It was Saturday night at the Green Dragon Bearthwaite, locally pronouced Burr-thet, where the taproom was home to the Grumpy Old Men’s Society story telling fraternity. The tales told were of all kinds, many amusing, many not, some merely old men recounting the events of their lives. Most had lived full lives and if the tales were a little enhanced for the benefit of the audience it helped to make the evening a little more interesting. A number of them were retired academics, but all had done their share of graft due to hardship, driving jobs, labouring and the like, and academic or manual worker they were all friends. The Green Dragon was in north Cumbria not far from the border with Scotland, but whilst perhaps half of the men were local born and bred the rest came from all over the British Isles except Sasha Vetrov, the unofficial chairman of the group and master raconteur who though he had lived locally for decades was born and grew up in Siberia and later northern Scandinavia.

The group existed to drink beer and occasionally stronger and even exotic liquors, tell stories and play dominoes. It had a reputation that had spread far and wide, and many men came considerable distances for the entertainment. Unlike ‘The World’s Biggest Liar Competition’ held at the southern end of the county every November at the Bridge Inn Santon Bridge, the tales were told at the Green Dragon all year round on Saturday evenings, and Johny 'Liar' Graham seven times world champion liar farmed Longcummercattiff which was close enough to drop in for a scoop(1) or two from time to time. Many brought their wives to enjoy the female equivalent in the best room. Gladys and Pete the landlady and landlord of the Dragon encouraged the group, it brought in trade. Pete was a member of the story tellers and Gladys admitted she enjoyed the gossip with the ladies.

The wives of most of the members were to be found in the best room indulging in gossip, considerably less alcohol than their husbands and more gossip instead of dominoes. The ladies’ supper usually included cream cakes which the men regarded as ok, but strictly for women. The environment was not misogynistic, but there was an old fashioned demarcation between the sexes which was constantly reinforced by the women as well as the men. Put briefly the carrying of umbrellas, flowers, except those grown for their wives to put in the church or selling, and half pint glasses was considered effeminate by the men and fetching in coal, paying for anything when out with their husbands and fuelling their own cars were considered to be demeaningly masculine by the women. They may well give their husbands a twenty pound note to pay with, but he handed the money over even if he gave them the change.

You were as likely to find one of the men wearing a frock, kilts excepted, as you were to find one of the women wearing trousers. The men were pretty open to accepting outsiders who came to live amongst them, but no woman who wore trousers would be acceptable to the ladies. They’d talk to them, but they could not be one of them till they became ‘respectably female’, i.e. stopped wearing trousers. There were no half pint glasses behind the bar of the taproom and if you ordered half a pint because you were driving it would be served in a pint glass.

The beer was on the table and the old men were settling down. It was a balmy early summer’s eve but not yet warm enough to be drinking outside. “What you got for us tonight, Sasha,” Bill asked.

“I thought I’d tell you about my cervix and my smear test,” replied Sasha imperturbably.

There was the sound of choking as beer went down the wrong way, and Stan said, “Go on. I’ll buy it. But it had better be good.”

Sasha took a deep draw on his glass and said, “That morning I went outside and collected the post from our mailbox. There was the usual rubbish which I welcomed, most of it I lit the fire with unopened. After all if it mattered they’d write again, but as long as it looked like a circular I’d burn it unopened. There was a letter from the Alinthwaite group medical centre which is where my doctor hangs out during the day. I thought nothing of it and left that one till after breakfast. Elle opened it and I thought she was losing it the way she was laughing. She couldn’t speak for laughing and handed me the letter. Now that was a brain teaser. Most official letters arrive addressed to Dr. or Prof. Vetrov which you could understand causing the mistake being made, but this one was addressed to Mr. Vetrov which was puzzling because it said it was more than five years since my last cervical smear test and was an invitation to have my smear test for which it gave me an appointment.”

“Well I know some folk don’t like you, Sasha, but that’s going a bit far wouldn’t you say?” retorted Stan.

“Did you go?” asked Denis.

“No, but I’ll admit I thought about playing stupid and going for a laugh. The reason I’m telling you is because I couldn’t work out why they would send that to someone they addressed as Mr., so they clearly knew was male. I know this may come as a shock to some of you, but I don’t have a cervix. And before anyone else says it, whilst Gladys is in the other room I’ll say it for you. I know I can be a cunt, but I still don’t have a cervix.” The laughter at that took a while to dissipate, but eventually Sasha continued. “Those letters aren’t handled by anyone, and are even folded and put in their envelopes so the name and address can be seen through the transparent window by a machine usually called a letter stuffer.

