Out of the Woods But Not Over the Hill Read online

  Christine took in a very old and delicately carved Japanese ivory figure, given to her by a great aunt, and a delicate and beautifully hand-painted porcelain bowl, a Phinn heirloom, given to her by my mother. After some coaxing, I persuaded her to take in the plate.

  The antique dealer examined the objects displayed on the tables before him with a world-weary expression. His comments were cursory and deeply disappointing for the owners of the objects: ‘damaged’, ‘of little real value’, ‘cheap copy’, ‘poor quality’, ‘rather ugly’. He was not impressed with the Japanese figure. ‘It’s bone,’ he said, placing the Japanese ivory figure to his cheek. ‘It’s a way of telling ivory from cheap objects like this,’ he explained. The beautiful hand-painted porcelain bowl, he informed her, was mass-produced and of little interest or value. Then he spied the plate and went weak at the knees. ‘I could swoon!’ he gasped, stroking the rough textured pottery. ‘It’s magnificent! This is Delft, circa 1680, an extremely rare example of Lowestoft ware.’ He pleaded with Christine to sell it to him.

  My wife politely declined and, on returning home, told me of the plate’s provenance as she placed it in pride of place on the dresser.

  ‘Shall I fetch some fish and chips?’ I asked her.

  Losing Your Marbles

  I was in the Casualty Department at Doncaster Royal Infirmary again recently. Christine, while snipping bits off the Virginia Creeper which covers the front our house, snipped off a bit of her finger. She was reluctant to let me accompany her to the hospital after the last time, when she fell off a ladder and broke an ankle while pruning the roses. As she hobbled in to see the doctor a nosy patient had enquired: ‘What’s wrong with her then?’ I replied, in hushed tones, that it is always unwise to drink too much when line dancing. On the way home, I had to explain to my wife why she had received so many strange looks when she emerged from the examination room.

  Over the years, I’ve been a regular visitor to Casualty. With four lively children, and a wife who enjoys climbing and balancing, pruning and digging, I guess it is not surprising that I have been something of a fixture at the DRI. Dominic was particularly prone to accidents as a child: popcorn up nose, wax crayon in ear, assorted broken bones, stubbed toe, trapped finger, splinter down nail, cracked head, grit in eye. He was a walking pathological dictionary.

  One Monday evening, I was all dressed up in dinner jacket, bow tie and fancy shirt, about to set off to speak at an after-dinner event, when young Dominic, aged eight at the time, flew down the stairs to kiss me goodbye. He tripped, hit a sharp corner of the bannister and split open his forehead. I have never seen such blood. Christine drove to hospital with me cradling our distressed child on the back seat, a flannel pressed to his head. My wife parked the car as I rushed through the door of Casualty with Dominic, the front of my dress shirt liberally spattered with blood. There were audible ‘Aaahs’ and ‘Ohhhs’ and ‘Good Gods’ and ‘Bloody hells’ from the waiting patients as they caught sight of me, looking like some gunshot victim out of a James Bond film. I was grabbed by a nurse and pushed towards a trolley.

  ‘It’s not my dad!’ shouted Dominic. ‘It’s me.’ Then he removed the flannel and announced, ‘It’s stopped now.’ A couple of stitches later, Dominic climbed into the car and asked, with a great smile, if we could go bowling.

  The following Friday, Dominic came in from the garden. ‘I’ve swallowed a marble,’ he told me glumly.

  ‘How did you manage to do that?’ I asked

  ‘I just popped it in my mouth,’ he explained. ‘I was pretending it was a sweet.’

  Back at Casualty, the receptionist remarked, as she signed us in, ‘You know, I’ve never come across the spelling of Phinn like this before but this week we had another person with that name in Casualty.’ I didn’t enlighten her.

  It was the same doctor who had stitched Dominic’s head. ‘You’re keeping me busy, young man,’ he told my son. ‘Don’t look so worried. You’ll get your marble back. What goes in one way usually comes out the other. It’s a matter of waiting. Ask your dad to buy you some prunes.’

  The following morning, Dominic proclaimed he was ready to perform. Christine and I kept vigil outside the bathroom door.

  ‘Anything?’ I asked.

  A moment later, there was a clunk and a cry. ‘Dad, Dad! I’ve got my marble back.’

