Novels, moorhens, surgeons, gratitude – End of Days #14 and #15

Greetings. On my voice recorder there is an untranscribed apologia for no-diary-yesterday, in which I explained that I lolled around finishing off

Stanley Johnson’s The Commissioner (tl:dr – nice start, a few amusing observations of Brussels and the functioning of the European Union, but enough thrills to be a thriller. Nice stuff on industrial espionage, but for a real thriller on this see the late Julian Rathbone’s far-superior “The Eurokillers”)

Mark Washburn’s The Omega Threat – great Space Shuttle thriller, continuing the adventure’s of retired leftie bomb-maker Sam Boggs (“The Armageddon Game” was a corker – he was forced to make a working atomic bomb). Washburn seems not to have written any more than these two, which is a pity.

Philip Reid’s Harris in Wonderland (Philip Reid was a pseudonym for Andrew Osmond and Richard Ingrams) – short, plausible political thriller, very much of its early 1970s time. A bit of a roman a clef, I suspect. Nice action sequences etc.

The first half of Auberon Waugh’s A Bed of Flowers – also beautifully done. Written in 1970-1, set in 1966-7 and a satire of the type you don’t see so much anymore I think (i.e. actual satire, where EVERYONE is some kind of fool or asshole, there is no moral centre). Long hard attacks on hippies, bent coppers, rapacious businessmen, mystics, farmers and civil servants. Waugh’s last novel, sadly – he feared comparison with his old man…

So, all this meant I didn’t even gabble for 15 minutes about the Impending End Times, even as I gathered together more Doomer Fiction of the late 1970s (plagues and nuclear wars, mostly). Because, well, I was probably a bit nervous about … The Operation.

It turns out the Hudson men (and who knows, maybe the ladies?) get hammer toes. And I thought it wise to get this sorted before the pain got too much, and while there was a) an NHS and b) civilisation. The surgeon who looked at them back in March said now was the time, because otherwise he might need to do skin grafts…

All of this is a long way of saying that – as per some of the asides in Waugh’s A Bed of Flowers (and another of Julian Rathbone’s novels – Kingfisher Lives!), “modern” and “Western” are not, actually, synonyms for “unhealthy”. There are things to be said for Western medicine.

And for checklists etc (I had my name/date of birth/address asked about 4 times between admission and the first incision, by distinct pairs of people: “never events” (the wrong kidney getting removed) still do happen, but very very rarely).

So, look, yes, everything is turning to shit, sure, but I have good friends sending me useful info/job adverts, I had access to professional and competent medical staff, I got to feed moorhens today (last time for four weeks or so, it’s true), and I have the most amazing wife anyone could ask for. Gratitude.