Picking up the pieces
I went down to see Doc yesterday.
He wanted to see me early for some reason, before I had a chance to load up with sugar and nicotine so I set the alarm for the ungodly hour of half eight. Jayzus but there were times not so long ago when I’d just be going to bed at that hour.
As chance would have it, the postman rang to doorbell, so I presented myself to receive whatever he had to proffer. He looked me up and down and sniggered. “That’s the first time I’ve seen you with your clothes on” says he. I suppose he’s right as any other time he calls I’m usually fast asleep and ergo divested of garments.
Anyhows I arrived down at Doc’s and joined the crowd of old farts in the waiting room. Doc stuck his head around the door, ignored all the old farts and invited me into his “surgery” [i.e. the back storeroom]. Normally at this stage he asks how I am, and normally I inform him that he’s the one who is supposed to tell me. This time he lust looked me up and down.
“Jayzus but you look terrible!” says he. “Wassup?”
“Plenty” says I. “The car is costing me an arm and a leg; the front gate still jams; the sewer is backing up again and I have to spend a fortune getting the roof fixed.”
“No” says he. “Wassup with you. Your health, not your fucking problems.”
“I’m knackered.”
“Take a holiday. Get a bit of sunshine and warmth into those bones. You need a break.”
“Can you prescribe a holiday on health grounds?”
“No.”
“Fell fuck off then, putting fanciful ideas in my head, especially as I have been dreaming of nice sunny days and enjoying confit de canard in the sunshine in Sarlat-la-Canéda. I can’t fucking afford it and you go rubbing salt into the wound.”
He hastily changed the subject and stuck a needle in my arm for some blood samples. I squirted blood all over the place. Serves him right.
That visit really pissed me off. It’s bad enough dreaming about sunny holidays but to be actually told to take one is going too far.
I’ll just have to go back to my jigsaws and dream of Sarlat.
Sarlat-la-Canéda
Salad-of-Candida , if my O level French serves? And I agree with your doctor; finance that holiday by selling SiL into White Slavery .
Sure I wouldn’t get more than a quid for him!
Oh you bloody Irish! As I was typing the above, The Bestes Frau turned to me and enquired of me, Keeper Of The Portal Of All Wisdom (or ‘Google’) “vot means ‘streelich’, ‘ze dress made her look streelich’?” -she reads English language penny dreadfuls of an evening, and the Daily Heil of a morning. I replied it wasn’t a word I knew but it sounded Gaelic-y, borged into English and probably impossible to translate but I googled to be sure….
…yep Irish and means just about anything you wants it to mean.
You should know by now that there are Irish words galore in the English language?
Sorry you can’t afford Sarlet, but then neither can I. You’ll just have to relax in the blinding sunshine of Ireland’s balmy climate. Oh, also don’t take the blood test results too seriously. After three or four tests, I was informed I had the final stages of renal failure and needed to be placed on the kidney doner list. Further test a week later was refined to “perfectly normal – no action”, so I had a miraculous recovery almost overnight. 15 years later, I think I may still be alive. But that’s just my opinion.
I never take those tests seriously, and nor does Doc. The only time I ever had anything out of the norm was when my Vitamin D levels plunged a couple of years ago. He blamed my beard for cutting off the sunlight but as I pointed out – there was damn little sunlight to cut off. The test after, they were back to normal levels. Anyway, he probably confused my blood with a sample from the local stables.
“This time he lust looked me up and down”
Oo-eer, Gramps! I don’t think it was your health he was interested in …
Fuck! That smell checker will be the heath of me yet.
Sarlat-la-Canéda sounds interesting. I’m in Toulouse for a few days this July. Any tips?
If you can make the 110 mile trip to the Dordogne and like Medieval architecture then it’s well worth the trip to either Sarlat or Domme [only a few miles apart]. Both are beautiful places, beautifully preserved, not as a museum piece but as very active towns.
It’s a lovely area. I rented a place in a hamlet not far from Périgueux for a couple of weeks about 25 years ago, and visited a lot of the towns in the area (although not Sarlat as far as I can remember). As you say, beautiful medieval towns that they’ve managed not to fuck up whilst maintaining the hustle and bustle of a busy town.
I actually like the French (I know, we Brits are supposed to hate them), and I admire the way they’ve kept their heritage. One of my early girlfriends was French. I was 18, and she was in her mid-twenties (and very attractive). She taught me a lot in the three months we were together, not least to speak basic gutter Parisienne French (she spoke no English, and had no intention of learning) and a better understanding of the French approach to life.
Nothing like telling you the obvious. For myself things have been a bit different especially when it came to various docs blowing wind up my kilt as far as what they thought was wrong with me. That is if I actually wore a kilt–which I don’t. Just want to get that straight.
I’ve had docs throughout my life tell me things that didn’t come out to be true. When I was a mere 6 year old I came down with rheumatic fever. Nasty old thing to have in the early ’60s you know.
When I came out the other side of it at 8 years old the doc(s) told my folks that I’d never have proper muscle control again, that I’d never walk properly again, and that I’d always have a heart murmur. Ten years later I walked into the AFEES station (Armed Forces Examining and Entrance Station) in Boston, MA tall, straight and normal. No sign of a heart murmur during the physical either.
When I was in my 40’s one of my VA physicians (read:intern) stated I had COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease) which I didn’t. He had to own up to it after I aced the “blow in the plastic tube thingy” test. I got rid of him shortly thereafter. Wasn’t the only thing he got wrong.
Otherwise I’ve been fairly lucky with the myriad of docs and so-called specialists they throw at me. Lately however, they all take one look at me and state I look like I’ve been dragged through a knothole backward. And they’re right. That’s about how I feel these days.
I don’t live that far from Sarlat de Caneda. Apparently it gets 3 million visitors each year in the summer. I tend to go in early spring or late autumn. There is a classic motorcycle association there that has an exhibition every few years on the first floor of one of the municipal buildings, great fun humping those bikes up 2 flights of stairs with a 180 turn between them……..
As to Confit du Canard, I prefer Magrais du Canard avec frites! As I’ve said before, if you ever get down here again, you are very welcome to stop by for a beer or two and a good nosh!
I have always been there around the first three weeks of September, so I presume I miss out on the worst of the crowds. The sad thing is that I am unlikely to go there again, certainly in the foreseeable future – it’s a mobility issue thing. Nothing to stop me dreaming though?