T he other day, the 9.56 bus to the nearest train
station was late and the people at the stop — of whom I was by far the youngest — began to grumble a little. Then, looming out of the mist, appeared the driver.
‘I’m sorry, the brakes have failed,’ he said. ‘I’m not prepared to risk your lives and they won’t be repaired until the next bus.’ The next bus — they are all decrepit round here, resuscitated from scrap heaps — was in an hour’s time. Words such as ‘typical’, ‘Third World’, ‘incompetence’ and ‘economic crisis’ ran angrily through my mind.
‘Thanks very much for letting us know,’ said the old ladies at the stop with genuine gratitude at his concern for their lives, and then they went off happily in search of a cup of tea.
This morning the bus was on time. A man in his seventies with crutches stood at the first stop after I had got on. Opening the door, the driver called out to him, ‘We don’t stop here no more. You’ll have to use them sticks to hobble to the next stop.’ Everyone laughed. The man with crutches was a regular. At the next stop, a woman in her sixties with a progressive degenerative neurological condition got on and found her seat in front of me with jerks and stumbles. ‘Don’t mind me, dear,’ she said to me. ‘I’m only dancing.’ An admirable people! Not like those who have replaced them, such as I: querulous and brittle in their self-importance. Near the front of the bus was a notice: No sTANDiNG iN FRoNT oF THis LiNE Do NoT DisTRAcT THE DRivER wHiLE THE Bus is MoviNG The passenger with the crutches hung on manfully to a rail in front of the line and chatted with the driver the whole way. It did one’s heart good to see rules in this rulemad country flouted so without a second thought.
Above my head was another notice, this one with the NHS logo: iF youR Gp NEEDs you To sEE A spEciALisT you cAN cHoosE To Go To ANy HospiTAL iN ENGLAND, iNcLuDiNG MANy pRivATE AND iNDEpENDENT oNEs — FREE oF cHARGE If your GP needs you to, nota bene, not if you need to, and not even if he advises you to. Then comes the real character-destroyer: wHATEvER youR REAsoN, iTs’s youR RiGHT Ha! I saw my GP a few weeks ago. It took two weeks and many phone calls to get an appointment. Afterwards, I spent a happy hour or two trying to work out how long it would take in my little town to get to see the same doctor twice.
There are 12 doctors in the practice, in one of those new polyclinic buildings known affectionately to the profession as ‘Darzi’s karzis’. The women among them are usually on maternity leave and the men, nearing retirement, off sick, leaving the short-term locums. So I estimated that, with determination and effort, and bearing in mind the many imponderables, and ruling out exceptional luck, I might get to see the same doctor twice in nine months or so.
On the way back from the station I took a taxi. There was a notice inside: iF you ARE sick iT is AN AuToMATic
£25 FiNE
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