The sign said, “Accident & Emergency Department “. It might have had, added underneath, “Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Herein”, but I didn’t need to be told that. Like anyone in Britain with any common sense, I avoid the place like the plague and can never understand why one hears of people going in there for a paracetamol, a plaster or a sanitary towel (but, apparently, they do). On this occasion I had little alternative. Yes, it was my turn for The Emergency, Jane having exhausted her ration until the end of the year.
I had been extending an articulated metal ladder that folds into a ‘W’ shape, but opens out like a Transformer to form a range of useful configurations. It can be a little unwieldy and heavy, and the securing mechanism is fiddly; but opening it up can be done by one man if the one man is careful, or by a man and his wife if he is wise. I tried the former, the memsahib appearing on the scene with a remonstration on her lips for not waiting for her, just in time to watch the action. Two sections of the heavy ladder came together like a pair of scissors, trapping my right hand in the jamb with a leverage of about four feet, thus acting like a pair of bolt cutters on my right forefinger. I immediately contributed to the proceedings by screaming, bleeding copiously, turning white, breaking out into a sweat and sitting down. My finger was cut to the bone though, thankfully, it was still attached to my hand. It was lucky that Jane was there for she did a good job at bandaging it up and stopping the bleeding. We then had to consider what to do next. Judging from the depth and raggedness of the wound I thought it might need a stitch or two, but I was also concerned that I might have damaged a tendon or a nerve, noting that my finger tip had lost all feeling. In normal times I would have gone to the local cottage hospital Minor Injuries Unit and asked a nurse to give an opinion but, in these Covid times, I had to call 111 first to get an appointment. I tried that. They took down the details and said that a paramedic would call me back in half an hour but, if this did not happen, then to just go to A&E at the hospital in The Big City. I waited for three quarters of an hour but no-one called so there was nothing for it but for Jane to drive me to the one place I really wanted to avoid. To be fair, the triage process was reasonably swift: perhaps ten minutes after arrival, and I was given a quick X Ray. After that I waited, and waited, along with about seven other people, all of us sitting in chairs set two metres apart. New patients entered and old patients departed, changing the mix in the waiting room like a flooding and ebbing tide, but the number of people in the waiting room stayed the same, with only me as the permanent resident. Entertainment was provided, at one stage, by a farmer with a broad Somerset accent talking loudly on his mobile phone to his friend and outlining the state of his catheter, the colour of his urine, and the health of his pigs. I supplemented this pastime by reading, and bleeding on, an improving book that I had had the foresight to bring along. Rule Number One in the Shacklepin Book of Wisdom: always take a thick book if going to A&E for you will never be turned round in less that two hours; Rule Number Two: if on a weekend evening, then take two books. Jane had, in the meantime, taken the car to a nearby park to wait – ever the hopeful. After an hour I texted her to just go home and await my call. The triage process had evidently worked well and I must have been Priority 9 (just under Priority 10 – “time waster”), for I was finally seen by a lugubrious nurse after just over three hours. And the outcome? Nothing wrong with bone, tendons or nerves; a deep cut or crushing injury; wound washed fairly brutally with plain water; no stitches applied (“we don’t stitch fingers – they heal themselves”); finger dressing applied; no injections, no painkillers; out of the door in five minutes. Four hours out of my life and an improving book soaked in blood all for a cut finger. If only I could have asked someone at the very beginning if the wound was serious. Hey ho, I had no real plans for Friday afternoon anyway.
I am a bit late with this blog because I have been holding back in order to include the result of the US presidential election. After a closely-fought contest it looks like Mr Joe Biden will be the next president of the USA and Ms Kamela Harris will be the next Vice President, though President Trump is contesting the result and will probably have to be prised out of the White House with a winkle pick. I would guess that a lot of people in the USA will be quietly pleased with the result (which was not a landslide victory), while there may also be a significant number of people not very pleased at all. I only hope, for the sake of that country, that this brings an end to a long period of politically-based in-fighting and nastiness that has characterised the present administration: it is time for Americans to come together again as one nation.