We’re all in a database and they interrogate it to create the mail merge that selects who to send the letters out to. First they select women only, then only those between sixty-five and twenty-five. If a woman is between twenty-five and fifty and it’s more than three years since her last test she gets a letter. If she’s fifty to sixty five and it’s more than five years since her last test she gets a letter. There are other rarer situations where a woman over sixty-five will get a letter, but that covers most of it. The first filter obviously is that you have to be female, which clearly I’d passed. So there I was between fifty and sixty-five, I was under sixty-five then, it was more than five years since my last smear test, and since I was clearly designated as female I got the letter like all the other women that met the criteria. Only of course I’m a bloke.

“So how does it work that you get to be Mr. and female, Sasha,” asked a clearly puzzled Alf.

It was a couple of months before I figured it out, Alf. Put simply it was due to a cock up, which is perhaps an overly apposite term in the circumstances. The interrogation of the data base doesn’t even look at whether you’re a Mr. a Miss or a Mrs. Think about it that’s in the box marked title, and it could contain Dr., Prof., Rev. or any number of other things that give no indication of your sex. The box it looks at is the one marked gender, which is actually nonsense because gender is a grammatical term to do with declining nouns, the box should be marked sex. In various European language there a males with a feminine gender for conjugation purposes and females with a male gender for conjugation purposes. English doesn’t decline nouns much apart from pronouns like he and she or her and him. There are the odd words that tell you what sex someone is like daughter, wife or actress as opposed to son, husband or actor, but in some other languages everything is either feminine of masculine even things like tables. Some languages give a third option of neuter, but some don’t.

Anyway I concluded I must be in the data base as F not M, so I rang the surgery. I asked the girl to call up my details and look at my sex. She said, ‘Oh, How did you know Professor Vetrov?’ I replied ‘The letter inviting me for a smear test was a bit of a give away.’ Tell you no computer is better than the moron that inputs the data.”

“Is that what were doing tonight, Lads? Telling tales about doctors, hospitals and the like. Because if it is I’ll give it a go when I’ve a pint in front of me.”

“Good lad, Harry,” said Pete. “I’ll get Alf’s round pulled in a jiffy. Stan, round those empties up will you?”

When the drinkers were settled Harry started by saying, “I can tell the hospital tale, or I can tell you how I came to be a teacher who never applied for a teaching job which leads in to the hospital tale. What do you want?”

“The whole deal, Harry. Start at the beginning,” insisted Sasha.

“Ok. I left school at eighteen with decent A’ levels in the sciences, but didn’t fancy university and all that bloody debt to pay off, so I served my time in a pattern makers shop for Allied Founders. That was a mistake because the whole industry was dying. Like the mills, mines and the steel works they were history by the time I was thirty. I was put out of collar(2) at twenty-five. I messed about with a few jobs, taxi driving, driving a delivery van, labouring, shelf stacking, but I was getting no where and earning bugger all. So I thought I’d do a degree with the Open University. At least I could apply for jobs that earnt more. I did a mathematics degree because I can do that. I got a first just before I was thirty. I’d still been doing all sorts of work, but I’d always been interested in sciences, and had always read whatever science stuff I could lay my hands on. I’d met and married Kathleen somewhere about then and she’d suggested teaching.

“You, a teacher, Harry! Christ that I’d give something to see,” said Gerry.

“I know. I couldn’t see myself teaching in a secondary school full of idiots not wanting to learn, but A’ level pupils and adult education didn’t seem too bad, so I got myself up to speed on the stuff kids needed for A’ level in all the sciences, mathematics and psychology and sociology for good measure. I didn’t have much to learn, most of what I already knew was way over the top of A’ level. I did a Further and Adult Education teacher’s City and Guilds certificate at the local tech on Thursdays because it was free, and I thought it was pretty easy. I was driving a cab at night then and we were getting by, but sometimes it was tight. After that I started on a Post Graduate Certificate of Education course with the OU too. They only offered a primary or a secondary PGCE but the secondary one qualified you to teach from eleven year olds to eighteen year olds, which included A’ level. Like the degree, the course was virtually free because of my lack of income.

“What about the practical stuff teaching in schools?” asked Gerry. “How was that?”

