“Come on. Don’t die on me now. You were looking all right yesterday”.
I was deeply touched by Jane’s remarks in the Breakfast Room, aka the Garden Control Tower, as I entered Day 8 of my convalescence, sitting there in the corner in my dressing gown and slippers. Then I realised that she was talking to a plant pot containing something small and green. The plants have invaded the Breakfast Room again, just like last year (Blog 89) and there can be no doubt where I sit in the pecking order.
I am not, it is fair to say, feeling at my best at the moment. I was lulled into a false sense of high expectation of a rapid recovery from my hernia operation by remarks made by friends, and by the fact that the operation was undertaken as a Day Case under a local anaesthetic.
“Absolute doddle”, I thought, “A quick slit, slap a patch on it, stitch it up and I’ll be as right as rain in two days”. I wish.
Here I am, ten days since the damage control repair, and still in pain, hobbling round the house like Quasimodo. Sitting down is a major wince-making evolution, getting up again worse, and as to the previously simple task of visiting the lavatory, well, don’t ask. The only encouraging bits I can see at the moment are the fact that Jane is treating me like a valuable, fragile, Fabergé egg and that, at last, I am beginning to feel just a little improvement. At least I can sleep almost through the whole night now, though sneezing, hiccuping and laughing are non-preferred events. Fortunately, I don’t feel like laughing much..
The operation itself was a breeze. I was seen punctually at the clinic, taken through the pre-operative checks, undressed, draped myself in one of those undignified gowns that are open at the back, and walked through to the operating theatre under my own steam. I met the surgeon, ascertained that I was the first on his list for the day and was reassured that he had overcome any post-weekend hangover and his hands weren’t shaking; I have always found it useful to establish a good rapport with someone who is about to cut you open. The procedure was screened off from me (just as well as I would probably have fainted) and was entirely painless. I swapped stories with the surgeon, told salty anecdotes to the nurses, and in 40 minutes it was all done and stitched up. I swung my legs off the operating table and walked, entirely normally, into the post-operative ante room. There, I was given a packet of dead fly biscuits and a cup of coffee, which I thought jolly decent. Much to my surprise, the post-operative nurse said that I had done well to stay the course: apparently it was quite common for men to walk into the theatre, lie down on the table, then get off again rapidly and beat a retreat. Anyway, a comprehensive recovery programme was explained to me: no less than three types of pain killer were prescribed (that bad, eh?) and then I dressed and bounced out into the arms of Jane, who was sitting, anxiously, in the waiting room. I was fully mobile and walked down the stairs and out to the car unaided; at home I ate a hearty supper, watched a little television, and trotted up to bed at about 2200. Then, as the anaesthetic wore off, it was as if a little voice had said in my ear,
“Welcome to hell”.
I was in absolute agony. I could not get comfortable despite the pain killers; I could not get to sleep, and neither could Jane. At 0200 I went to the lavatory, did what was necessary, became confused, and promptly collapsed – demolishing the lavatory roll holder in the process. Poor Jane, built like a fragile flower, could not get me up and I was forced to return to the bed ignominiously on all fours – there to groan, toss and turn for what remained of the night. I persevered manfully for the rest of the week and dressed every day with tie or cravat before going downstairs (standards, standards). I even accompanied Jane to Marks & Spencers to buy victuals for a special Valentine’s Day dinner. By Friday I thought things might just be improving a little and it was time to remove the dressing. All looked healthy down there except that everything from navel to thigh was very swollen and coloured red, yellow, blue, purple or black. It being Friday I thought I would have a glass or three of wine (Blog 109) while Jane and I corresponded with friends on Facetime. That was my big mistake: it started the agony all over again, with another sleepless night, setting my recovery back three days. In hindsight, I suppose the alcohol opened the blood vessels and simply increased the swelling and pain. Speaking to my post-operative nurse, who rang for a follow-up consultation on Monday, I discovered that I really shouldn’t have been out of bed, let alone hitting the bottle or visiting St Michael. She said some patients recovered quickly, but some took a little longer; it looked like I fell into the latter category. Just my luck. Jane, of course, has been absolutely super in looking after me, offsetting my pain with stories of what it is like to be a woman and pregnant (having two bags of set concrete stuck to your chest, and childbirth being like visiting the lavatory to pass a football are the graphic bits I remember). The stories served to convince me that changing sex to a woman is not a good idea, not that I needed convincing (look at the queues to visit the ladies’ loo). They also made me reflect on the aspect of human nature that believes that a good way to sympathise with someone’s pain is to top their experience with tales of an even worse one. Ho hum. At least I have time, as I lie in bed, to write to you good folk.