Before the CV19 crisis (remember that time?) we had my American cousin coming to stay for the first time, and she and her husband had not visited the UK before. Courageously, they were going to hire a car and tour parts of England after visiting us. I pondered on what advice to give them apart from telling them to drive on the left and how to negotiate single track roads when meeting a tractor coming the other way. In the end, I opted to lead the long list of advice with the thing that struck me as the most unusual piece of social behaviour that I had noticed when Jane and I had visited Wisconsin a few years ago: do not tip the barman. It seems that, in the USA it is common to slip the barman an additional dollar (probably more now) when paying for every drink. One is also expected to leave a substantial tip (perhaps 20%) for a waiter or waitress in a restaurant. It seems that catering staff over there are poorly paid and have to supplement their wages with tips. I wanted to explain to my cousin that, under no circumstances should she tip a barman or barmaid in Britain though one could, if pushed, offer to buy them a drink; restaurant staff could be tipped 10% or (extravagantly) 15% if service had been particularly good, but it was not obligatory; taxi fares could be rounded up to the nearest pound if feeling flush but, again, it was not expected. The Americans must simply love we British as customers in restaurants and bars, for we either do not tip or are not as generous as Americans. It is, of course, not stinginess, but ignorance on our part. I did read of one case in New York where a British customer was actually chased in the street by a waiter from a restaurant demanding, “Where is my God-damned tip?”. So this is my tip: if you are American in Britain, don’t tip a barman or barmaid (you will give them airs and graces); if you are British in America, then be generous.
Jane has advised me to (a) stop complaining about Covid 19, (b) stop moaning about facemasks and (c) stick to just the facts. So here they are. Against all my expectations, England has entered a second national lockdown period on 5 November that will last (allegedly) until 2 December. The move was taken because the number of positive outcomes to CV19 testing was increasing, as was the number of deaths, and it was considered that the Regional Tier System was not proving effective enough. It has since been revealed that the projected number of cases used to support the need for a national lockdown was overestimated by a factor of four, and that the Tier System had, in fact, started to produce a downturn in cases, but the lockdown has gone ahead anyway. Joy. As I write, a research study by King’s College in London reports that the number of positive outcomes to tests is levelling off, as is the number of deaths for the UK. The daily figure for UK deaths stands, today, at 156. Our neighbour, a paramedic aged in her mid 40s, came down with Covid 19 last week despite wearing full PPE including the ubiquitous face masks; she was quite ill at home for a week, but has now recovered and her family were, fortunately, unaffected though they had to self-isolate for two weeks. In some ways she fared better in terms of comfort than her husband, a Squadron Leader in the RAF. Although tested negative, he was confined for two weeks in a tiny cell in a Portacabin on the RAF base in Cyprus with no TV, no en suite facilities, no booze and his food served on a paper plate with disposable cutlery . I dare say they gave him the RAF Handbook (if there is one) to read. He was not happy. No witty comments by RN readers about the RAF and their home comforts please.
I have commented before about the Service way of life and the discipline that goes with it. If you have served since leaving school, as I did, then you think nothing of the constraints that serving in the armed forces impose; there are, after all, many perks too. I was chatting to a Chief Officer in the Merchant Navy many years ago and he opined how much easier it was for officers in the Royal Navy to deal with ratings backed up, as they were, by Queen’s Regulations; Merchant Navy officers had a harder job and had to lead by strong character and persuasion (in my father’s time, by fists too). He was right in the final analysis but, as I pointed out to him, we in the Royal Navy rarely had to use the ‘iron fist in the velvet glove’ to enforce an order and we gave orders pretty much the same as he did: a ship’s complement is, literally, “all of one company” and officers and ratings usually get on very well together in mutual respect as shipmates (Royal Navy warships never have a ‘crew’; they have a ‘Ship’s Company’). But the “iron fist” is still there. At a prominent place in every British warship (usually where the ship’s company queues for the Dining Hall) is published a large notice, perhaps one metre square, containing the Articles of War and setting out the basis of naval discipline eg “Any officer or man who strikes a Superior Officer shall suffer death, or any worse punishment”, that sort of thing. Nowadays it will say “man or woman”, of course. Despite this prominent reminder, it is easy to forget in the relaxed navy of late 20th and early 21st centuries that the Naval Discipline Act does exist, and this happened to four of my very senior Chief Petty Officers in my last steamer, HMS NONSUCH. The ship was emerging from a very long refit and the critical milestone of Ship’s Company Move Onboard was approaching The very senior Chief Petty Officers (equivalent to Warrant Officer 2nd Class) would be accommodated in 4-berth cabins and the task of deciding who would be allocated to which cabins was given to the Master at Arms (MAA). The MAA is the ship’s policeman, the senior of all ratings onboard, and the only rating in a warship to have his own single cabin. It just so happened that the MAA’s allocation of which Chief Petty Officers would go into which cabin did not meet my Chiefs’ approval: they wanted to be together and in a prime spot with a scuttle (porthole) appropriate to their seniority. So they stomped off, together, to the MAA’s cabin to complain. As they started to grumble to him mightily, he interrupted with just one sentence:
“If you approach me as a body to complain like this then I will charge you with mutiny”
It stopped them dead.