“Not good, Gerry. I finished the PGCE, but the teaching practices taught me that school teaching wasn’t for me. I’d have ended up strangling some of the little bastards, girls and boys alike. I got a bit of part time teaching at the college I got my City and Guilds at, but it didn’t generate much income. Kathleen suggested I put an advert in the local paper as a tutor. Within a matter of a couple of months I was tutoring four hours an evening at twenty-five quid an hour. A’ levels and top end of GCSE only. I was turning work away and didn’t have to tutor any idiots. By then I could get rid of any that were only there because their parents made them and replace them with kids that wanted to learn. Christ we’d never been as well off. I was earning far more than I would have done as a teacher.”

“And of course you declared it all to the taxman didn’t you?” Bill asked.

“Naturally I did, just like you would have done, Bill.” It took a few minutes for for the laughter to die down. “A woman rang me up said her son had missed a bit of school and she wanted a tutor to help him get a C. I said I didn’t do the D/C borderline, and rather patronisingly she asked if that was too advanced for me. I laughed and said I didn’t teach the innumerate or special needs and wouldn’t teach those trying for a B never mind a C. I told her to get back to me when her son was doing A’ level mathematics. She put the phone down on me. Another said she thought I was rather expensive and other people only charged ten pounds an hour. I asked her why she hadn’t used one of those, and she said they didn’t have any time. I told her when I didn’t have any time I only charged five pounds an hour.”

That caused so much laughter it was an ideal opportunity to get another round in.

“Most remarkable of all, a woman rang me up wanting a tutor for her six year old daughter. She was obviously educated and I gently told her I didn’t do primary. She said she knew that because I tutored one of her friend’s sons, but her daughter was exceptionally bright, and she said Naomi enjoyed watching ‘Tomorrow’s World’ with her dad. That was a program that reported on cutting edge science and technology. She explained her fifteen year old son wasn’t bright and had a tutor to help him get his GCSEs. Naomi had said she wanted a tutor too, and initially they’d thought it was just because she wanted what her brother had. Naomi persisted and had finally started negotiating. Her latest offer was could she have a tutor for her Christmas and birthday presents? At that point her dad had suggested giving me a ring.

“She said from what she’d heard about me Naomi would like me and would I please try it for an hour. She knew what I charged and that was fine. I was intrigued, a little girl who watched ‘Tomorrow’s World’ was not usual, so I agreed and went round. Her parents were both doctors, and the house was a large detached property set in extensive grounds, so money wasn’t an issue. I was shewn in and introduced to Naomi who promptly asked me, ‘Could phasers and light sabers exist?’ She was a ‘Star Trek’ and ‘Star Wars’ fan. I was aware her mum and dad had both listened in at some point in that first hour whilst we talked about the differences between science fiction and reality, and at the end of the hour her mother asked, ‘Will you take her?’

“What you just talked about Start trek for an hour, Harry?”

“Sort of. She was a very inquisitive little girl who obviously wanted someone to answer her questions. I got the impression her parents and her teachers couldn’t and she didn’t know any one who could. As a result she could be a bit of a handful sometimes. Her dad said she could be a little Madam, and she didn’t have any friends because she didn’t appear to have anything in common with other children. He told me even bribery didn’t work to make her behave because other than her computer, which she used for writing programs in BASIC on, and books she didn’t want anything.”

“Hell. What did you say to that?”

“I suggested buying her a Texas Instruments Voyage 200 graphics calculator with all the accessories.”

“You’re not for real, Harry, you know that?”

“Maybe, but she had a lot of fun with that calculator. Anyway when her Mum asked me if I’d take Naomi on I replied, ‘Certainly,’ and told her. ‘I’ve not had that much fun for a long time.’ The look of relief on Naomi’s parents’ faces was a picture. Naomi was one of only two truly gifted children I have ever met in my entire life and we are still in touch though she’s married with a family now. I’m not sure I can say I actually ever taught Naomi anything, I just shewed her how things were done and explained why they were done that way, but for the next twelve years, till she left for Cambridge, I spent an hour a week, answering questions, discussing things she’d read in the papers or seen on the television or was doing at school. We spent time on puzzles and I’d leave her things to learn or do. I shewed her elementary calculus when she was nine, purely because it was the easy way to solve a puzzle she was working on, and she taught herself the rest with a bit of help from me with integral calculus and her calculator.

