Dear Philippa,

 

The brief pause in the Great Freeze (otherwise known as the Global Warming Memorial Freeze) prompted me to nip over to Hull to see Denise, my twin sister, and give her a Christmas present before Phase II hits, scheduled for today. I discovered when I called ahead that she had not been out of her house for nineteen days. I drove like Jehu over the Wolds, fearful of what I would find. Would she resemble Ben Gunn? Would she be huddled in a foetal attitude, keening at the world outside the window, and gnawing at the stump where her hand once was?  

 

 I arrived with fresh bread, milk, newspapers and magazines. She said very little, looked at the bread with a wild surmise, like stout Cortez on first looking into Chapman’s Homer, and immediately set about organising water and Bonios for my dog. I couldn’t be sure, she said, if you would bring her. She was fine; her scurvy will respond to treatment, I am confident of that, but will her sanity return? If it does, how will we know?

 

But let this be a lesson to you. Are your siblings coping with the weather? Check it.

 

I do feel slightly guilty that I had not discovered her plight until she was three weeks into it, especially as I had spent Saturday evening at the Groucho Club helping to celebrate my nephew’s 21st birthday over a fancy dinner – for twenty-one as it happens, most of them beefy rugger-bugger medical students, all tricked out in DJs and not a pair of Ferrero cufflinks in sight. I was encouraged by the uncomplicated determination with which they set about trying to drink the Club dry, and I enjoyed watching their flushed faces, shining with innocence, as they began to appreciate the impossibility of their ambition – none of the namby pamby disapproval for this generation of doctors-to-be. How unlike my own doctor, sourly scolding me for my modest intake, who with his pinched, bearded face resembles nothing more than a ferret peering out of a bear’s arse to complain about the winter accommodation.

 

I was asked to say a few words, during which I gave them some wise advice about how to select a medical specialty when the time comes. Your name may give you a clue, I told them: Dr Brain, a very distinguished neurologist, is a good example of how this can work, Christine Cutting, a surgeon, and my favourite – James Riddle, a urologist. My secret hope, which I did not share with them, is that somewhere there is a medical student called Alan Fistula who will settle comfortably into a career as a proctologist, with a side-interest in solving simple anagrams. It was a wonderful evening, to be surrounded by youthful excess and confidence. The following morning I remembered the last occasion when I spoke after a dinner at the Groucho Club. It was an event put on by one of the royal medical colleges, and for my contribution they paid me a fee of £500 – enough to cover the bar bill last Saturday.

 

But back to my sister. I’m going to have to keep a closer eye on her. It’s all very well showing up after three weeks with a loaf of stale bread and a bottle on semi-skimmed, but it doesn’t seem much when she’s been subsisting on nourishing kitchen scraps pushed through her letter box by neighbours whose wheelies are full, and trying to knock together a tasty pasta dish with used teabags serving as ersatz ravioli. What would Mum think?

 

Best wishes,

 

 

Howard