Monday
If the NHS is creaking under pressure, then blame me. There’s no chance I will ever get struck off a GP’s list through lack of attendance. Last year, my GP organised a district nurse to come round to my house every day for three weeks to administer IV antibiotics for a knee infection and now she has arranged for me to see the podiatrist who comes to the surgery each week. It’s enough to make a hypochondriac feel wanted. The problem this time is my second toe, which has been forced out of shape by my foot’s inability to behave following a knee replacement. It’s also extremely painful and I’ve now only got one pair of shoes that are even vaguely comfortable. “Do you think I’ll need to have it amputated?” I ask. “I don’t think it’s come to that yet,” the podiatrist replies. It was the “yet” that worried me. I told my therapist I might have to lose a toe but not to worry as I had concluded it was one part of my body I could manage without. “Christ,” she said. “You are psychotic, after all.”
Tuesday
Ukip members are up in arms at the prospect of having both Neil Hamilton and Mark Reckless forced upon them at the forthcoming Welsh assembly elections. It’s hard not to see why. Hamilton has always been a liability and Reckless is just Awkward. I once spent an afternoon canvassing with him in the Rochester byelection. A deep, persistent growl could be heard from behind the first door he knocked at. Reckless turned round anxiously, caught between not wanting to look a Westminster sissy and a natural desire to make a dash for it. “I think we can move swiftly on,” he said. “Hmmngh.” Reckless finishes every sentence with hmmngh. A red Vauxhall then pulled up. Three teenagers in hoodies got out, took one look at Reckless and made a dash for their front door, which they slammed behind them. The driver struggled in her heels and Reckless trapped her before she could reach sanctuary. “I’m Mark Reckless, hmmngh,” he tells her. “Will you be voting Ukip, hmmngh?” The woman mumbled something noncommittal before joining the others indoors. How is it that so many people with no people skills are attracted to a career in politics?
Wednesday
A lot of people – most of them under the age of 35 – seem to be worried about the negative image of ageing being portrayed in song lyrics. The gist seems to be that any song that suggests you are past your best when you’re getting on a bit will throw oldies into a terminal depression, and that lyrics must now contain a positive message of smiling pensioners on a year-long Viking river cruise. As someone who now officially qualifies as old, may I politely ask everyone to bugger off and mind their own business. I can get along quite nicely without the protection of the voice of youth song police. For what it’s worth, I’ve never been able to stand most songs that are relentlessly upbeat and optimistic. I find them terribly depressing.
Thursday
Never mind that the Scots Nats had always said they wouldn’t vote on English laws, hypocrisy sometimes serves a higher purpose. The SNP’s decision not to abstain on the extension of Sunday trading hours not only put the dampeners on George Osborne’s career prospects by enabling a handful of Tory rebels to block his legislation, it also did everyone a favour. I can’t recall a single occasion on which I’ve woken up on a Sunday morning and thought, “Sod it, I’ve got to wait another hour before I can go to the garden centre.” Rather, I now look on it as an abject failure if I have to leave the house to buy anything. My one exception is my morning trip to Costcutter in Streatham, which sells the finest chocolate croissants. Every time I go to France, I yearn for Costcutter. By the way, Costcutter is open from 7am every Sunday. Though the chocolate croissants usually aren’t ready before 8.
Friday
Having spent most of my spare time this week reading Tom Bower’s biography of the former Labour leader, I find myself writing seven words I’d never believed possible. I almost feel sorry for Tony Blair. Absorbing 650 pages of relentless condemnation can make a reader surprisingly compassionate. Bower seems to have gone out of his way to find anyone with a bad word to say about Blair – there’s no shortage there – and everything he did as prime minister is cast in the worst light. While I’m fairly sure that Iraq would have been better off without Blair’s interference, I find it hard to say that health, education and Northern Ireland were all sent to the dogs by him. Just a few kind words saying the old rogue wasn’t as bad as all that would have been enough to remind me why I’m glad he’s no longer prime minister. So just this week, TB, as you count your millions in the palaces of third-world dictators, my thoughts are with you.
Digested week digested: The Not-So Special After All Relationship