“I was taken aback when Naomi said, ‘Tell me about periods.’ ‘Your mum would be better for that,’ I said. ‘After all she’s a woman and the kind of doctor that deals with that kind of thing.’ Her mum ran the local family planning clinic. ‘Yeah, but she’s my mum, and you explain things better.’ ‘Ok.’ said I. ‘Ask her if she has any leaflets at home we can look at will you.’ Naomi came back with a few different leaflets and we went through them. ‘I get all that,’ Naomi said, ‘but it doesn’t explain what makes the first one happen, the menarche.’ ‘No, it doesn’t, but that’s going to have to be for next time, which will give me the opportunity to check my facts. I still think you ought to talk to you mum because only silly people don’t use all the resources available to them. I’m a man and can give you facts, but your mum can tell you what it feels like and how it could affect you. You need both. Ok?’ ‘Ok.’ As I was leaving her mum paid me and said, ‘Thank you.’ ‘What for?’ I asked. ‘Naomi doesn’t talk to me much, she’s a daddy’s girl really. They spend a lot of time together programming her computer and playing with that calculator. When you tell her to talk to me, she does. She became much easier for me to get on with after you talked about yeast, beer and baking and suggested she ask if we could bake some bread. Gordon bought her a wine making kit and all the equipment she needed to go with it, result one very happy little girl. We spend time together in the kitchen now. I know she’ll talk to me now about becoming a woman, so thank you.’

“Some of the folk you’ve met are as strange as you, Harry.”

“Maybe Eric, but if you have a strange problem maybe it takes a strange person to fix it. I stopped advertising and when we moved to a bigger house where I had a room for tutoring, I stopped travelling to pupils’ houses. They came to me. Naomi thought my study-library-computer room was brilliant and it occupied us for months looking at my books, computer programs and all the rest of the stuff I had in there. Sometimes her mum would wait in with us for the hour if she wanted to go supermarket shopping afterwards because it wasn’t worth going home, and she was amazed at just how intelligent her daughter was. Sometimes her dad drove her to my place and he’d join in the conversation.”

“I was making a lot of money and the undergraduate resit candidates during the summer holidays paid even more. Funny thing, I kept my eye on the ads in the papers, I was the only one in the ads that did A’ level anything, and I was happy to teach three or even more subjects within the hour. But I noticed a new advert at eight pounds an hour when I was charging thirty. I knew I should have left it alone, but hell any teacher’s time has got to be worth more than that. I rang the number and it was a young woman’s voice that answered. I explained a teacher was worth more than that. She asked me if I was worried that her husband would take work away from me. I told her that I wasn’t interested in pupils at that level and turned down more than a dozen such every week. I said I’d keep her number and pass it on. I did along with all the others numbers I used to get rid of idiots on.”

“So for how long did you do that before you got a proper job, Harry?”

“I never did get a proper job, Alf. I’d made enough to retire at fifty-five though I carried on tutoring till I moved to where I live now, which was too far for folk to travel to, and I’d had enough by then anyway. This next part of my story is what links to the hospital theme and it’s from when I was still travelling to my pupil’s houses. I started with bad guts that reached serious pain levels when I was still cab driving which was a few years before we moved house. The usual stuff from the pharmacy made no difference. Most of the time I was fine, but when it hit me I was anything but. One night at the end of my shift, probably about half three in the morning, I was filling the cab up at one of the local twenty-four hour service stations. It hit me, and I was throwing up over the boot [US trunk] and halfway across the forecourt. I thought only babies did projectile vomiting. I was wrong. The lass in the pay kiosk clearly thought I was drunk.

“Another time I went with a mate who had a sailing boat anchored on Lake Windermere, somewhere near the middle. He had an inflatable to reach the boat and though the wind was little more than a breeze it was a good day for sailing. We sailed down to the south end of the lake where the train station and the café is and had a coffee and a bite to eat. Back on board we’d just cast off when it hit me. Fish will eat anything, but I was glad I’d never liked fish. Whisky George, his taxi call sign was Whisky, thought I was lakesick, well it can’t be called seasick can it. Till that point I’d not sought medical help. Oh the pride of youth, but enough was enough. The ultrasound shewed gallstones and I was put on a waiting list for a cholecystectomy. The pain got worse and more frequent. The ultra sound also shewed up something in my left kidney, which was possibly a tumour. I was ultra sounded for that at decreasingly frequent intervals over the next five years. There best guess was it was what they called a nexus, a collection of conective tissue that apparently just about every one has somewhere. I just happened to have one in my kidney. Even when they signed me off, they still didn't come right out and say it wasn't cancer. Probably too scared of being sued if they were wrong. Scared the hell out of both of us for a while though."

