Dear Philippa,

 

Grave news of my clever economist friend. Having detected a very small lump on his foot a few weeks ago, which has since baffled all the physicians who have viewed it, all of them distinguished and very nearly as clever as the patient. Anyway, the medical profession’s finest having failed to come up with a definitive diagnosis – it looks like a lump, one of them solemnly observed – he set to work on the problem himself. He considered the signs and symptoms, took into account his clinical history, and with, I suspect though he denies it, some cribbing from Wikipedia, he got there himself – it is foot cancer!

 

He promptly checked himself into a hospital in York, private of course, and presented his aggressive tumour to a brilliant surgeon. To a man with a scalpel everything looks like a lump; the theatre was prepared at once, his leg was painted orange, and under the knife he went for heroic surgery. After weeks of self-dramatisation, and coming up with the only diagnosis he seemed to want, the resolution was disappointingly prosaic – a cyst, moreover, not an exotic cyst, Not even a wart, but a lower class common or garden cyst. I have not seen him since he was discharged, with bland assurances a packet of paracetamol, and a lighter wallet, but I hear that he is hobbling about in some sort of orthopaedic boot, to which he has become emotionally attached. So attached, his long-suffering wife tells me, that she has trouble persuading him out of it and into his pyjamas at bedtime. He is expected to make a full recovery.

 

After this brush with death, albeit at second hand, I hoped for a quiet end to the week, but not a bit of it. On Friday I attended a fund-raiser in aid of The Army Benevolent Fund, commonly referred to as The Soldiers’ Charity, a splendid, lean outfit that devotes itself not to bricks and mortar but to delivering financial help to soldiers, active and verteran, and to their families. They generally put on a good show, and this was no exception. We had an amusing turn from Gervase Phinn, schools inspector turned comic, with food and wine, the wine branded Howcroft oddly enough. And there was an auction, the sort where you overpay for stuff.

 

One lot caught my eye – a tandem sky-dive with an army paratrooper. If I judged it right I could bid aggressively, but drop out near the top, giving me the opportunity to swagger about as a bit of a daredevil who had been frustrated by the careless wealth of others, and avoid stupid risks. I dropped out at four hundred quid, the top bid was four twenty-five. Job done. I reckoned without the charity’s director, a brigadier of my acquaintance, who saw through me. He sidled up, told me he could see I was disappointed, and said he could fix a second jump for me for the four hundred.

Bummer!

 

I consoled myself with the certainty that wife and daughter would beg me not be so foolish, not to subject my raddled old body in such a hazardous venture. Not a bit of it. They urged me on, telling me it is an ideal opportunity to solicit sponsorship for the church’s New Toilet Fund, to benefit a second good cause. So I’m stuffed. And four hundred quid is not so much, after all, for the chance to relax in the arms of a para, even if plunging earthward at God knows how many feet per second, with bowels in uproar. I could of course come up with a little bit of foot cancer if my nerve fails.

 

Best wishes

 

Howard