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 A tentative blog to test the temperature. |
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Ten years ago I was writing several blogs on various subjects - F1 motor racing, Music, Classic Cars, Great Romances and, most crushingly, a personal journal that included my thoughts on America, memories of England and Africa, opinion, humour, writing and anything else that occurred. It all became too much (I was attempting to update the journal every day) and I collapsed, exhausted and thoroughly disillusioned in the end. So this blog is indeed a Toe in the Water, a place to document my thoughts in and on WdC but with a determination not to get sucked into the blog whirlpool ever again. Here's hoping.     |
| The Land of Echocardiograms Lying at the end of an apparently interminable number of empty and featureless corridors, the Land of Echocardiograms is indeed like another country. Here the bustling traffic of the rest of the hospital has died away and a different, more sombre mood inhabits the air. The light is low in these more hallowed halls, deliberately kept in twilight as they are. Only the lush, liquid sounds of beating hearts interrupts the great silence of these darkened rooms, and then only briefly, as though an accidental exclamation of awe at the weight of the inhabitants’ task. Here the only ceremony is that of the jellied and slippery implement pressed ever harder into flesh, searching always the murmurs of the deepest organs, the quiet ponderings of hidden artefacts. For an hour I kept quiet in recognition of the need for this silence in the face of such mysterious processes but at last, when the deed was done and all data unloaded to the computer to be displayed in dim shadows against darker shapes, I ventured a question for the custodian of such secrets. “How many pictures did you take?” The inadequate banality of the word “pictures” sounded like an insult in that serious place, and there was a pause before she answered, without a glance from her continuing work of selection and presentation. “About seventy.” Abashed by the immensity of the task, quite clearly beyond my understanding of what was required for success, I lapsed into silence again, duly humbled by my crass ignorance. Word count: 252 |
| Transport “Seven, seven,” he said, without explanation or prior reference. It was an unusual thing to say in any circumstance but especially coming from so unimposing a figure, a slight man known usually as no more than Transport. He stood by the gurney, awaiting my reply. Suddenly I understood. “Yes,” I replied, “I’m seventy-seven.” It was no evidence of superior insight or gifted ability but merely information contained in the hospital’s recognition code of name and birthdate. If anything, it demonstrated a certain dexterity in the maths required to deduce age quickly from such data. I climbed onto the gurney and lay down. “You’re doing well,” he commented. “Yeah, I guess I’m lucky to be reasonably mobile still,” I replied. “For your age, you’re looking good.” I snorted. “Well, you’re the first to notice in that case. I would have said something less complimentary.” “Not for you to judge,” he countered. “I’m better qualified.” I thought of the years and aged faces he’d seen in that time. “Guess that’s true,” I admitted. We set off on our journey to the Land of Echocardiograms. It was one of those conversations that revealed much more than it stated. There was the fact that old age finds itself with little to think about but the passing years. In all that hospital, the vast majority of older clients were engaged in assessing and understanding old age. And the approaching death, of course. Life becomes much simpler when its end draws near. If there are any experts at all, the most common are the aged, as focused as they are upon their own circumstances. Indeed, the hospital itself was like a concentration of such lives and thoughts, a teeming soup of the study of age. Word count: 289 |
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