Happy Families by Richard Gordon

Author:Richard Gordon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2008-11-04T08:20:48+00:00

Autumn

1

Autumn in suburbia comprises days of melancholy hypochondria.

It was beautifully epitomized as,

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, by John Keats (1795–1821), who qualified at Guy’s Hospital and was using the customary medical abbreviation for mistura, a mixture. The hypochondria epidemic is caused by fading of the dark colouration which all suburbanites assume during the month of August. This is comparable to the well known summer colour change of the black-necked grebe, the moorhen, coot and other birds.

The suburbanite will put himself to much expense, inconvenience, discomfort, and even danger, from high-speed travel, unsafe water and undigestible, oily overspiced food, to ensure even a slight change in his shade of skin. Colour is a symbol of carefree, modern, suburban leisure, like an Access card. His enjoyment of the August migration is esteemed in direct proportion to the deepness of the browning. His desire to impress neighbours that he was having as wonderful a time as he lied on his postcards, incites him to court detention at Heathrow as an illegal immigrant.

Some suburbanites turn only bright pink and have their skin come away in shreds. They willingly risk reappearance resembling a butchered carcass, because returning without a tan is as humiliating as Jason coming home without the Golden Fleece or MCC without the Ashes. It also arouses suspicions of really having done 28 days inside.

Suburbanites who prefer not cramming themselves among bodies like rows of boiled frankfurters on the scorching white sand of foreign beaches, 47

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can precook themselves like oven-ready chicken pancakes with a solarium on their own bathroom ceiling. This allows them to sunbathe starkers even at midnight in midwinter, though many find St Tropez preferable, as there is only the wife to look at.

Suburban skin lightens as the evenings darken, until some September morn they see themselves cheese-pale in the bathroom mirror, all health clearly drained from a body nervously awaiting the onset of painful symptoms.

Seven major hypochondrias are endemic in suburbia during the damp autumn months.

ANOREXIA NERVOSA

This is defined by a standard medical text, as “a condition in which there is a profound aversion to food, often leading to severe self-starvation”. It is interesting in arising from entirely different causes in males and females, like sterility.

Aetiology

In the male, the debilitated eye becomes strongly attracted to items in the newspapers indicating that to consume bread and butter, bacon and eggs, fish and chips, oysters and fruit-and-nut bars, Stilton and celery or roast beef with Yorkshire is to court imminent and instant death –

probably in an embarrassing situation, extramarital sex being renowned for a far more violent effect on the cardiovascular system than Saturday nights with the lady wife. Trenchant articles by eminent medical men explain with relish that these foodstuffs – and many others which the public so stupidly enjoys – are infected with the deadly Coli Estoril, or Portuguese plague.

As he wishes to stay alive to read the next morning’s issues, he nervously pecks at the tasty dinner provided by the lady wife with the feeling of having married into the Borgias.

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