If symptoms

persist.. .

THERE WAS a lovely spring day last week, so I decided to walk from my hos- pital to the prison. Admittedly, the land- scape between these two august institutions is not such as would inspire film directors to take shots of springtime lovers tripping hand-in-hand through it in slow motion; but even a slum looks better in the sunlight.

To help me on my way, I stopped to buy some Fry's Turkish Delight at the lit- tle sweetshop run by the Women's Royal Voluntary Service. The volunteers are indubitably excellent women, morally speaking, but speed of thought and action are not among their qualities. As I watched one of their number agonising over my change — the cash register had even given her a strong hint as to how much I should be given — I could not help but recall a sketch in the hospital's Christmas show, in which several women were interviewed for the post of assistant in the WRVS shop. The candidate even- tually selected for the post was confined to a wheelchair, was completely mute and was, in fact, stone dead.

To reach the exit of the hospital I had to pass the fracture clinic, where every day, without fail, those who have injured themselves or who have been injured the previous day — mainly in what police and perpetrator alike call 'a domestic' sit disconsolately in rows on wooden benches waiting for their names to be called in stentorian tones by the sister, as it they were all guilty of unnatural vice.

`Kenneth Jones, cubicle two! Mizra Begum, cubicle three!'

Those who say that hell is separation from God are grossly mistaken: hell is a shortage of orthopaedic surgeons.

Through the automatic doors into the fresh air! No host of golden daffodils, though; instead, the crunch of cigarette butts underfoot, left by people (the majority round here) who cannot go long without a fag. Inside the hospital, according to the notices, 'We operate a no-smoking policy.' Just around the corner from the hospi- tal, I somewhat shamefacedly stuff the whole of the Turkish Delight into my mouth. I have to do it that way, because my hands are full of mobile telephones, books, and the Lancet. Then I start to worry that I might be mugged: how could I possibly offer any resistance with my mouth full of Turkish Delight? I couldn't even call feebly for help.

I pass the houses nearest to the hospital. They belong to the council and their windows are so heavily fortified that they make the precautions taken by the US embassy in San Salvador at the height of the civil war there look posi- tively casual. No one lives in these hous- es, of course, except for drug-addicted squatters.

Then past the house of a terrible old alcoholic who is either in bed, in hospi- tal, or in the pub. He lives with three sluts, his daughters, who regularly tele- phone doctors to request emergency vis- its, telling him to f— off when they arrive: `Dad's better now.'

What a relief to arrive at the prison! A diabetic prisoner is waiting for me.

`Prison's no good for my diabetes, doc- tor,' he says, 'it always goes all to pot in prison.'

`Then why keep coming here?' I ask.

`I don't, doctor. They keep sending me here. I tell them I'm diabetic, but they don't take no notice of me. And it's not doing my diabetes no good, doctor.'

`But they're not sending you for your diabetes. They're sending you here because you keep breaking the law.'

`But prison don't stop me breaking the law, doctor, so what's the point?'

I clutch my head and mutter, 'Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.'

`You what?' asks the patient.

Theodore Dalrymple