“I had my gall bladder out years ago, Harry. I wasn’t too bad with the pain, but I was told it can be just about the worst pain you can suffer.”

“Don’t know about that, George, but I do know it’s bad. My doctor put me on stronger and stronger painkillers. Eventually I was on a morphine derivative. He’d warned me I could get addicted. I told him I didn’t want the morphine I wanted an operation and I’d worry about any damned addiction later. The opiates didn’t stop the pain, they just reduced it to a point at which it was just about bearable. I was still driving the cab as well as tutoring. One of my pupils was a Pakistani girl who went to a good school, but wasn’t getting a fair crack of the whip just because she was a Pakistani girl. I tutored her in psychology, biology and mathematics, it was a popular A’ level combination with girls in those days. I ended up on the floor at her house one evening. Unbeknownst to me her father was a fund holder GP. [Family doctors who were given a budget and they determined what services they bought off the hospitals for their patients. That system was only in place between 1991 and 1997/8] Her mum made me a cup of tea and I explained to her dad my situation.

“ ‘If you were a patient of mine this would have been dealt with months ago,’ her dad told me. ‘What do I have to do?’ I asked. He went away and after a few minutes returned. He gave me a piece of paper and said, ‘See this man tomorrow at Bury General Hospital. Any time in the morning. He will be expecting you.’ My area health authority was Salford. Bury was a different one, but I thanked him and did as he’d told me. I was too ill to drive so I asked Whisky to take me to the hospital. The consultant examined me, had an ultrasound taken and asked, ‘Can you stop?’ ‘What now?’ I asked. ‘Yes. I want to operate early tomorrow because it’s the only available time slot I have for some time.’ ‘Yes but I need to tell my driver what’s going on.’ ”

“What just like that?” asked Pete.

“Yeah. Like I said he was a fund holder GP, and I think he was calling in a favour. I explained to Whisky and he said he’d tell Kathleen and have her pack a bag for me. I was operated on at six the following morning. It was eleven twenty-five when I came to. I was facing the ward clock and some one was messing with my arm. I discovered later it was a nurse taking my blood pressure. I was only awake for seconds and felt in great discomfort, but that horrendous stabbing pain had gone. I came to gone two and my abdomen was acutely uncomfortable. I couldn’t sit up. The nurse offered her hand and said, ‘You pull on my hand.’ I managed, and she said the gas my abdomen had been inflated with for the keyhole surgery was what was causing my discomfort, but it would be a lot better in twenty-four hours.

“The surgeon came round later and he apologised for the length of the main scar. I had four scars, one for his instruments, one for the light and I presume the other two were for the gas, or maybe it was two for lights and one for gas. Anyway, he said normally the main scar was was a quarter of an inch long but my gall bladder had ruptured and fused to my liver making it difficult and necessitating a longer incision. It was only half an inch long, and he was apologising! My father had had the same operation when I was maybe four and his scar was a foot long and looked like it had been stitched up with boot laces.”

“That’s what mine looks like,” said George.

“I was on an intra venous antibiotic drip because of the rupturing, and I was going to be kept in for an extra twenty-four hours. My father had been in hospital a month I think. That I thought was that. Whisky collected me and took me home and life carried on. The pain had gone and I wasn’t troubled by having been on opiates. My pupil collected three As at A’ level and her parents were deeply grateful, but not I suspect as grateful as I because the surgeon had told me had I not been operated on when I was within a week I would have been dead or an emergency admission on my collapse. In the case of the latter they would he said have had no choice but to open me up from top to bottom and I would have had a scar like my father’s. The irony of it was nearly two years later I received a letter from Hope hospital Salford informing me I had an appointment to be examined in about six weeks. Left to them I’d possibly have been dead.”

“It’s bloody amazing what they can do when they actually get off their arses and do it,” Denis said with nods of agreement from them all.

