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Stacks, Royal Marine, central figure in My Tutu Went AWOL, thinks that driving a car can't be classed as travel.
I said, 'Not even something on the level of Route 66?'
'No. It's still driving a car. Travel implies someone else has their hand on the wheel. Or the tiller. Or the throttle.'
We were having this conversation between Christmas and New Year in the walk-in health centre. Cut a long story short, I was house sitting, had been feeling default setting ill for months, and had now begun to feel really sick. Looking up my symptoms online, I realised that I couldn't rule out bowel cancer.
Yes, I know. Never look up symptoms online. We had the Reader's Digest medical pull-out in the seventies. When my mother had swollen glands; my father had to physically stop her giving herself a tracheotomy with a Bic Biro. God knows what she'd be like these days if she could understand anything more technical than a slow-cooker.
Two of my uncles died of bowel cancer and their symptoms were virtually identical to mine. I really couldn't rule it out. And, believe me, looking up my symptoms in the past, I've made myself rule out dropsy, leprosy and pregnancy.
Stacks responded to my cri de coeur and drove down from Salford to make me visit a walk-in health centre. On the way there, deciding that the end was on its way, I panicked myself into a crying jag.
The whack he gave me still stuns me, three months on. I wasn't alone on Liverpool Street giving him a WTF stare.
'Right, Stacks, I'm cutting you from my book!'
He explained to both me and the concerned passersby, 'You moved your head and my cygnet ring caught...' He gestured to the side of my eye. 'Shit. Sorry, but I thought you were going to run into the road, mate.'
I had to pinch the cut closed as we walked on, which made it difficult to give sufficiently outraged ports de bras for, 'Of course I wouldn't run into the road, Stacks. The cars are going at six miles an hour. I'd have at least got you to take me to the Whittington Hospital. Then we could have walked round the corner for you to boost me over the spiked railings on the suicide bridge.'
He half-smiled. 'Good. Jokes are slowly starting up again.'
Waiting in the walk-in centre, I talked about places I wanted to go before I died.
'Iestyn, you're not going to die.'
'Russia, obviously, finally. I want to do the Trans-Siberian Railway. Rome. Istanbul. New York. India.'
I got seen. I needed tests. Stacks pulled in favours and got me an appointment with a naval surgeon. Odd to see him in a Hampshire consulting room, rather than a Crimean field tent. More tests, scans. The upshot - not bowel cancer: a parasite in my lower gut. What was described to me sounded like a tape worm with no sense of direction. I'd probably picked it up in the Seychelles.
'But they sprayed the place every morning at 5am for bugs.'
'The whole Seychelles?'
'No, just the five star bit I was staying in.'
Over dinner before he drove home, Stacks asked, 'Why haven't you travelled to those places you mentioned before?'
Stacks, Royal Marine, central figure in My Tutu Went AWOL, thinks that driving a car can't be classed as travel.
I said, 'Not even something on the level of Route 66?'
'No. It's still driving a car. Travel implies someone else has their hand on the wheel. Or the tiller. Or the throttle.'
We were having this conversation between Christmas and New Year in the walk-in health centre. Cut a long story short, I was house sitting, had been feeling default setting ill for months, and had now begun to feel really sick. Looking up my symptoms online, I realised that I couldn't rule out bowel cancer.
Yes, I know. Never look up symptoms online. We had the Reader's Digest medical pull-out in the seventies. When my mother had swollen glands; my father had to physically stop her giving herself a tracheotomy with a Bic Biro. God knows what she'd be like these days if she could understand anything more technical than a slow-cooker.
Two of my uncles died of bowel cancer and their symptoms were virtually identical to mine. I really couldn't rule it out. And, believe me, looking up my symptoms in the past, I've made myself rule out dropsy, leprosy and pregnancy.
Stacks responded to my cri de coeur and drove down from Salford to make me visit a walk-in health centre. On the way there, deciding that the end was on its way, I panicked myself into a crying jag.
The whack he gave me still stuns me, three months on. I wasn't alone on Liverpool Street giving him a WTF stare.
'Right, Stacks, I'm cutting you from my book!'
He explained to both me and the concerned passersby, 'You moved your head and my cygnet ring caught...' He gestured to the side of my eye. 'Shit. Sorry, but I thought you were going to run into the road, mate.'
I had to pinch the cut closed as we walked on, which made it difficult to give sufficiently outraged ports de bras for, 'Of course I wouldn't run into the road, Stacks. The cars are going at six miles an hour. I'd have at least got you to take me to the Whittington Hospital. Then we could have walked round the corner for you to boost me over the spiked railings on the suicide bridge.'
He half-smiled. 'Good. Jokes are slowly starting up again.'
Waiting in the walk-in centre, I talked about places I wanted to go before I died.
'Iestyn, you're not going to die.'
'Russia, obviously, finally. I want to do the Trans-Siberian Railway. Rome. Istanbul. New York. India.'
I got seen. I needed tests. Stacks pulled in favours and got me an appointment with a naval surgeon. Odd to see him in a Hampshire consulting room, rather than a Crimean field tent. More tests, scans. The upshot - not bowel cancer: a parasite in my lower gut. What was described to me sounded like a tape worm with no sense of direction. I'd probably picked it up in the Seychelles.
'But they sprayed the place every morning at 5am for bugs.'
'The whole Seychelles?'
'No, just the five star bit I was staying in.'
Over dinner before he drove home, Stacks asked, 'Why haven't you travelled to those places you mentioned before?'
'Because I wasn't dying before.'
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