 |
| Typical barracks block at RAF Changhi. For all I know it may have contained my ceramic nemesis |
When we’re ill we shrink. Make do with fewer words, fewer shows of interest and lose our ability to be surprised. We complain and thus become dull. If we’re able, we combat our malaise via original thought.
In April 1956 I flew halfway round the world. From London Heathrow to Rome, to Malta, Bahrein, Karachi, Delhi, Bombay, Bangkok and Singapore. For eight months I’d studied theoretical and practical electronics in Wiltshire; now I’d be applying this learning repairing radio equipment at RAF Seletar. In the meantime I must needs languish at a transit barracks at RAF Changhi. National service involves much languishing.
As I toyed with an execrable lunch I noticed small bowls of pills dotting the tables in the dining hall. Salt pills, I was told. To what end? Because whities (newly arrived from the UK) sweated a lot. I swallowed two, exactly twice the recommended dose I later learned.
Soon tectonic plates shifted within my gut and I was attacked by thunderous diarrhoea. After two visits to the loo I had nothing more to give but the urge still remained. At twenty-minute intervals throughout the night I visited and revisited that hateful orifice, becoming weaker and weaker. At one point I knelt before the loo hardly able to keep my torso erect. Returning to bed seemed pointless. What happened then I have no idea. Somehow I survived.
These days I don’t sleep well. Tonight, original thought beckoned. I would write a piece about trying to write verse when my verse-writing skills (never readily available) were in abeyance. Too boring, I suppose. Then I recalled my communion with the Changhi loo. I doubt whether it’s done anything for you but I’m readier for sleep than I was an hour ago. Think of it as a purge.
Today is my 83rd birthday RR (a mere rookie, I know). With my wife in hospital and liable to be there over Christmas your thoughts on your relationship with that Changi loo seemed a somehow appropriate greeting for what looks like being a shit time.
ReplyDeleteI hope your illness does not impinge too much on this period and that you have loved ones around you. Best Wishes if it's in "keeping with the situation". As spoken by Mrs Dilber (the immortal Kathleen Harrison) in "Scrooge"
Avus: Looks like we both drew short straws. You and your denuded birthday, me and Christmas spent on the ward (although I wouldn't be at all surprised if my op were postponed yet again, given the Johnsonian hysterics about shoving patients with non-Covid ailments to one side).
DeleteElder daughter PB is here with us for the duration which is just as well. Yesterday the online grocery order from Morrisons (that well-known Bradford institution) failed to arrive; lie upon lie from them made it seem we were dealing with a government department.
I'd forgotten Kathleen Harrison appeared in Scrooge. I was more familiar with her contribution to the Hugget family series of movies, surely the feeblest, least inoffensive comedies ever made.
Bear up, old son. At least your bog is working.
That was enlightening. I will never take pills provided by a restaurant in Changhi, or anyplace else for that matter.
ReplyDeleteI hope you had a good sleep after writing that.
robin andrea: I was surprised we weren't forced to take the salt pills. The RAF I mention stands for the Royal Air Force and this was part of my two-year stint of national military service. Two years spent obeying orders without question - ah those happy times (eavy irony intended.)
DeleteWell, you have certainly proven your point made a while back that one should be able to write about anything. I recently bought Gorgon Times and look forward to reading it over the holidays. I'll be sending you good thoughts on Tuesday. Bon courage, my friend.
ReplyDeleteColette: I created Clare and fell in love with her. It was a strange process. GT was my first serious attempt at novel-writing and she shares the story with Andrew Hatch. But from then on there were no more shared central characters; the next three novels all had women at their heart.
ReplyDeleteYou've expanded my vocabulary with "execrable". At least temporarily.
ReplyDeleteMikeM: Although it doesn't share etymological roots with excreta, I think it carries the same kind of literary bite. Use it in good health. Just off to the Krankenhaus
ReplyDelete"das Krankenhaus"
ReplyDeleteAs much as I love my native language, I have never been fond of that vocabulary item. Why not, "das Gesundheitshaus" or "eine Heilquelle"? I prefer the term Klinikum. In Austria and Switzerland, it's a "Spital". Ein militärisches Krankenhaus wird "Lazarett" genannt.