Rambling at Last.

My internet is back earlier than forecast by BT, thanks in very small part to me and very large part to the Chairperson of the Parish Council. I rang her this afternoon and said ‘thank you.’ So let’s draw a line under BT (for now.)

At the moment I’m interested in why I so dislike consulting doctors, and came up with three thoughts:

1. I think it might be a race memory. Until relatively recently, doctors were drawn from the upper echelons of society because you needed to be rich to afford a medical education. Consequently, they hobnobbed with the aristocracy as a matter of course and frequently got invited to tea at the big house while the peasants (like my ancestors) caught typhus and other sundry peasant-type diseases and died of them in vastly disproportionate numbers.

2. Doctors touch you and prod you and generally fiddle with you, and I can’t stand being touched, prodded and fiddled with except in circumstances that should be obvious. (And they don’t happen any more, and never did with a doctor anyway. I had an affair with a nurse once, but they’re different – especially so back in the days when they wore cute little caps, capes, coloured belts and dark tights. For which read ‘panty hose’ if you’re from the wrong side of the water.) I don’t mind my car being fiddled with by a mechanic, nor my computer by an IT technician. Cars and computers are their own people; my body (what’s left of it) is entirely mine and therefore sacrosanct.

3. I remember even as a young child being appalled by the overly deferential respect afforded to the doctor by my mother. She never asked ‘What’s next, old lad?’ It was always ‘So what can be done about it, doctor?’ Hateful. It had me frowning at the invasion of an authority figure in my life and ashamed of my mother.

My reluctance might well have something to do with one or any combination of the above. They’ll do for now.

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So here I am jotting a note again. Earlier this evening I thought I’d forgotten how to write; I felt so rusty after a six day lay off that I thought I could no longer put finger to keyboard and life as we know it was over. Maybe I still have a future after all. Maybe tomorrow I’ll make that post about the connection between New York City and falling standards at the BBC. Maybe.