Out of the Woods But Not Over the Hill (21 page)

In the restaurant in Arcachon, my three sons surveyed the repast before them with eyes like chapel hat pegs. Christine explained that the meal comprised of rabbit in jelly, snails, frogs' legs, steak, mussels and octopus. Richard and Matthew pulled faces and, reaching for the
baguettes
, announced they would settle for the bread. Dominic, the youngest, licked his lips and tucked in with gusto. He tried everything, much to the disgust of his brothers and the amusement of the waiter and the other diners. Henceforth, he became known as Dominique,
la poubelle
, an appellation he delights in to this day.

Parents' Evening

Just before my first child, Richard, started school, I completed a three-year research degree in reading development and put my findings into a book. I was also appointed as a school inspector. The day before the first parents' consultation evening, my wife Christine gave me a stern warning.

‘And don't go telling Richard's teacher what you do. She's only in her first year and will be nervous enough without you telling her you're a school inspector and putting the fear of God in her.'

‘I won't,' I replied.

‘And don't go on and on about all that research on reading you've been doing.'

‘I won't,' I said again.

Miss Smith, my young son's teacher, smiled warmly when we sat down in front of her. If she was nervous she certainly was not showing it.

‘Richard is doing very nicely,' she said confidently, scanning her mark book. ‘He's a well-behaved child and has settled in well.' Before we could reply, she continued: ‘Now, reading is perhaps the most important skill he needs to learn in these early years.' My wife gave me a sideways glance. I smiled smugly but remained silent. Miss Smith continued enthusiastically. ‘It is fundamental to learning and we must work together, not only to get Richard to read clearly and fluently, but also to help him become a lifelong reader.' This young woman was very impressive, I thought. She continued: ‘So let me explain about early reading development and the reading scheme we are using, and give you a little advice on how you, as Richard's parents and most important teachers, can help him at home.'

I said nothing but felt my wife tapping my foot under the table. After five minutes listening to Miss Smith, Christine, a former infant teacher herself, felt she ought to say something.

‘Actually, Miss Smith, my husband and I know a little about reading development and the various schemes,' she said amiably.

Miss Smith smiled a sympathetic smile, the sort of resigned expression of a teacher responding to a child's willing but incorrect answer. ‘A lot of parents think they do, Mrs Phinn, but they often get the wrong end of the stick.' So we sat it out.

Next morning, Miss Smith told Richard how she had enjoyed her conversation with his daddy and mummy, and asked what they did for a living.

‘Daddy goes out in the morning with a big black bag and comes in late with his big black bag.' I must have sounded like Jack the Ripper.

‘Ah,' sighed the teacher, ‘your daddy is a doctor?'

Like all infants, Richard was bluntly honest. ‘Oh no, my daddy's a school inspector who has just written a book about reading, and my mummy used to teach infants – just like you.'

That afternoon, Richard came home with a brown envelope addressed to Richard's parents. Inside, on a sheet of coloured paper, four words were printed in bold lettering: ‘Ha, ha, bloody, ha!'

Something on My Plate

There is something about auctions that brings out the worst in people. I suppose it's the fiercely competitive nature of the business: people bidding in public against each other for a desired object, sometimes going way over the value of the item, just so they can have the satisfaction of having done the other person down. But I have to admit I do love auctions. Many a Sunday morning I have spent at the local auction room with the best of the bargain hunters, rooting through cardboard boxes crammed with cracked plates and chipped jugs, garish glassware and old bottles, pot lids and costume jewellery, and flicking through dusty tomes and stamp albums, folders of carefully mounted cigarette cards and old photographs. Like all the other bidders, I hope to come across an undiscovered and priceless Canaletto or an unrecognised piece of unique Clarice Cliff pottery.

Before we were married, Christine collected Willow Pattern plates. When we were courting, I thought I would surprise her on her birthday with a fine specimen I had seen displayed in the auction house window. Unfortunately, on the day of the sale, the auctioneer rattled through the lots like a Gatling gun and, by accident, I bought another plate. It was without doubt the ugliest piece of pottery I had ever set my eyes upon. It was a large plate depicting three stiff Chinese figures walking across a crudely painted bridge. The picture looked like one executed by a small child. Worst of all, there was a long hairline crack right across the centre.

Christine was aghast when she saw it and even more aghast when I told her how much I had paid for it.

‘It's horrendous!' she cried. ‘I wouldn't eat my fish and chips off it.'

The plate was consigned to the back of the cupboard, where it stayed for many years. It saw the light of day one afternoon when Christine decided to attend a social event at our children's school. The head teacher had prevailed upon another parent, a local antique dealer, to talk about and value small items brought in by the parents and teachers.

Christine took in a very old and delicately carved Japanese ivory figure, given to her by a great aunt, and a delicate and beautifully hand-painted porcelain bowl, a Phinn heirloom, given to her by my mother. After some coaxing, I persuaded her to take in the plate.

The antique dealer examined the objects displayed on the tables before him with a world-weary expression. His comments were cursory and deeply disappointing for the owners of the objects: ‘damaged', ‘of little real value', ‘cheap copy', ‘poor quality', ‘rather ugly'. He was not impressed with the Japanese figure. ‘It's bone,' he said, placing the Japanese ivory figure to his cheek. ‘It's a way of telling ivory from cheap objects like this,' he explained. The beautiful hand-painted porcelain bowl, he informed her, was mass-produced and of little interest or value. Then he spied the plate and went weak at the knees. ‘I could swoon!' he gasped, stroking the rough textured pottery. ‘It's magnificent! This is Delft, circa 1680, an extremely rare example of Lowestoft ware.' He pleaded with Christine to sell it to him.

My wife politely declined and, on returning home, told me of the plate's provenance as she placed it in pride of place on the dresser.

