Scrunched up, squeezed against the window, not much room to breathe, writing haphazardly in the miniscule notebook with a pencil that would soon be impossible to write with: one and a half inches of hopeless innuendo, mounds of oxymorons, overspiced, overseasoned and the coffee like dishwater. Not that we see dishwater much these days given that all of us (well, almost all of us) have invested in the labour saving delights of a dishwasher. All unpleasantness (like dishwater) is rendered invisible.
Pushed into a corner, trying to remember first times and first lines, trying to make a fresh start, trying to remember the headings, trying to remember the excitement of a week or ten days ago . . . what was it like to be caught in Olympic hysteria, amazed at our propensity for tears.
So I was surprised, not to say disappointed with my first glimpse of him. Seedy might well be the word; his patchily shaved jowls, his tieless shirt, his gravy stained suit, his gaping trainers, and why not mention his thinning hair and scalp dotted with livid pustules and several acres of dead skin. I thought: betting shop. I thought: pub held in a 1951 time warp. I thought: permanent austerity.
There was something suggestive in the still spinning chair of his secretary, assistant, wife, partner – though perhaps not even a woman; the habit of my assumptions prejudicing my judgement, clouding the ecological and emotional realities of personnel and micro-politics. There has been much talk of assassins recently but this did not seem to be the scene for a sniper, rather the bloody mess of a demented machete attack. Out of control. But I have to accept the immediate evidence that there is neither murderer nor victim.
And besides I had been acting on the understanding that I was about to meet a surgeon who was cut-price enough for my needs and wishes. When the price of an admittedly complex procedure is available for £20.00 cash instead of £20.000 on the credit card then I think we are all agreed that privatising the health service was a good thing.
Triple by-pass – no problem: in and out in an afternoon. They will hardly miss me on the trading floor of Barclays. After all, a bargain is a bargain.
He attempted to straighten himself, to lengthen his spine, to unwind himself from whatever traumas he had recently been put through.
Mr. Thoroughgood? I asked, pushing for confidence and brushing aside any doubts that might have surfaced in my mind. If one is going to believe in privatisation then one has to behave appropriately. As Perry was recently telling us: “An ideology, to be effective, must always in some measure answer to reality.” This was reality and I was really here.
He nodded and forced his mouth into a sickly grin: do you have the cash? His head wavered as though unsure whether to nod affirmatively or shake despondently.
But come on, lighten up, that was his problem.
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