I found some pieces from my old political blog. All more out of date than a Farage policy, but hopefully; more amusing. I’ll start posting a few of what I think are the best.
Anyway, here’s my Bob’s body piece from Feb 2017. Think of it as political nostalgia and a reminder of just how awful; some of our politicians can be.
This week, I kept seeing the media going on about how huge numbers of people waiting in A&E had nothing seriously wrong with them; shouldn’t have been there. I had an eight hour wait in A&E last year. Trust me; no one goes through that kind of hell unless they have no alternative. Plus if everyone is just an over anxious member of the worried well, why are people being treated on makeshift beds in corridors?
It isn’t misuse of A&E that’s the problem; it’s our trust in the NHS and our willingness to drag ourselves in to have our ailments treated. It wasn’t always like that, which brings me onto Bob’s spare body….
I knew Bob (Not real name), right through De Lucy infants and Abbey Wood Comprehensive and beyond. From about five years old to twenty two or so. Never besties or anything, just part of the same crowd. I have mentioned Abbey Wood Comp before. A school with such a sensational reputation as a place of learning, that it was demolished. I heard a rumour that the ground was salted too.
I’m rambling here…. Back to Bob. At about five, Bob started to get a lump on his right side. It was just above his waist and small at first. Bob loved that lump; it gained him popularity and a little fame. This was in an age before computer games and colour TV. Someone growing a spare body was perfect entertainment for five year olds. It grew and grew…..
You might think the school (He was excused games) would get Bob looked at? No. You might think his parents would rush him along to seek medical help? Ahh, it was when the NHS was barely ten years old. People remembered when doctors were fierce and demanded payment for their services.
Adults rarely bothered their doctor and kids were always sick anyway! Weren’t they?
I had every disease going, we all did. Measles (Several kinds), Mumps and numerous other awful childhood diseases. I even went for the bullseye and caught TB when I was about six. That was rare though and considered a bit flashy to my school mates. It was a time when we all knew someone who’d actually died from Diphtheria and several of my chums were crippled by Polio. Times were f**king grim, honest! A lump that didn’t hurt and wasn’t covered in sinister black veins wasn’t something to bother the doctor with.
Stay with me, we’re getting back to Bob…. It seems strange now, but quite ordinary then; that Bob never had his spare body looked at by a doctor until he was eighteen. By then the lump was about seven inches long and stuck out about three inches from his body. He was famous, we all loved Bob and his spare body. Even his parents laughed about it.
Besides, if it had been serious, he’d have died already, right?!
Sex drove Bob to see the doctor, or rather the lack of it. Something amusing to show off to an adoring crowd at primary school, didn’t appeal to the ladies. Bob was eighteen and unlikely to ever get laid.
It was benign, or I wouldn’t have begun this anecdote. The NHS removed the lump and Bob was left with a really cool scar. I haven’t seen Bob for about forty years, but I hope he’s alive, well and still claiming he got the scar in a fight.
Ok… back to the modern day NHS.. We were all once like Bob! We never bothered going to see our doctor unless we were bleeding from every orifice. Or dead! The first the NHS knew about many people’s illness, was when they ended up in the mortuary.
Now we trust the NHS, which is a good thing. Generations of being told we should ‘get that checked out,’ have worked. We feel comfortable taking our weeping sores along to the doctor and our strange lumps. Again a good thing! If any organisation can truly say it is a victim of its own success, it is the NHS.
It just needs funding properly and it needs to concentrate on bread and butter medicine. Do we want to get back to an age when people like Bob’s parents didn’t want to bother the doctor?
That’s it….. Just about 800 words or so……
© Ed Cowling ~ February 2017
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