinite sadness. “I was hoping for a race car.”

Luckily the real Santa turned up on Christmas Eve with just enough racing cars to restore his faith in superhuman nature.

What, you might ask, has any of this got to do with politicians as we brace ourselves for months of General Election campaigning?

Simply that we too have a wish list – lower immigration, better roads, cheaper rail fares, improved health services, tax increases for the rich, tax cuts for ourselves – that the various Santas of the main parties may promise to deliver.

But then they’ll simply hand over the same old package that they had planned all along, and we will be terribly disappointed.

This is because our expectations, like Jamie’s, are fundamentally unrealistic. The national finances are knackered, to use the technical economists’ jargon, and whoever is in charge is going to struggle to do much for us against that background.

Let us take health as an example, because I happen to have had recent experience of attending Wansbeck Hospital for an NHS scan.

The premises were top notch, the equipment clearly state-of-the-art, the staff charming and my appointments on time. This is exactly what people pay for private health insurance in the hope of achieving.

Now, as it happens, the service at Wansbeck is provided in partnership with a private company: InHealth.

Why should anyone care? It works brilliantly and it remains free to the patient. If this is the sort of “privatisation” that is going to make the NHS “unrecognisable” after another five years of Tory government, I’d vote for more of it.

What’s more, I feel no confidence that Labour in office would do anything radically different, given that they persisted with the Private Finance Initiative and the introduction of private partners to the NHS throughout their 13 years in office.

The key, plain fact of the “NHS crisis” was disarmingly explained on the radio the other morning by a scientist introducing his research findings that two thirds of cancers are caused by random mutations on which neither lifestyle nor heredity has any bearing.

The human body, he said, has a design life of approximately 40 years and after that it will start breaking down, no matter how careful you are.

Trying to keep me, at the age of 60, doing all the things I used to enjoy in my 20s is like trying to do 24,000 miles a year in a 1954 Morris Minor. It’s likely to cover rather a lot of them on the top of a recovery truck.

But we expect the NHS to keep us going in good health until we are 80, 90 and – in ever-increasing numbers – 100.

The potential cost of trying to do this is limitless and ruinous. No political party is ever going to be able to deliver it, so like young Jamie we might as well stop wishing and accept the reality of ongoing disappointment.

Because there isn’t a benevolent Mummy and Daddy to step in and save the day for the NHS, the roads budget, the armed services or anything else.

Accept reality – and bear in mind that the reality of hard times in Britain is infinitely preferable to the condition of most of the rest of the world – and we will undoubtedly face fewer disappointments.

That knowledge may also enhance our lives for the next few months as we reach for the “off” switch at the start of every pointless political debate. After all, we don’t need a doctor to tell us they are very bad indeed for our blood pressure.

www.blokeinthenorth.com

Originally published in The Journal, Newcastle upon Tyne.

My heart was always in the North East

Overweight, mildly stressed, 50-something male who likes a drink has heart attack. As a news headline, it ranks right up there with the latest shock revelations about the Pope’s religious affiliation and the lavatorial preferences of bears.

Nevertheless, it came as a mild surprise to be told in Wansbeck Hospital last Monday that I had almost certainly suffered a heart attack. More unnerving was the verdict that this was some historical event that had passed me by, and not the cause of the chest pains that had taken me to casualty in the first place.

A disturbingly pretty doctor kept looking at the results of my electrocardiogram and muttering about “depressed PR”; which, in view of my trade and usual mental condition, struck me as the perfect cause of death. I resolved to have it inscribed on my tombstone in any case, in place of the words specified in my last will: “Not sleeping, only dead”.

My short stay in the Wansbeck was my first experience of being a hospital patient since I had my tonsils removed in the old Ear, Nose and Throat Hospital in Rye Hill 50 years ago. In those days the nurses wore uniforms much closer to those now only obtainable from Ann Summers, but that is the only point one could possibly cite in favour of the past.

As an occasional sceptic about the virtues and value of the NHS, I would like to put on record that I was most impressed with the cleanliness of the premises, the quality of the equipment, and the unfailing charm and cheerfulness of the ever helpful staff. Even the much maligned food was tasty and piping hot, though I dare say Michael Winner might have shaken his head over the sogginess of the toast at breakfast.

Having said that, I would strongly advise anyone who feels in need of sleep not to get themselves marooned overnight in the Medical Admissions Unit, where the steady stream of ex-miners suffering breathing difficulties did lead me to wonder how much of a disservice Mrs Thatcher really did this region when she arranged that another generation should not follow them down the pits.

Foolishly, no doubt, I pressed for my discharge on the grounds that I had a wife and three-month-old son who needed me at home, and that I could easily return as an out-patient to have the remaining diagnostic tests I was told that I required. Time has never passed more slowly than during the ensuing three days of sometimes intense pain before an appointment card dropped through my letterbox. On the other hand, it seems overwhelmingly likely that the condition from which I am suffering is pericarditis, and the many hypochondriacs’ websites I have consulted tell me that it is normally treated only with strong painkillers, which I have anyway.

One indisputably good thing has come out of all of this. The onset of my illness prevented us from devoting last week to the planned clearance of my Northumberland house prior to its sale, scheduled for completion next month. As the days wore on, it became increasingly clear not only that we had no hope of meeting that deadline, but that the inevitable stress of moving house was just about the last thing I needed. So I contacted the unfortunate buyer and told him that I was withdrawing my acceptance of his offer. He was very nice about it, all things considered.

So the next time I hear someone embark on that wise old saying “You can take the boy out of the North East …” I shall be able to interrupt them with “Not this boy!” Even better, if they ask me why, I shall be able to produce a sheaf of medical evidence to support my contention that “My heart wasn’t in it.”

www.blokeinthenorth.com

Originally published in The Journal, Newcastle upon Tyne.