‘Shall I fetch some fish and chips?' I asked her.

Losing Your Marbles

I was in the Casualty Department at Doncaster Royal Infirmary again recently. Christine, while snipping bits off the Virginia Creeper which covers the front our house, snipped off a bit of her finger. She was reluctant to let me accompany her to the hospital after the last time, when she fell off a ladder and broke an ankle while pruning the roses. As she hobbled in to see the doctor a nosy patient had enquired: ‘What's wrong with her then?' I replied, in hushed tones, that it is always unwise to drink too much when line dancing. On the way home, I had to explain to my wife why she had received so many strange looks when she emerged from the examination room.

Over the years, I've been a regular visitor to Casualty. With four lively children, and a wife who enjoys climbing and balancing, pruning and digging, I guess it is not surprising that I have been something of a fixture at the DRI. Dominic was particularly prone to accidents as a child: popcorn up nose, wax crayon in ear, assorted broken bones, stubbed toe, trapped finger, splinter down nail, cracked head, grit in eye. He was a walking pathological dictionary.

One Monday evening, I was all dressed up in dinner jacket, bow tie and fancy shirt, about to set off to speak at an after-dinner event, when young Dominic, aged eight at the time, flew down the stairs to kiss me goodbye. He tripped, hit a sharp corner of the bannister and split open his forehead. I have never seen such blood. Christine drove to hospital with me cradling our distressed child on the back seat, a flannel pressed to his head. My wife parked the car as I rushed through the door of Casualty with Dominic, the front of my dress shirt liberally spattered with blood. There were audible ‘Aaahs' and ‘Ohhhs' and ‘Good Gods' and ‘Bloody hells' from the waiting patients as they caught sight of me, looking like some gunshot victim out of a James Bond film. I was grabbed by a nurse and pushed towards a trolley.

‘It's not my dad!' shouted Dominic. ‘It's me.' Then he removed the flannel and announced, ‘It's stopped now.' A couple of stitches later, Dominic climbed into the car and asked, with a great smile, if we could go bowling.

The following Friday, Dominic came in from the garden. ‘I've swallowed a marble,' he told me glumly.

‘How did you manage to do that?' I asked

‘I just popped it in my mouth,' he explained. ‘I was pretending it was a sweet.'

Back at Casualty, the receptionist remarked, as she signed us in, ‘You know, I've never come across the spelling of Phinn like this before but this week we had another person with that name in Casualty.' I didn't enlighten her.

It was the same doctor who had stitched Dominic's head. ‘You're keeping me busy, young man,' he told my son. ‘Don't look so worried. You'll get your marble back. What goes in one way usually comes out the other. It's a matter of waiting. Ask your dad to buy you some prunes.'

The following morning, Dominic proclaimed he was ready to perform. Christine and I kept vigil outside the bathroom door.

‘Anything?' I asked.

A moment later, there was a clunk and a cry. ‘Dad, Dad! I've got my marble back.'

Trust Me, I'm a Doctor  

Half way through her finals at Leeds University, my daughter Elizabeth was rushed to hospital with a suspected ruptured appendix. It was a worrying time but she came through it with flying colours. She had the operation and, when I phoned through to the hospital, she sounded as lively and cheerful as ever and said the doctors and nurses were splendid. She shared a small ward with two other women, both of whom were recovering from their operations. The elderly woman in the next bed, Elizabeth told me, was chatty and amusing and never complained; the woman opposite could not have been more different. For her, the tea was too weak, the food too cold, the doctors too young and inexperienced and the nurses not very helpful and too busy to be bothered. She delighted in complaint. It was no wonder, Lizzie told me, that her visitors curtailed their visits.

By chance, I was to give a lecture to the post-graduate education students at Leeds University the day following my daughter's operation, so I could give my talk and then walk the short distance to the hospital to visit. My lecture was in the morning and visiting hours in the afternoon, but the very accommodating ward sister said I could call in during the morning before the doctor made her rounds.

I duly arrived at the small ward straight from the lecture, carrying my notes on a clipboard. I was dressed formally in grey suit, maroon waistcoat with my father's watch chain dangling across my stomach, white shirt and college tie, and sporting a pair of half-moon, gold-rimmed spectacles. I guess I looked every inch the specialist as I entered the ward. The university had produced a large lapel badge for me on which the name DR GERVASE PHINN was emblazoned in bold black capitals, and which I still wore.

Conscious of the eagle eyes and the finely tuned hearing of the woman opposite Elizabeth, I pulled the screens half around my daughter's bed for some privacy, and spent a good ten minutes in conversation. I then kissed her goodbye, removed the screens and, on my way out, exchanged a few words with the elderly woman in the next bed.

‘And how are you feeling?' I asked her.

‘Mustn't grumble,' she replied.

‘A replacement hip, I hear,' I said. ‘Is it very painful?'

‘Oh not that bad,' she said, and then added pointedly for the eavesdropper opposite, ‘and everyone here has been wonderful.'

‘You'll be back line dancing before you know it,' I told her.

As I headed for the door, the woman in the opposite bed called after me. ‘Excuse me. Can I have a word?'

‘Yes, of course,' I replied, approaching her.

‘I've not seen anyone this morning.' She pursed her lips as if sucking a lemon.

‘Pardon?'

‘I said I've not been seen by anyone, Doctor.' She had obviously caught sight of the badge. ‘The young woman in the corner bed has seen two nurses and a doctor already today and the woman next to her saw her specialist this morning. I've not been seen.'

‘I'm sorry about that,' I said.

‘Are they private patients?' she asked. ‘Because if they are, it's preferential treatment.'

Before I could enlighten her as to my position in the world, she continued: ‘I might as well be invisible, Doctor, for all the attention I get.'

‘Are you not feeling too well?' I enquired solicitously.