I miss my childhood doctor. You really felt he’d done a proper job after he’d peered into and probed every orifice, depressed your tongue with a wooden spatula leaving a splinter half way down your throat, and then sent you on your way clutching a bottle of medicine that tasted like a combination of nitric acid and cat’s pee and was the colour of a strawberry Mivvi.
It’s all computerised now. He tinkles on his keypad while firing questions at you.
“Have you ever sat near to a bonfire?”
“Have any of your ancestors ever died?”
“Have you ever eaten a doughnut?”
“Do you run a marathon every day, once a week, once a month, once a year or never?”
“OK, the computer says that you have a 10% chance of dying before you leave the surgery, a 20% chance of at least one leg falling off before next Christmas and a 50% chance of surviving the next meeting of the coven. My advice to you is …. dammit, the computer’s crashed … you’d better come back in a year’s time. NEXT!”
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