That same week, I was privileged to share a platform with Doug Beattie at the Manchester Literary Luncheon. One of a tiny contingent of British troops, the Royal Irish Regiment captain went to help Afghan forces recapture the town of Garmsir – known as the Taliban gateway to Helmand Province. For two brutal and bloody weeks, he and a few soldiers, who shrunk to just three men, faced a ferocious enemy in impossible conditions and with inadequate supplies. For his repeated bravery, Captain Beattie was decorated with the Military Cross.
There was a strange hush in the audience, and a good few tears, as this brave soldier told us with heartfelt honesty about his experiences and of the resilience, courage and humanity of the British soldiers who served with him. At one point, when serving in Iraq, he was responsible for forming and running the holding pen for 1,500 enemy soldiers with a small defence platoon to contain them.
‘It was a tense period,’ he said. ‘I understood why my men’s frustrations might so easily boil over: the heat, the physical exhaustion, the real danger and the imagined danger. But I was clear in my own head. We would treat the prisoners correctly and with compassion. It was what I asked of the men under my watch. The response was fantastic. Not only did they do what was requested but they often did more, giving up their own water and food so at least some of our charges could be satiated. I was, and am, extremely proud of them.’
The morning after the literary lunch, I travelled to London with a heavy case in tow. As I struggled to lift my burden off the packed luggage rack, a young soldier took it from my hands.
‘OK, pop,’ he said, ‘I’ll give you a hand.’
Doug Beattie would have been proud of him.
Someone at the Door
I have to say that I admire the sheer persistence and determination of Jehovah’s Witnesses. Near where I live, their bright modern church has been built, and many a weekend I have received the attention of a couple of zealous members of the congregation wishing to debate their beliefs with me. Without exception, I have found these visitors smartly turned out, courteous and good-humoured but, sadly for them, singularly unsuccessful in converting me to their way of thinking. I was brought up to be polite to people who appear on one’s doorstep so have, unlike some, I should guess, never been discourteous to these dedicated proselytisers.
However, one weekend I was not in the mood for any disturbance. I had a deadline to meet. My long-suffering wife had departed on the Friday evening for a weekend with her parents in Shipley, to give me some peace and quiet to complete a book I had been struggling to write. The final manuscript had to be on my editor’s desk first thing Tuesday. So, nine o’clock Saturday morning found me on a roll in my study, rattling away happily at the keyboard, making real headway. Then the doorbell rang. I decided to ignore it. The wretched bing-bonging continued so, hair a mess, unshaven, barefooted and in my old green towelling dressing gown, I stomped down the stairs and threw open the front door. On the doorstep were two well-dressed, smiling individuals. The middle-aged man held a briefcase and his young woman companion held a clutch of papers.
‘Good morning,’ said the man cheerfully.
‘Morning,’ I grunted.
‘Beautiful day, isn’t it?’ said his companion. ‘Don’t you feel glad to be alive?’
‘Look . . .’ I began.
‘Might we interest you in what we believe?’ said the man.
‘No,’ I replied bluntly.
They both were clearly taken aback. This was somewhat surprising to me since I should think they often receive such a response.
‘I do not wish to appear churlish,’ I told them, ‘but I am exceptionally busy and have not the time, nor indeed the inclination, to debate your beliefs this morning.’
‘We would welcome the opportunity of explaining our views,’ said the man, undeterred by my sharpness.
‘And what we stand for,’ added the woman.
‘I am fully aware of what you stand for,’ I said. I pointed to the clutch of papers in her hand. ‘I have read all about your beliefs and have debated them a number of times with your colleagues on this very doorstep and I am not interested. I shall never be converted to your way of thinking.’
‘Really,’ said the man, looking very interested.
‘And I have to tell you,’ I continued, ‘that the only thing you and I have in common is God.’
The man looked at the woman, smiled weakly and then turned his attentions back to me. ‘So I take it, then,’ he said, ‘that you won’t be voting Liberal Democrat?’
Consulting the Doctor
I have been having a bit of trouble with my throat recently.