  Trust Me, I’m a Doctor

  Half way through her finals at Leeds University, my daughter Elizabeth was rushed to hospital with a suspected ruptured appendix. It was a worrying time but she came through it with flying colours. She had the operation and, when I phoned through to the hospital, she sounded as lively and cheerful as ever and said the doctors and nurses were splendid. She shared a small ward with two other women, both of whom were recovering from their operations. The elderly woman in the next bed, Elizabeth told me, was chatty and amusing and never complained; the woman opposite could not have been more different. For her, the tea was too weak, the food too cold, the doctors too young and inexperienced and the nurses not very helpful and too busy to be bothered. She delighted in complaint. It was no wonder, Lizzie told me, that her visitors curtailed their visits.

  By chance, I was to give a lecture to the post-graduate education students at Leeds University the day following my daughter’s operation, so I could give my talk and then walk the short distance to the hospital to visit. My lecture was in the morning and visiting hours in the afternoon, but the very accommodating ward sister said I could call in during the morning before the doctor made her rounds.

  I duly arrived at the small ward straight from the lecture, carrying my notes on a clipboard. I was dressed formally in grey suit, maroon waistcoat with my father’s watch chain dangling across my stomach, white shirt and college tie, and sporting a pair of half-moon, gold-rimmed spectacles. I guess I looked every inch the specialist as I entered the ward. The university had produced a large lapel badge for me on which the name DR GERVASE PHINN was emblazoned in bold black capitals, and which I still wore.

  Conscious of the eagle eyes and the finely tuned hearing of the woman opposite Elizabeth, I pulled the screens half around my daughter’s bed for some privacy, and spent a good ten minutes in conversation. I then kissed her goodbye, removed the screens and, on my way out, exchanged a few words with the elderly woman in the next bed.

  ‘And how are you feeling?’ I asked her.

  ‘Mustn’t grumble,’ she replied.

  ‘A replacement hip, I hear,’ I said. ‘Is it very painful?’

  ‘Oh not that bad,’ she said, and then added pointedly for the eavesdropper opposite, ‘and everyone here has been wonderful.’

  ‘You’ll be back line dancing before you know it,’ I told her.

  As I headed for the door, the woman in the opposite bed called after me. ‘Excuse me. Can I have a word?’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ I replied, approaching her.

  ‘I’ve not seen anyone this morning.’ She pursed her lips as if sucking a lemon.

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘I said I’ve not been seen by anyone, Doctor.’ She had obviously caught sight of the badge. ‘The young woman in the corner bed has seen two nurses and a doctor already today and the woman next to her saw her specialist this morning. I’ve not been seen.’

  ‘I’m sorry about that,’ I said.

  ‘Are they private patients?’ she asked. ‘Because if they are, it’s preferential treatment.’

  Before I could enlighten her as to my position in the world, she continued: ‘I might as well be invisible, Doctor, for all the attention I get.’

  ‘Are you not feeling too well?’ I enquired solicitously.

  ‘No, not really.’

  ‘Are you eating?’

  ‘Yes, but the food in here’s not good,’ she complained.

  ‘And are you regular?’ I asked mischievously.

  ‘Yes, I’m all right in that department.’

  ‘Well, I’m very glad to hear it,’ I said, smiling warmly. I
turned to go.

  ‘Is that it?’ she demanded.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Aren’t you going to examine me?’ she asked sharply.

  ‘No, I’m afraid not.’

  ‘Well, you are a doctor, aren’t you?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes indeed,’ I replied, ‘but I’m a doctor of letters, not of medicine. Good morning.’

  I left an acutely embarrassed daughter, a chuckling elderly patient with a replaced hip and the woman in question open-mouthed and, for once in her life, lost for words.

  A Present for Christmas

  ‘Bah! Humbug!’ exclaimed Dominic, when I informed him that I would not want any presents on a recent Christmas. It is not that I am a Christmas killjoy; I love the festive season and most of the things it brings with it, but I honestly do not need any presents.

  ‘Buy a cow for Africa,’ I told my son, ‘or make a donation to the donkey sanctuary.’

  You see, I have all I need. I want for nothing. I certainly do not require any more socks or scarves, shirts or cardigans, ties or underpants. I prefer to buy such items myself and do so in the January sales when everything is half the price. Invariably, any Christmas offerings of this kind which I receive end up in an Oxfam shop in the New Year.

