Eye and Book
April 22, 2023, 12:28 pm , by Richard Lutz
by Richard Lutz
I was sitting in reception at a private hospital because the British health system can’t give me a cataract operation for two years. I’ll be well past zimmer frame age by then and, by that time, the earth will be wrapped in radioactive plastic and the rivers will be filled with effluent and nuclear sludge overseen by omniscient AI robots.
I go private for a whack of cash. Something’s amiss on this green isle set in a silver sea. Someone forgot to shovel billions into a free public health service that, as a credo, offers care to meet unlimited demand.
Anyway, in this private hospital, staffed by medical staff trained in the tax funded public sector, I was ushered past reception. Not by a doctor. Not by a nurse. Nor a porter or even a janitor with a mop and bucket. I was ushered in by an accountant from the private hospital’s finance department.
She was my first point kf contact. She wanted to see my credit card and double check I’ve paid the cheque. Which I have. All ok? she asks as she hands me the bill marked ‘Paid’. No, I say. For the fifth time, they have my family doctor’s name wrong. And each time management says the wrong name is the right name because it appears on its database. I explain the doctor retired six years ago. They say that’s the name in the computers. They can’t change it.
While waiting around, I check the Other Waiting Arounds; they’re locked into phones, scrolling and rattling out messages. Re-scrolling and checking their sites. Not a newspaper to be seen. Not a magazine. God forbid, someone digesting a book.
But no one is reading so much as a paperback, a newly minted hardback nor even a well thumbed text book. It’s as of the world of books has ceased to exist.
Not to sound too smug..well, I am actually…I always try to carry something to read. It’s a catch all strategy that fills time. You can’t drown in ennui with an open book. A waiting room, whether in a hospital or an airport, is simply just another corner to gobble down a couple of pages.
For the record, I don’t use bookstores. If someone doesn’t give me a Must Read, I’ll patrol local charity shops. Shelter, which helps the homeless, and Oxfam are my neighbourhood go-to places. They both have excellent biography, history and fiction departments.
Unfortunately, my local library is underwhelming, confusing history with a bombardment of military books. And it’s dark and gloomy. For some reason, the next library down the road, in the Partick area of Glasgow, is better with intelligently stocked shelves in rooms filled with air and light.
So, with that in mind, what books am I carrying around now or littered around my reading chair once I get home from this eye operation? What treasures from this realm of gold, from this disappearing world of books?
Right now, from my pals at Shelter, I’ve found a crisp novel about how Elizabethan playwright Christopher Marlowe was murdered in a London pub just about the time Shakespeare was knocking out his early stuff. Was it a drunken brawl? An assassination by government spies who thought he was a Catholic spy? A fight over a lover? Or an unpaid bill? I’ll find out.
Waiting in the wings is a gritty bio of Steve McQueen. Not the contemporary film director/artist. But the 1960’s Hollywood icon who liked fast cars, all night bars and roughing it up with pals like James Dean. This Steve McQueen was a nasty bully (according to the author)… who was unlikeable, addled with drugs and neuroses but smart enough to know how to play Steve McQueen in film after film. He died at 50. He never grew old.
Also waiting is a medieval history about four Renaissence rulers vying for European power: 16th kings of England, France and The Holy Roman Empire as well as Suleiman the Magnificent from the Ottoman Empire. Them boys knew how to fight first then sit down and talk, connive, sign peace treaties, betray and then fight again. The author, John Julius Norwich, is one of my favourite history writers.
Also waiting by the chair is a novel by Willa Cather and a great looking pile of nonsense from old time tv comedian Dick van Dyke that has all the hallmarks of a quick knock off before drifting off into Ancientdom. I’m a sucker for entertainment biographies. Especially good have been portraits of Rita Hayworth, John Ford, swimmer/actor Esther Williams and George Gershwin.
Once finished, these retired books will go here:
It’s my hyperlocal mini-library. An obsolete seaside phone kiosk buffeted by decades of beach sand, stiff southwesterlies and, sometimes, a touch of sun.
It’s been bought for £1 and turned into a free library. It has some choice books, some kids’ picture books, a flurry of crumpled beach reading, a full range of dubious Dan Brown novels and the inevitable expanse of cookery epics slapped together by tv chefs out to make a buck (if not a soufflé). All for free.
No library card here. No digital reservations, no subscription fees or librarians or fines for bringing them back late. Just the deep blue sea, a shifting shoreline and a gut feeling that if you rifle through enough books, you’ll find a gem or two. Take it out and, if possible, return as necessary.
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Tim C
A whack of cash I’m sure and a whacko system – fella I know in his mid sixties recently had his cataracts done privately BUT paid for by the NHS! He was more than capable of paying if he’d had to.
Curiouser & curiouser…
Tony Fitzpatrick
Your opener on the private clinic leaves one wondering if they are motivated by money and not healthcare… or am I reading too much into it….??
Bill O’Moseley
So, err… snap ! Had the same op yesterday. Question: How long for things to clear up?
Martin McCrindle
Does Kindle count?
Claire Oldfield
Well, by the time you have paid the private sector medical fees you will need to be sourcing your books via charity shops – either that or send the family back out to work.
RD from LA
it would have been amusingly ironic if someone waiting around was reading 😉:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Cataract-Lodore-Robert-Southey/dp/0803710259
i hope all went well…being blind in one eye since 1980 ( a retinal problem), I know anything to do with vision loss can be scary.
Laurel Rice
we really love the free library Bill built and put out front, odd and surprising often and even odder hand me downs of odds and ends. Donuts in there one day?!
Lil
Your local library! Well done. I love it!
Alice Cummings
Will’s cataract op went well, again the only contact we have experienced with the private sector.
Joel Mandelbaum
As for the first part of your article, welcome to the American medical system (but since there is financial incentive to do cataract surgery, it gets done very quickly here) Sounds like you have some great reads in your special libraries
Having time to read a lot more is one of the biggest anticipated perks of my upcoming retirement.
Jim B/ Maine
After having “failed” my first cataract evaluation 3 or more years ago (I did not complain enough about the problems, and so the insurance company would not authorize the surgery yet – the theory they followed was “hope he dies before he complains enough”), a month or so ago I went in having cover myself in ashes, wearing a hairshirt, rending my garments and wailing at the unfairness of blindness. Or something like that. So this time I “passed”, and will have both eyes done.
Alan Holland
Good luck with the operation Richard. Presumably you’ll be able to read without glasses now?
I flew out to the Netherlands yesterday and at the gate I was the only one of 120 waiting passengers to be reading a book. The other 119 were staring at phones.
Tessa Goodrich
I use Kindle and read serious books which always turn out to be dreary. But I’m addicted
William Rice
Does Scotland have the wonderful library app called “Libby”? All one needs is a library card in order to access all manner of digital fare. There is even a part of it called “Kanopy” with which you can watch four movies a month for free from a truly vast collection.
Quresh
I hope Scotland has something like Libby, it is a real blessing.
Bella Houston
Hoping sight issues are improving
Sue Johnson
When in Cambridge went into Waterstones and it was busy, you’ll be pleased to hear.
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