One of the few good aspects of convalescing is that you are indulged by your loved ones and you are King for the Duration. On my return from the clinic Jane sat, without complaint, through Miss Marple, Midsomer Murders, Trucking Hell, Wheeler Dealers and even a short bit of The Battle of Midway. When, however, I tuned in to Dad’s Army I sensed a disturbance in The Force; a short intake of breath from the person sitting next to me; a shuffling in her seat.
“Is this not the film”, she said with just a slight touch of asperity in her voice, ”that we bought as a DVD and that we were so disappointed by that we stopped watching it and threw it out?”
“Well, yes”, I said. “I thought perhaps I might give it a second chance”.
She made no reply, but I sensed from the way she fidgeted that Jane’s tolerance of The Sick Person’s choice of television programme was finite. I switched off the set. Since then, on my own in bed, I have been able to indulge myself again, but the pleasure is hollow. Let’s face it: British daytime television is dire, and evening television is not much better. If ever you need encouragement to recover from an illness, just switch on a television set.
I did see one television programme that stirred my memory. The ex MP Michael Portillo was doing one of his episodes of Great Railway Journeys, a programme which aims to visit various parts of Britain by railway, using an old volume of Bradshaw’s Guide from the 19th century as a reference. It is a gentle, but quite entertaining programme and the episode I saw involved him visiting a defunct coal mine in Wales. It reminded me of a visit to a Nottinghamshire coal mine that I had made as a junior officer. The Royal Navy very much favours these industrial visits, at least for its engineer officers such as I. The Service takes the view that serving officers should have as rounded an education as possible as well as have an appreciation of the people and industries that the Royal Navy protects and serves. I was a Sub Lieutenant at the time and it would have been in the early 1970s. I was not phased by the prospect of visiting (what was then) a modern coal mine and, indeed, I thought it would be interesting as my grandfather, great-grandfather and great-great grandfather had all been coalminers. It proved to be more than interesting: it was appalling. The trip down in the lift was no problem: wearing our own (white) overalls, we were kitted out with helmets and lamps, searched for matches or lighters, then descended a very long way. The first revelation was that the actual coalface was about three miles away from the base of the shaft and we had to get there, a journey that took about half an hour. There was no transport as such; we travelled on the conveyer belt that had brought the hewn coal back from the coalface. This was achieved by lying on a platform next to the moving belt then rolling smartly onto it. At the other end, we alighted by a reverse of the earlier procedure, though we had to be quick if we wanted to roll onto the platform rather than join the coal on the way back. Looking back, it was a Health and Safety Officer’s worst nightmare, but then (in what I still think of as the fairly recent past) it was perfectly normal. If I thought the transportation system was a little crude, I at least thought the basic mining technique would be modern, with automatic machines doing all the work. I could not have been more wrong. As we walked towards the actual coalface the headroom became lower and lower. I am 5’ 6”, but even I soon had to stoop, then double over to make progress. Finally, almost on all fours, we reached the coalface. There was a machine doing a lot of the hewing, but it was supplemented by men, bare-chested, wielding pickaxes. I was appalled to find that coal mining had hardly changed in 100 years; it was a complete revelation to me. When we returned to the surface we were as black as chimney sweeps and it took two showers to get rid of the dirt. My white overalls never quite recovered. The experience left me with a deep respect for coal miners and a sense of bafflement as to why they wanted to hang on to their industry in the strikes that followed in the next decade. Now, deep coal mining in Britain is all gone and the pits have been built over. Given the conditions that I encountered 50 years ago, that is no bad thing.
