Second opinion

AS it so rightly says in the Bible, the imagination of a man's heart is evil from his youth. It was for this reason that, after the Flood, God decided never again to destroy the surface of the earth by flood or fire: Man simply wasn't worth it. And that was in the days before the National Health Service.

Man is a lot worse now than in Noah's time, of course. For example, even in Noah's time, when the earth was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence, nobody tattooed his hand, as did my first patient last Wednesday, with the words 'fuck' and 'lager'; for I am sure that, if anybody had done so, the Bible would have recorded it. Of course, this would have presented a problem of exegesis: were the two words to be construed as meaning 'Fuck lager!' or as 'Fuck' and 'lager' or even as 'Lager fuck'?

The man in question had a large number of scars on his scalp and face, mainly of the kind caused by a Stanley knife.

'How did you get those scars?' I asked him.

'I get into a lot of trouble.'

'Why?'

'I don't know, it's one of them things.'

I asked him about his tattoos as well.

Did he regret having had them done? 'Isiah, it's just one of them kid things.' He had been in prison quite a lot — nine years, to be exact, divided into seven sentences. He was now socially isolated, without family or friends.

'What about your mother? Is she still alive?'

'I don't have nothing to do with her.' 'Why not?'

'She's the one what put me in prison the last time.'

'Oh, she's a judge, is she?'

`No, she's the one what called the police when I smashed the car into her house without tax and insurance.'

The patient in the next bed was one of those graceless young women, with bovine eyes and a curl of the left half of the upper lip when asked any question, that are found in such large numbers in England and nowhere else. They are generally employed in what are known ironically in this country as the service industries. She had taken an overdose after an argument with her boyfriend.

'Would you take another overdose?' I asked her.

'No,' she said, half her upper lip curling. 'Why not?'

'Because I had to spend eight hours in casualty.'

Well done, National Health Service: eight hours in your casualty departments is worse than death itself.

The next patient had taken an injec tion of heroin to celebrate his release from prison that day, and had stopped breathing as a result. He had now recovered.

'How did you take the heroin?' I asked.

'I tooted it.'

'And why were you in prison?'

'I broke a man's legs.'

'How?'

'With a baseball bat.'

'Why?'

'He was irritating me.'

'How?'

'He just was.'

'But who was he?'

'I was staying with him.'

'He was your landlord?'

'No, a friend.'

'I don't suppose he's your friend any more.'

'I got no grievance.'

Theodore Dalrymple

Mass Listeria by Theodore Dalrymple (Andre Deutsch) can be ordered for £7.99 (rp £8.99) post-free in the UK (call for overseas rates) from The Spectator Bookshop, 32-34 Park Royal Road, London IVIVIO 7LN. Alternatively, ring 0870 1557288 or fax 020 8324 5678.