This strange little adventure, my very own Brief Encounter, probably belongs to my 20th year. I was a little low in spirits as the train whistled and clanked out of the Gare du Lyon that summer day. I had cried all the way to Folkestone after an argument with my...
My first three years at medical school were good fun. We were not so different from any other students; long holidays, and plenty of time for larking about and socialising. Of course I had to do a lot more science, by an extra year at the beginning, for ‘Pre-med’ or...
In which I get down and dirty with the bedbugs. “Why don’t we spend the summer working as Butlins Redcoats?” said a school friend in Walthamstow Hall, as we discussed this pressing question of how to spend our months of freedom from boarding school. “Lovely,” I...
So, let’s progress backwards and see what had brought me to studying medicine in the first place. I had always wanted to become a doctor, like my mother, preferably a psychiatrist too, which I thought was like her also, though there are considerable differences...
I dreamed the other night of a country which stood as a symbol for the whole Universe, a common enough picture. Imagine, if you will the most beautiful landscape you know. Mine might have been the Yorkshire Dales, or maybe the green hills of the borderlands between...
I thought of calling this – in the style of old fashioned writings – “In which I have a breakdown and fail my Final Examinations” but that sounds a little sad. My memories of medical school were mostly happy – even happy-go-lucky. Blood? Yes – plenty of that, both...
