four: fancy that. outposts of the nhs that examine nothing but balls

      wednesday 5 november / 9.12 a.m.

       Blimey, I didn’t know Tom and Nicole were back together.

      Mildly surprised but, honestly, not that interested, I return Hello! to the pile on the table. It’s only now that I see the date on the cover—July 1998. It must be a cunning policy cooked up by a Department of Health think-tank. Put ancient magazines in doctors’ waiting rooms and watch as patients are transported back to a halcyon age when Tom and Nic were the golden couple and you only had to wait two years for a hip replacement.

      I’ve never met Doctor Stump. He has been my GP for years, but I’ve been avoiding him. Doctors make me squeamish and having one called Stump is hardly likely to cure me of that. The only time I did visit, a locum was on. He was Polish. No disrespect to the guy—I’m sure he would have made an excellent practitioner in suburban Gdansk—but in South Woodford, where the East End blurs into Essex, he was no use whatsoever. Normally I take my ailments to the chemist, where I ply the pharmacist with my symptoms before leaving with an over-the-counter remedy. But I couldn’t see myself dropping my trousers in Superdrug, so here I am.

      Up on the wall the green light blinks. I’m on. I walk into the shabby surgery and sit down. Stump caps his biro and looks at me from behind his desk. Then he coughs. It isn’t a polite throat-clearing ahem. It’s a prolonged, spewing-blood-into-a-hanky, Doc Holliday affair that doesn’t look as if it’s going to finish any time before lunch. ‘Can I get you some water?’ I ask. He glares at me angrily—like Who’s the doctor round here?—so I sit back and wait. As he tries to catch the spittle with a billowing cotton hankie, I wonder if I’m doing the right thing. I mean, the lump…It’s probably nothing. The thing is, it doesn’t hurt. I’ve squeezed as hard as I dare squeeze one of my own testicles (a word I’m growing increasingly comfortable with) and there’s no pain. If it were something bad, surely it would be painful. By bad, of course, I mean cancer. Pain is the first thing I think of with regard to that disease. Cancer hurts. Like hell, by all accounts. Yet I feel nothing. So what am I doing here? Wasting precious NHS time, most probably.

      Then again, if it is something bad, what am I doing here? Why am I entrusting my health to a doctor called Stump? It’s like calling a new brand of sweetener Anthrax and expecting the public to sprinkle it onto their cornflakes. And look at him retching into his hankie as if he’s spent the last few decades ignoring his own profession’s very sensible advice on smoking. He can’t even manage his own cough and I expect him to help me?

      No, whichever way I look at it, coming here was a poor idea. Best I leave now, let him get on with the three old ladies in the waiting room, all of whom looked as if they might die in their seats if they don’t get immediate medical attention. I stand up, but with the hand that isn’t preventing his lungs from spilling into his lap Stump waves me back into my chair. With an effort that turns his face purple he finally strangles the cough and says in a voice awash with phlegm, ‘What can I do for you, Mr…’ He searches for the name on my file. ‘…Collins?’

      ‘It’s Colin,’ I say. ‘Like Cliff Richard.’

      ‘What, it’s not your real name?’

      ‘No, I mean it’s Cliff Richard, not Richards. I’m Co lin. No S.’

      ‘What can I do for you, Mr Co lin?’

      I’ve been giving my next line a fair amount of thought. Actually practising it in front of my bedroom mirror. Much like I used to mime to Smiths songs when I was fourteen. (And now I think about it, Doctor, it would appear that I have a growth on one of my testicles sounds like a Morrissey lyric, one he rejected as being too gloomy—that and the fact that finding a plausible rhyme for testicles would have been beyond even his considerable lyrical gifts.) But now I’m here—on the stage, in a manner of speaking—I can’t say it. So instead I mumble, ‘I’ve got the flu.’

      ‘Well, what do you expect me to do about it?’

      I don’t answer.

      ‘I suggest you go home, take some paracetamol and sleep it off,’ he says.

      I don’t move, though.

      ‘Is that it?’ he asks. ‘You’ve got the flu and you just came to tell me?’ He picks up his pen and writes something on my file—time waster probably.

      ‘No,’ I say quietly.

      ‘What then?’

      I still can’t say it.

      ‘Speak up.’ He’s irritated now. ‘I’ve got a waiting room full out there.’

       Yes, three old ladies and the Grim Reaper.

      ‘It’s my…I’ve got a…’

      He nods by way of encouragement.

      ‘I’ve got cancer.’ There. Said it. It’s out now.

      ‘Really?’ he asks, genuinely curious because, well, there’s no note of it in my file. ‘Where? When was it diagnosed?’

      ‘It hasn’t been…Not exactly. But I’ve got a lump.’

      ‘Where precisely?’

      I can’t say it.

      ‘Give me a clue.’

      ‘It’s…It’s on…My…’ No, still can’t say it.

      ‘Somewhere rather personal perhaps?’ Stump hazards.

      I nod.

      ‘Why don’t you point?’

      Good idea. I point.

      ‘You’d better drop your trousers.’

      ‘Do I have to?’ I ask.

      ‘Well, you could just describe it for me, I suppose,’ Stump says.

      Excellent. Relaxed now, I say, ‘It’s on my left…er…you know, my left one, and it’s about—’

      ‘I was being facetious, Mr Collins—’

      ‘It’s Co lin.’

      ‘Whatever, if we’re going to make any progress at all today you really will have to take your trousers off.’

       Damn.

      9.24 a.m.

      Still traumatised, I buckle my belt and zip up my flies. Stump noisily peels off his surgical gloves and sits down. He picks up my file. ‘Smoke, Mr Collins?’

      ‘No,’ I say fairly honestly. I’ll share in the very occasional joint, my one weedy concession to my inner Jimi Hendrix—I’m sure he’s in there somewhere—but I’ve never touched a cigarette.

      ‘Drink?’

      ‘Only socially…’

      …And not much of that these days.

      ‘How’s your general health been?’

      ‘Fine, I suppose. Apart from the flu.’

      ‘Are you stressed?’

      ‘Well,