  At one time, I did like to receive a bottle of single malt for Christmas but my daughter put a stop to that. Elizabeth is a research psychologist at Newcastle University, looking into effects of alcohol on intelligence. She used to talk to her father but now she tends to observe me as if I am a case study. A week after her taking up the post I found bottles of wine had mysteriously disappeared. Lizzie watches me eagle-eyed if I so much as look in the direction of a decanter.

  I only buy one Christmas present – for my wife. The children are quite content with cheques. Each year, I ask Christine what she would like. Each year, it is the same response: ‘Surprise me.’ I once considered jumping out from behind the Christmas tree, wearing only a fake leopardskin thong and with ‘LOVE’ and ‘HATE’ tattooed on my knuckles. That would have surprised her and no mistake. In the past, Christine has received bags she never uses, CDs she never plays, chocolates she never consumes and jewellery she never wears. She is very gracious on opening the presents, and declares with great enthusiasm that the gift is lovely and one she really wanted. Then it is returned to the box and doesn’t see the light of day again.

  One year, I did surprise her – and every member of the assembled family as well. A colleague in the office at Harrogate enquired what I had bought for my wife that Christmas.

  ‘A very nice rope of pearls,’ I informed him

  ‘Pearls!’ he snorted. ‘Pearls! That’s what old women wear.’ Then the expert on the psychology of women informed me that: ‘When women get older they still want to feel attractive and desirable. You need to get her a bottle of expensive perfume, an emerald ring, an outrageous bouquet of winter roses or a sexy negligee.’

  I was prevailed upon to accompany this colleague to an exclusive ladies’ shop in Harrogate, and to buy some skimpy red silk underwear.

  On Christmas morning, with all the family gathered in the lounge, Christine opened her present and held up the contents. It was as if she had been poked with a cattle prod. Our four children turned the colour of the underwear.

  My sainted mother, sitting in the armchair by the fire, shook her head, sighed wearily and told my wife: ‘Put them away, Christine. His father went through that stage.’

  This year I settled for a flat-screen television set.

  Backward Reader

  I was once asked, by a large educational supplier, to compile a book catalogue for schools, to recommend a wide range of reading material for teachers to use with infants. I was to write a short paragraph on each text. Over six months, I had the most wonderful time, reading more than 500 picture books and early readers. During the summer, while my wife Christine took Maeve Binchy and Sebastian Faulks, Dick Francis and Deric Longden on holiday to Majorca with her to read, I packed fifty or so large, bright picture books.

  I would get up early – so early that I was always the first to the sun beds – take a glass of orange with me and relax around the hotel pool before anyone else had stirred, reviewing the early readers. Each morning Jose, the pool cleaner, would pass me as I read Stories for the Very Young or Early Nursery Rhymes, and greet me with ‘Ola!’ to which I would reply ‘Ola.’ He was not at all interested in my reading matter.

  At about seven-thirty, a large, bleary-eyed individual in a white towelling dressing gown would flip-flop past me and reserve the four sun beds next to mine with towels, magazines, parasols, sun-tan lotions, cold creams, lilos and an inflatable dinghy, and then he would disappear until a couple of hours later, when he would re-emerge with his wife, his sullen-faced daughter, let’s call her Tracey-Jo, and a large, aggressive-looking son, who we’ll call Duane. There was the whole of the poolside to choose from but he picked the spot next to me. He would recline there for the day, gradually taking on the colour of a boiled lobster. On the fifth day, he spoke to me. I was at that time reading a delightful book all parents of young children should read. The cover depicts a large happy rabbit bouncing across the page and has the title Read to your Bunny.

  ‘’Appen you’ll get onto t’big books one day, then,’ he said, grinning inanely.

  ‘I’m sorry?’ I said, looking up.

  He gestured at the picture book with a fleshy hand. ‘I said, ’appen you’ll get onto t’big books one day.’

  ‘I have problems with my reading,’ I informed him seriously.

  The smile disappeared and was replaced by an expression of some discomfort.

  ‘Oh, I see,’ he said. Clearly embarrassed, he rose from the sun bed and flip-flopped off to have a swim.

  ‘I don’t know why you do that,’ said Christine, looking up from her novel and shaking her head. ‘People will start believing you.’

  ‘Well, if I had got problems with my reading,’ I replied, ‘the last thing I would want would be to hear that sort of comment.’

