Little George

I forgot to mention that, despite my concentrated worrying, I did ‘get appendicitis’; and not just an ordinary one but an acute appendicitis. I was rushed into hospital at 6 pm on a Shrove Tuesday (had to go without my pancakes!), and operated on that same night. The surgeon (a Mr Bennet-Jones) had to be called out from home. (I don’t know if he was sitting down to a fish-supper).

A fragment of memory: I am lying on a hospital trolley thing – ‘gurney’, I think they call them – in a corridor. I have been ‘pre-opp’d’ so I am feeling calm, serene even. Two nurses are talking:

‘We should take him into the theatre’
‘But it’s so cold in there. And Mr Bennet-Jones hasn’t arrived yet’
‘Yes, but you know he doesn’t like to be kept waiting.’

At that moment, I heard the crunch of car tyres on gravel. (I can hear it now as I type these words,) And suddenly this stern looking man is bending over me. ‘Why didn’t your mother call the doctor earlier?’ he asks me. What did he expect me to say? ‘Because, being working-class, she ‘hates to make a fuss’, has a horror of ‘being a nuisance’ so she delayed calling the doctor out until it started to look really serious.’
What I actually said, rather timidly, was ‘I don’t know.’
He disappeared – presumably to get into his operating outfit. I thought he might have said something like ‘Come on, let’s get this show on the road’. But he didn’t.
And then they wheeled me through those big, flapping doors into the theatre.

And so, at the age of ten years, I lost my appendix: down the drain in Peasley Cross Hospital. I think that nowadays the let you take it home if you want – in a little jar. It looks like a pickled gherkin.
Actually, the appendix is a good example of evolution: apparently we needed in when we ate grass – or something like that. So now it is obsolete, and it occasionally causes trouble – well wouldn’t you if you were obsolete!

There is an odd spin-off to this major event in my little life: I was in hospital for 3 weeks. This was because I got a post-op infection. That was VERY painful; I won’t trouble you with the details. Anyway for some time after that, my right side was very tender, so, although I was right-handed I transferred things like handkerchief, loose change, bits of string, knife and other things a young lad needs, to my left trouser pocket. (Even today, if I were to put a handkerchief into my trousers, it would be the left pocket), and although I did not exactly become ambidextrous, there are some things I still do naturally with my left hand.

I don’t know how all this is going to turn out: at my brother’s I mean. I tell you one thing: I am not going to spend every night on the living room floor. Other arrangement will have to be made.