Visits to coal mines by junior naval officers must have been going on for quite some time. The late naval author John Winton tells the story of a midshipman on a cruiser who was dispatched on such a visit and, on his way back to the ship, met a senior officer who had completed a game of golf and had been invited to stay on for dinner by his host. The officer asked the midshipman to take his golf clubs back to the ship for him. As the midshipman came up the brow carrying the clubs, he chanced to meet the Captain, who was waiting for a guest.
“Been playing golf then, young Gilpin?”, asked the Captain in one of his rare jovial moods.
“Oh no sir”, said the midshipman innocently, ”I’ve been down a coal mine”.
The Captain stopped the midshipman’s leave for a month. Honesty is not always the best policy.
We completed quite a few industrial visits as junior officers, and they all included a very modest degree of hospitality ranging from a simple cup of tea to lunch in the workers’ canteen. The hospitality never extended further than that and it would have been improper if it had (though the chance would have been a fine thing). That said, I never forgot the industrial visit to Vickers Shipbuilders in Barrow-in-Furness. Vickers was building the aircraft carrier HMS INVINCIBLE at the time, as well as being the sole builder of British nuclear submarines; the company was a big contractor for the Ministry of Defence and I was later to visit the site regularly in design appointments during my career. On this first visit as a junior officer we were shown all the various parts of the shipyard and passed from manager to manager until, half way through a meeting with one man, at 1200 the hooter blew. Yes, this firm must have been the last in the country to summon and dismiss the workforce by hooter. To our surprise, we were dismissed and invited to return at 1400: cast out into Barrow in Furness to fend for ourselves. At that time Barrow in Furness (biggest dog turds in the north west) was not exactly the sort of place where you could ‘do lunch’. Pubs did not serve food – unless you counted a packet of pork scratchings – and, in any case, they all looked distinctly rough. There were no restaurants, no McDonalds or Burger King, no Costa Coffee and no cafés that we could find. Ten of us roamed the industrial town streets in our natty civilian suits, looking incongruous and out of place, seeking somewhere – anywhere – that could provide us with food. In the end we found a Salvation Army hostel that served us a decent lunch, for a modest price, on trestle tables covered with newsprint acting as a tablecloth. I have donated to the Salvation Army ever since.
In later years, as an MOD Project Officer, I was allowed to take lunch in the shipyard’s Managers’ Restaurant, a fine dining room panelled in oak and with waitress service. At 1300, the buzz of conversation would cease as the main broadcast sprang into life with BBC Radio 4, the one-o’clock pips, and the headlines. Apparently this tradition had been going on for decades and, the first time I heard the headlines, I half expected to hear the announcer say at the end,
“…and from one of these missions, one of our aircraft is missing.”
One lunchtime in Vickers, after the headlines had died away, there came a tinkling of a glass and a call by a senior manager for everyone’s attention. It seemed that old Sid Perkins (not his real name) was due to retire today and his retirement party would be held that evening. Old Sid had joined Vickers in 1933 and had worked as a draughtsman, then design manager, in the run up to, and throughout, WW2, continuing to the present day. He would be presented with his gold watch at the party that evening and all managers were encouraged to attend and wish him well. I thought it was a very touching announcement and felt for this man, whom I had never met, but who must have seen so many social and industrial changes in his career. At my next visit, I asked how the retirement party had gone. The party, apparently, had proceeded very well until, late in the evening, poor old Sid dropped down dead.
And do you know what the first question the senior management and personnel department of Vickers asked the next day? Had Sid died before midnight (ie while still in employment) or after? It affected the amount of widow’s pension, you see.
Yes, I have long memories of Vickers Shipbuilders (now Bae) and Barrow in Furness. Thank heavens I don’t bear a grudge, that’s what I say.
No talk of Covid this time, nor of Boris; just all about me (I knew you’d be interested): woebegone and stoical, hoping someone will come along, take pity, and slip me a dose of morphine. Fat chance. Still, onward and upward as they say; mustn’t grumble. Just don’t make me laugh.
16 February 2022
"A Very Vintage Chap..." 