‘It’s because you talk too much,’ said my wife. ‘You want to give your voice a rest once in a while.’
My doctor was rather more sympathetic and I was sent to the hospital for an X-ray.
So much is said and written about the failings of the NHS, but I have to say that I received five-star treatment. I sat with my book in an easy chair, in a comfortable lounge area, with a cup of coffee, waiting for my name to be called. It wasn’t long before a smiling and chatty nurse took me to have the X-ray.
A week later, I was back. They had discovered something.
Then followed a battery of tests, all done with cheerfulness and accompanied by an explanation of what was happening.
The specialist appeared and introduced himself, and I followed him into a room that smelt of antiseptic. Leaning over me with a long, thin piece of tube-like equipment, he explained that the bronchoscopy would be a little uncomfortable when the probe went down the back of my throat and into my lungs, but it would soon be over.
‘It sounds quite fun,’ I managed to murmur. I eyed the tube. ‘I hope it’s had a thorough wash,’ I told him. ‘I hazard to think what other orifices it’s explored.’
He smiled, and assured me this equipment was used solely for lungs.
It was the speech therapist (a Joanna Lumley look-alike) who did the endoscopy (the tube this time went up my nose and down the back of my throat) – another fun experience. All was explained to me, and I watched in fascination as the miniature camera displayed my insides on a small screen.
‘You can have a copy of the photographs if you like,’ said the smiling nurse, who held my hand throughout.
‘Great,’ I croaked. ‘I’ll put them in my album next to the holiday snaps.’
‘Well?’ said my wife when I arrived home.
‘I’ve got to go back for the results next week,’ I told her, ‘and in the meantime I have to try and rest my voice.’
She gave a hollow laugh.
The following week I was called into the specialist’s office.
He sat behind his desk, half-moon spectacles perched on the end of his nose, a wodge of papers before him. He tapped the desk with his pen for a moment as if considering what to say.
I feared the worst.
He took a deep breath. ‘Before I go through the test results, Mr Phinn,’ he said, ‘may I ask you something?’
I knew it, I thought, my heart thumping in my chest and my throat becoming dry. It’s serious. He’s going to ask me if I have made a will. I nodded. ‘Yes, of course,’ I managed to mouth.
He reached into a drawer and produced a copy of my latest Dales book, which he passed across the desk. He smiled. ‘My wife is a big fan of yours,’ he said. ‘I wonder if I might trouble you to sign this for her?’
With trembling hand, I wrote my name.
There was something on my throat, he explained, but it was damaged cartilage which was not life-threatening. He suggested, however, that I might undergo a course of speech therapy.
‘I don’t think I will find that too arduous,’ I said, thinking of the breathing exercises I would be doing with the Joanna Lumley look-alike.
The Best Medicine
There’s the story of the man (no doubt from Yorkshire) who, coming out of a Ken Dodd show where the audience had been weeping with laughter, responded to his friend’s question, ‘W
hat did you think of the comedian then?’ with the observation that: ‘Well, he was all right if you like laughing.’
It is a fact that some people don’t like to laugh. Lord Chesterfield, for example, thought it extremely vulgar to express amusement. ‘There is nothing so ill-bred,’ he wrote, ‘as audible laughter, with its disagreeable noise and shocking distortion of the face.’ He was clearly not a barrel of laughs. Queen Mary was also a bit of a killjoy, by all accounts, and instructed her family never even to smile in public.
I feel sorry for these wet blankets, because laughter not only makes you feel good, it does you good.
According to Dr Pierce J Howard, Director of Research, Center for Applied Cognitive Studies, NC, USA: ‘Laughter increases our immunity to illness, improves sleep, enhances natural growth and results in tests of problem-solving ability improve when preceded by laughter.’ A colleague, Michael Miller of the University of Maryland, agreed that a chortle a day can keep the doctor away and found, after extensive research, that laughter ‘offsets the impact of mental stress which is harmful to the endothelium’. He further discovered that, compared with healthy people of the same age, those with heart disease were 40 per cent less likely to laugh in a variety of situations.
