“Sally! I knew it was you. How are you?” asks my old patron and friend Margaret.
We are at Barton Surgery and I’m waiting patiently to see the duty doctor. Margaret has just come along with a mature gentleman she introduces as Rob (so I’ve no cause to disbelieve her). They are on their way out (not “the way out”, hopefully, considering we are all at the doctors’) and they stop to chat.
“Well,” I pause and conjecture before deciding to tell them the truth, “actually I hardly slept last night because I have a painful bladder infection.”
Rob looks at my patron and grins.
“Rob has the same problem,” says Margaret.
After commiserating with one another the conversation turns to my painting, which has been on the wall since the surgery opened twenty-five years ago, and we remember the fun we had at the opening party. The conversation is coming to a natural conclusion and Ron signals his intention to leave by attempting to do up the zip on his coat. He can’t put the zip together because his hand is shaking.
“Sorry,” he looks at Margaret, “my hand is shaking…”
“Because you’re obviously not used to being in the company of such beautiful women,” I laugh.
“Exactly what I was going to say,” he responds.
They depart at the same time that the duty doctor calls for me and in fives minutes flat I am making my way to the pharmacy attached to the surgery. Who do you think is waiting in the pharmacy? You guessed. The pharmacy is quite full and there will be a bit of a wait so we resume our chat.
“Have you been watching ‘The Real Marigold Hotel’? Not the film, but the programme with celebrities who are staying in an hotel in India for real?” I ask Rob.
“No, I haven’t, but I’m aware of it,” he says.
“Well you should watch it and you’ll realise that they are just frail humans with all the problems that we have… and more,” I start. “Take Lionel Blair, for example, you remember Lionel Blair?”
“The dancer,” confirms Margaret.
“Yes – he’s eighty-seven and I always thought he was a bit camp – but he’s married with two children, which surprised me. Well poor Lionel, even my Chris woke up yesterday morning and said, ‘I’m worried about Lionel Blair and his distended stomach”.
“Distended stomach?” Margaret’s eyes widen.
“Yes,” I say, “poor Lionel had prostate cancer and the treatment left him with a distended tummy and flatulence. It was quite distressing to see him saying, ‘I’m so sad about my fat stomach.’ Two men tried to massage the fat away…”
“I didn’t get a fat stomach after my operation,” informs Rob.
Margaret and I agree and tell Rob how lucky and good looking he is.
“Then there’s Bill Oddie,” I say.
“I never liked him,” Rob interrupts.
“He’s got bipolar and he had an unhappy childhood,” defends Margaret.
“And he was funny in ‘The Goodies’. Bill Oddie thinks manic-depression is a better description for the disorder. And he’s admitted to being impotent. I’m sure you’d like him if you saw the programme,” I add.
At this point I realise that the buzz in the pharmacy has stopped and I glance around. All eyes are on our little group. The pharmacist beams at me as if to urge me to carry on speaking and the other customers look expectant (if not pregnant). A tall man wearing a nice grey woollen coat has turned to face our huddle and he gives half a nod.
“Isn’t Miriam Stoppard in this series?” asks Margaret, perhaps unaware that there is a rapt audience behind her.
“Yes, she’s seventy-nine and beautiful. She reckons it’s most important to look good from behind, which she does,” I say.
“My father, who was in the army, always thought it most important to clean one’s shoes,” Margret makes a pertinent point.
“My father was exactly the same,” chimes in the gentleman in the stylish grey coat.
“Paul Nicholas bought eight pairs of underpants,” I announce.
“What was he in?” asks Margaret.
“‘Just Good Friends'”, says the man in the grey coat.
“And still looks handsome at seventy-two… if a bit thin and older-looking. He doesn’t have curls anymore – it’s sort of flat to his head…”
I go on to inform the pharmacy audience that the actress Amanda Barrie cried about being eighty-one (everyone commiserates with barely audible appreciation of how awful it is to get old); also how Sheila Ferguson, from “The Three Degrees” has got over her divorce, looks wonderful for sixty-seven or sixty-nine and has “plenty of money to live anywhere in the world”; Rusty the chef and Dennis Taylor the snooker-player, at sixty-seven, are the babies of the group visiting the real Marigold Hotel but Dennis appears older, even though he must have a young wife for he has children of eleven and nine. At last the head pharmacist brings over the filled prescriptions in two paper bags – the large bag for Rob and a small one for me.
“Nice coat,” I say to the tall chap in grey as I pass by.
“I left my cashmere one at home,” he says dryly.
I think he is alluding to Kashmir, not too far on the map from India (and Cochin, where “The Real Marigold Hotel” is filmed.
In the car park outside Rob, Margaret and I part with hugs and kisses.
“The surgery will never be the same for Rob,” my patron laughs.
“I’m still shaking,” says Rob.
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