“I found out how small a world it is a long time later. Twenty odd years went by and I had moved to Cumbria. After another five I put one of my fingers into a circular saw and ended up being patched up in Carlisle infirmary by a doctor who looked vaguely familiar. ‘Is your name by any chance Khan?’ I asked. ‘Indeed, why?’ he asked. In return I asked, ‘Do you have a niece called Zamira?’ ‘Ah,’ he exclaimed, ‘You are Professor(3) Maywell. Colleagues, we must do an especially good job on our friend here. My family owes him a great debt. Zamira is now a surgeon, my friend, and married with four children. We must exchange addresses for I know she would like to write to you. She was upset when she lost contact when you moved.’

“Like I said it truly is a small world.”

“Supper in fifteen, Gentlemen, so carry on if it’s a quick one, but clear the tables please.”

“What’s on the menu, Gladys?”

“Venison and cabbage pie with potatoes, carrots and offal gravy. The venison is courtesy of Harry and his waggon on the A595, and Alf supplied the cabbage, potatoes and the carrots from his plot.”

Pete told the old men quietly, “Gladys said to tell you supper’s free to the regulars.”

“Hell that was tasty,” Sasha said. There were nods of agreement all round. “Pete, fetch a couple of bottles out of the cellar with a bit of kick will you? The plum Slivovizt I got last year would be good to follow that dinner with.”

“On my way, Sasha. Stan, get some shot glasses will you?”

After the obligatory visit to the back for the relief of their superannuated bladders the men settled down with a fresh pint and the Slivovizt. “So whose got a tale then?” asked Pete.

Only Geoff responded saying, “I can think of two, but I need time to remember it all.”

“Well that’s got us a start on next week,” Pete said. “But what about now?”

Eventually Sasha said, “I’ll pick it up. I’ve got one that’s more or less in keeping with the theme. It’s about the opticians, and a bit of a lecture first, but it’ll do. I’ve two eyes that see. The left one works perfectly and I’ve never come across anyone with night vision or peripheral vision as good as mine, but I’m red green colour blind as you all know. My right eye, is so bad my brain shuts down the signal from it half the time. It must reckon it’s better off without it. My right eye is very long sighted, and the back of it is severely astigmatic. Instead of being smooth its corrugated was how one optician described it to me.

“Sight’s a funny thing, you need two eyes to perceive depth. To have three dee vision your brain needs two slightly different views, one from each eye. But brains are clever, they create what’s missing from what’s there and they learn from experience. Even with no glasses on and putting my hand over my right eye I see a three dee image with my left eye which is impossible. How? It’s my brain creating it based on experience. That can be dangerous in some situations like with lathes or milling machines because the three dee image isn’t real, so things can be nearer than I think.”

“What happens if you put your hand over your left eye, Sasha?”

“My brain instantly accepts the signal from my right eye. My sight is blurry and I can’t make out much detail, but I can see to get around. I’m not sure I’d want to drive, but my brain must reckon a crap signal is better than no signal at all. You must have heard me refer to things like green grass and red letter boxes, yet you just accept it without thinking anything of it because because you do too and for you that’s normal. But if you stopped to think about it you’d remember I’ve no idea what that means. It’s just my brain using thousands of such references to appear to know what I’m talking about.”

“How do you mean, Sasha?”

“When I think about it, Alf, letter boxes and grass look the same to me, but I know one is red and the other is green because I’ve heard folk say so probably thousands of times, so I say so too. The other thing you have to realise is your eyes don’t see anything. They are the sensors for the part of the brain that processes sight. It’s the same with all your other sensors, your ears don’t hear, your nose doesn’t smell, your mouth doesn’t taste and your skin doesn’t feel. They are just the sensors providing input to the appropriate parts of the brain that process their input to give you a sense of sight, sound, smell, taste and touch. How often have some of you been out in the dark walking home with me and said, ‘How the hell can you see where you’re going, Sasha?’ The straight answer is I can’t, but I’m used to using all my senses.

“My sense of touch tells me where the grass is in the middle of the lonning.(4) My sense of hearing can detect the slight differences in the echo of my feet from the hedges on either side, so I know which one is nearer. That’s why a National health hearing aid is no good. That’s exactly what you get from the National Health a middle of the road, one size fits all hearing aid. A hearing aid as in one hearing aid. To hear properly you need both ears functioning, because like it does with your eyes your brain will analyse the difference in the two signals. It will then tell you where the noise is coming from. Elle has a private bloke, and two top of the range hearing aids. Cost eight thousand quid for her first pair ten maybe twelve years back. The ones she has now are far more sophisticated and were only two and a half, but he reprograms them every year and visits whenever she needs him, all free as part of the service. And they’re so small as to be almost invisible. How many of you were aware she used hearing aids?”