Laughter, of course, can come in different forms. It can be defensive, cynical, embarrassed or cruel as well as good-humoured. Sometimes we laugh to be polite or to cover up, to be part of the group or just to be sociable. And what makes one person laugh might not amuse another. I remember, as a child, gathering around the laughing policeman in the glass case on Blackpool pier. This large puppet came to life when a penny was put in the slot. Then he shook and guffawed, and his infectious laughter had those who watched doubled up with laughter. There was always one, however, who looked on with a face like a death mask, perhaps wondering why so many people found it funny.
I have to admit to having a chuckle when I read about the hoax telephone calls to Dublin Zoo. It can’t have been much fun for those receiving them.
‘Good afternoon, Dublin Zoo. How may I help you?’
‘I’m responding to an urgent call from Mr Rory Lion. If he’s not available, Anna Conda will take the call.’
‘We have not lost our sense of humour,’ said the marketing manager, ‘but with the calls coming in at a rate of thirteen a minute, it’s no laughing matter.’ In desperation, she has recorded the following welcome message on the answerphone: ‘If you are wanting to speak to a Mr Rory Lion, C Lion, G Raff, Ann T Lope or E Guana, you are the victim of a hoax message.’ This, of course, might cause something of a problem should Mr Don Kee or Mr Jack Rabbit be appointed to the zoo.
Believing in Miracles
Alan, a friend of mine, recently spent a time in hospital. He retired as head teacher on the Friday and on the Tuesday he had a stroke. Fortunately he is on the mend and when I visited him he was cheerful and optimistic, and spoke warmly of the care and attention he had been receiving from the doctors and nurses.
I had arrived at the hospital rather too early for visiting time, so had retired to the café for a cup of tea before seeing Alan. When I came to pay, I encountered in front of me a large, tattooed woman in fluffy bedroom slippers and shocking pink dressing gown. She was berating the poor woman at the till.
‘There’s not much flipping cheese in this sandwich and it’s flipping expensive as well and I don’t like the flipping tea either,’ she complained.
Needless to say ‘flipping’ was not part of her vocabulary, but the other ‘f’ word was.
As the vision in pink shuffled off, the woman on the till sighed. ‘You certainly get to see life in here,’ she told me.
‘Think yourself lucky,’ I replied. ‘You don’t have to treat her. Can you imagine her as a patient?’
I was clearly mistaken for a member of the medical team, for the woman on the till nodded and said, ‘You’re quite right, Doctor. I don’t know how you and the nurses have the patience.’ Then she smiled. ‘I’ve taken off the staff discount.’
The man in the bed next to my friend, who had also suffered a stroke, was in a considerably worse condition than Alan, and lay prone and speechless, his body stiff as a plank. On his second day in the hospital, Alan was visited by a former colleague, a devout Roman Catholic, who brought with him some holy water from Lourdes. This he sprinkled liberally on Alan’s arm and leg, and said a short prayer of healing.
The visitor of the man in the next bed watched proceedings in interested silence and then asked: ‘What are you doing?’
Alan’s former colleague told her the story of how a young woman called Bernadette saw a vision of the Virgin Mary in 1858 and, since then, the grotto at Lourdes, where she appeared, spouts spring water that possesses healing properties.
‘Can my husband have some of that?’ asked the woman.
‘Is he a Catholic?’ she was asked.
‘No.’
‘Does he believe in miracles?’
‘I don’t suppose he’s ever thought about it but he’s game to try anything if it helps him get better.’
So the holy water from Lourdes was sprinkled on the prone individual who, such was his condition, really had no choice in the matter and looked somewhat bemused.
The next morning, when Alan awoke, his neighbour had gone.
Oh dear, he thought, the man has suffered another stroke. He did look very ill.
‘Has the man in the next bed died?’ asked Alan of a nurse.
‘Oh no,’ she said, ‘he’s having a shower. He’s going home later today.’