They had to go off up the corridor and return, individually, each in turn, to make their complaint. Complaints or grievances can only be made individually, and two or more people complaining, fermenting trouble or defying an order is classed as mutiny; it is an extremely serious offence leading to Court Martial and, if found guilty, imprisonment.
Now you may say the the MAA was going a bit over the top in his response, but it certainly established his authority in NONSUCH (the word went round like wildfire) and shut the mouths of my Chief Petty Officers like a scene from a Tom and Jerry cartoon.
We managed a quick day trip to the boat just before lockdown was implemented, the aim being to check out the dehumidifiers, shut the seacocks and generally see that she was all right for her long period ashore on the chocks. Work had started to remove the antifouling (the paint on the boat’s bottom) and some structural defects had been identified for later rectification. Some of the new marina pontoons were in place and extended, it seemed to me, as far as the Channel Islands but I may be indulging in hyperbole there. It was a beautiful sunny day but it was a long one, starting in freezing fog at 0600; we were quite shattered by the time we returned home in the evening. Oh dear, we are getting old: at one time I never thought twice about driving for ten hours non-stop when going on leave, or staying up for 48 hours to supervise a defect repair at sea; now I am fagged out after an early start and just a twelve-hour day. Tempus fugit.
I came across a box in the utility room the other day and found inside, to my delight, my old pipe. I occasionally smoked a pipe in my younger days to produce a mature image based on Kenneth More in Sink the Bismarck, the affectation being additionally useful as a pointer to indicate strategically significant places on a chart or unusual readings on a gauge. I smoked either the RN-issue best shag (in those days the navy issued us with a monthly ration of free tobacco) or, later, Clan aromatic Dutch tobacco. I liked to think that I cut an authoritative avuncular figure, though my fellow watch-keepers apparently did not agree with my choice of aromatic tobacco (they claimed it smelled like camel dung) and once sabotaged the pipe by stuffing it with a crumpled machinery log sheet when I was absent from the Machinery Control Room on rounds. Anyway, to get back to the present, I seized the old pipe lovingly and rummaged hopefully for any left-over tobacco from 40 years ago, though to no avail. Undeterred, I strutted around the kitchen with the empty pipe in my mouth, reliving those heady younger days while safe in genuine maturity and posing, once more, as the father figure of the 1950s. This nostalgia lasted until Jane returned from shopping and took one look at me.
“Get that twitty thing out of your mouth. You look ridiculous”
I confess I was a little hurt. I thought I was cutting quite a dash. And, as I pointed out to her, would we consider “twitty” to be a proper adjective?
“You still look like a twit”
“So if I bought some Clan and undertook to smoke it only outside, would that be acceptable?”
“No. Throw it out”
I put her reply down as a “maybe”, but hid the pipe back in its box. Yet another avenue of pleasure that has been closed off to me, along with wearing my Cunard Platinum Member badge and running a sea trial with that plastic submarine from the packet of cornflakes. Life is hard but I still have the Lockdown Jigsaw to do and can play on this duff hand for all it is worth. Oh dear, it’s bleeding again. It must be all that typing. Must go before the keyboard gets bunged up.
8 November 2020
"A Very Vintage Chap..." 