They all shook their heads except Stan who said, “I knew, but only because I was at your place one day when she referred to them. I’ve never seen them.”

“Back to using all your senses. The wind on my face tells me which way I’m facing. My sense of smell tells me that the shit spread on the field yesterday is on my right or whatever. Those and dozens of other clues that most folk aren’t even aware of tell me a lot about my immediate surroundings. I grew up learning those things, most folk don’t. If I’m driving dozens of clues that others miss tell me about what is ahead. The institute of advanced motoring teaches those skills. What I’m saying is your brain does it all. There are dozens of experiments that have proved that over and over again.”

Geoff interrupted, “I had an uncle Hamish who went deaf. His sisters were always going on at him to get a hearing aid, but he was stubborn and tight with money. Eventually he got a hearing aid, but my auntie Morag discovered it was just a piece of wire over his ear and a two ounce tobacco tin in his shirt pocket. She went off the at deep end at Hamish. He claimed though it cost nothing it worked. She called him all sorts and scathingly asked how could it possibly work. She was stunned when he triumphantly said, ‘Folk see the wire and talk louder, just like you are doing the now.’ ”

After the laughter died down Sasha said, “A classic example of brain power. Getting back to the opticians. I’m rough on glasses, I always have been. Elle had varifocals years ago, but Christ they’re expensive. I made do with ready readers and one eye for years. I could go through half a dozen pairs a year. I’d sit on them, put them down and drop something on top of them, but mostly because I only used them for reading I was putting them down dozens of times a day and the lenses got scratched to the point of useless. However at less than a fiver each I didn’t care. Trouble was as my eyes got worse with age they weren’t powerful enough, so I was wearing two pairs to read. I used to twirl my specs round by an arm and break them that way too. Eventually Elle broke me of that habit, but by then I was struggling to see and to read. I came to the reluctant conclusion I had to bite the bullet and have varifocals and stop abusing my glasses.

“Elle had had her latest pair for over five years, needed new lenses and wanted new frames too. I did a bit of investigation and we decided to go to Specsavers in Workington. They do really good deals if you buy two pairs. Elle’s needs were for standard varifocal lenses in attractive frames, and she was happy with the two pairs of glasses she chose. I on the other hand didn’t care much about the frames as long as they were all one piece plastic, no separate nose pads or bits on the arms I could break. Sasha proof. The lenses on the other hand had to be up to my requirements or what was the point in spending all that money. I do a lot of reading of small print and looking at tiny circuits, so I wanted a wide field of view with high power for reading along with being able to see distance, and they had to at least partially correct the sight of my right eye well enough to give me genuine three dee sight. I’d been warned that varifocals took some getting used to when you first tried them and some folk couldn’t get on with them at all which is scary when you realise how much they cost.”

“Took me a few weeks to get used to my first pair, Sasha.”

“I was told it could take longer than that, Stan. My lenses were three times the cost of Elle’s. When we went to be fitted for them Elle’s were fine and she was happy. The girl that fitted mine asked me how they were. I read some tiny print at about five feet away and looked down the length of the shop, through the glass doors, across the road and read the signs over the windows of the shop across the road. I hadn’t been able to do either for years. Takes time to get used to them? Took me less than a second. I should have got them years ago. I do look after them now, but it’s easier because I only take them off when I go to bed, and I put them down with the arms open, so the lenses can’t get scratched, but four pairs of glasses cost me nine hundred quid, and mine were two-thirds of that, but like Elle’s hearing aids you can’t get those lenses on the National Health Service, which considering how much damned tax I’ve paid into it over the decades is a bloody scandal.”

“You up for carrying on next week, Geoff?”

“Aye, I’ll have remembered enough detail by then to tell a decent tale, Pete.”

“Right, so we’ll start with Geoff next week and anyone else who can dredge up a tale. Dominoes, Lads. Partner me, Stan?”

Word Usage Key

1 Scoop, vernacular term referring to a scoop of beer, a drink.
2 Put out of collar, reference is to a working horse having the head collar removed at the end of the day's work. To be made redundant.
3 Professor, the term here is being used as a term of respect for a well thought of teacher.
4 Lonning, lane.