A miracle, thought my friend. He had witnessed a miracle.
Later that day the doctor called and, after hearing Alan’s account, informed my friend, with a wry smile, that the man had not, in fact, had a stroke but had suffered a particularly bad migraine.
Tricks in the Hospital
When my mother was a theatre sister, young doctors sometimes played tricks on the nurses. They were harmless enough, but my mother warned the trainees to be wary of being sent for ‘a Fallopian tube’ or a box of ‘Bower’s Capsules’ or to get the doctor’s ‘anatomical snuff box’. One young nurse, attending her first operation, watched nervously as a formidable surgeon performed in the theatre. He was known for being humourless, rude and irascible, a man who never said ‘please’ and ‘thank you’. When he turned to the young nurse and snapped, ‘Fetch sister’s coat!’ the poor young woman jumped.
‘P . . . p . . . pardon?’ stuttered the young nurse.
‘You heard me, nurse,’ snapped the surgeon, speaking through his mask. ‘Fetch sister’s coat!’
‘Is this a joke?’ she asked feebly.
‘A joke!’ exploded the surgeon. ‘Fetch sister’s coat! Now!’
The young woman scurried off, returning a moment later with my mother’s coat.
The surgeon sighed deeply and articulated, ‘I said, “Fetch the cystescope”.’
On another occasion, a bubbly, good-humoured West Indian nurse was observing the self-same surgeon.
In those days when the patient was anaesthetised, his or her arm was placed on what was called an ‘arm board’.
The surgeon turned to the nurse. ‘Arm bored!’ he snapped.
‘Pardon, Doctor?’ asked the nurse.
‘I said “arm board”,’ repeated the surgeon.
‘Well I’se bored too, Doctor,’ she replied pleasantly, ‘but we’ll soon be going home.’
The Funeral
My sister Christine taught an art class in Kinvara, a village on the west coast of Ireland where she once lived. In the group was an elderly man who found, late in life, that he had a real talent for painting, and became prolific in turning out the most beautiful and sought-after watercolours. Sadly, on his ninetieth birthday, he died. My sister, along with members of her art group, attended the funeral in a small church in rural Connemara. Prior to the requiem mass, the deceased man’s daughter invited my sister to view the body, which lay in an open coffin in the front room of her small cottag
e. On the walls surrounding the coffin were her father’s paintings. The artist himself reclined in the casket, clutching a set of paintbrushes and a palette.
One aged aunt, leaning over the coffin, stared for a moment at the corpse before remarking to the daughter: ‘You know, Bridget, sure your father’s never looked better.’
Death comes to all of us but people in the country can still find humour in this most serious situation. Those in rural communities see life and death at first hand every day and perhaps, therefore, have a better understanding and indeed appreciation of such things. Some of my favourite stories, which I am assured by the tellers are true, include the following.
The cortege was leaving the crematorium. It was a bitterly cold day and the ground was dangerously icy. Two elderly women, instead of using the steps, decided that they would exit via the ramp, up which the coffin had been wheeled. One of the women lost her footing, slipped and nearly fell, but, grasping the handrail, managed to right herself.
‘Dear me!’ she said to her companion. ‘I nearly went full length.’
‘Well, it’s very slippery,’ replied her friend. Then she added: ‘I mean, you would have thought they would have put some ashes down.’
Some years ago, in a mining village in South Yorkshire, a veiled figure in the deepest black arrived at a cinema, followed by what appeared to be a funeral party. She handed the usherette a sheaf of tickets, and, noting the look of surprise on the young woman’s face, said solemnly: ‘Ee, lass, my Jack never did care for funeral teas and such but he did enjoy a good cowboy picture.’
The owner of a butcher’s shop in North Yorkshire died. His friend, a lugubrious character called Tommy, attended the funeral tea along with the other mourners. Amongst the spread on the table, he observed some sausages on cocktail sticks.
‘Come along, Tommy,’ said the widow, ‘will you not have a sausage?’
Out of the Woods But Not Over the Hill Page 24