  Later that morning, Duane approached. He was a large young man embellished with various silver studs and rings. He clutched a pint of lager, which he then placed in front of me.

  ‘Mi dad’s sent this,’ he said, articulating every word. I felt awful. ‘He says he’s sorry for what he said.’ I felt worse. Christine sighed and tut-tutted. Then the lad turned to my wife, adding in a theatrical whisper of a voice and nodding in my direction: ‘Mi dad didn’t know he was backward.’

  A Message for Mums and Dads

  Teach me compassion.

  Help to keep an open mind and respect the views of others.

  Expect a lot of me.

  Allow me some space.

  Don’t tell me my dreams are wild and my fears are foolish.

  Offer advice now and again, but please don’t nag.

  Listen to what I have to say.

  Encourage me and please don’t criticise me in front of others.

  Support me and realise that – once in a while – I can be difficult.

  Cope with my moods and try to be a bit more patient.

  Enjoy my successes but please don’t be disappointed in my shortcomings.

  Never make promises you can never keep.

  Take no notice when I say hurtful things, I don’t mean them.

  ‘God’s Own Country’

  Yorkshire

  Discovering Yorkshire

  Young people these days are much more widely travelled than was the case in the past. They see much more of the country than I did when I was young, and many have had a Spanish holiday or visited the Disney theme parks in Paris or Florida. Growing up in Rotherham in the 1950s, the child of parents with modest incomes, I saw little of the country outside South Yorkshire, and my first trip abroad was to Paris for a weekend when I was fifteen.

  Most summers, when the steelworks had ‘shut-down week’, the family had a fortnight in Blackpool. Apart from Christmas, the holiday f
ortnight held the greatest thrill for me. Most families like mine had neither the money nor the opportunity to travel and see the world, and therefore spent the holidays at one of Britain’s seaside resorts. Rotherham is about as far as you can get from the sea so, apart from the day trips to Scarborough, Filey and Bridlington and the school trips to the Isle of Man, I saw little of the coast. There was, therefore, an extraordinary feeling of excitement and anticipation when the summer holiday came around.

  It was only when I was in the sixth form, studying for my ‘A’ levels, that I discovered North Yorkshire, where I was later to spend much of my working life as a school inspector. On the field study trips, organised by my geography master, the inimitable J Alan Taylor, I came across the Yorkshire Dales and the North York Moors for the first time, and the experience was unforgettable.

  One memorable field trip was to Malham Cove. We had read about ‘clints’ and ‘grykes’, limestone pavements and caverns, potholes and subterranean rivers in our physical geography text-book, but I was not prepared for what I was to see. We approached by a footpath from the south, and this immense bow-shaped cove came into view like some great walled cathedral. It was breathtaking. I had never seen anything quite as bleak and rugged. Mr Taylor had us stand beneath the towering cove and not say anything at all – just take it in for a moment. Then he explained that it was formed millions of years ago, when the earth’s crust cracked, fracturing the rock so that it dropped vertically. ‘It’s over two hundred feet high,’ he told us, ‘a thousand feet wide and, once, a crashing waterfall cascaded over the vertical cliff, creating a fall higher than the Niagara Falls. Now, can your small minds take that in?’

  Another time, we stayed in a youth hostel set in the North York Moors. This part of England, a silent, bleak world with its great tracts of heather and bracken, fascinated me. We explored the incredible landscape, visited great abbeys like Byland and Rievaulx, ate our sandwiches in the shadow of lofty castles at Helmsley and Pickering, and sat in the sunshine outside local inns, in villages untouched by modern life. One weekend, Mr Taylor led us deep within the moors towards the coast at Ravenscar. The journey followed the old Viking route known as the ‘Lyke Wake’. Legend has it that the Vikings carried the ‘lyke’ or corpse across the forty boggy miles to the sea, where the body was given up to the waves. With the coming of Christianity, the practice was continued, but it took on a deeper meaning and the walk came to symbolise the journey of the soul towards heaven. I had never seen such magnificent scenery in my life. Beneath a shining blue sky, there stretched a landscape of every conceivable colour: brilliant greens, swathes of red and yellow gorse, which blazed like a bonfire, dark hedgerows speckled in pinks and whites, twisted black stumps, striding walls and the grey snake of the road curling upwards to the hills in the far distance. Light, the colour of melted butter, danced amongst the new leaves of early summer.