Clap Your Hands

These Thursday evening claps are thought provoking in many ways.  The debt is clear.  How can clapping ever be enough? 

As Fantasy Bob stood at his front door yesterday, a range of emotions came across his mind.  He began to think of his own debt to the NHS and all those who work in it.  He was prompted particularly by a casual conversation earlier in the day in which he learned that the New Economics Foundation had, a number of years ago, done a load of number crunching and come to the conclusion that 1976 was the best year in the UK for quality of life. 

Now 1976 was an interesting one for FB.  He was in a bit of a limbo - he had graduated the previous year, had started a PhD but had left after a term when a broken ankle on the rugby field knocked his already low spirits flat.  He returned to Aberdeen, tail between legs. 

Back on both feet, he got a job in social care as a House Parent at what was then described as an Assessment Centre with Secure Facilities.  It was where troubled teenagers were held while the Children's Panel deliberated over their fate.  There was no extensive disclosure process or vetting.  FB simply went to see the Director of Social Work and was on the job the next day. 

Secure facilities meant that all doors and windows were locked. On his second morning, as he walked up the hill from the bus stop he saw one of the inmates running across an adjacent field absconding.  He gave chase, collared the lad and brought him back.  A legend - sort of  - was born.

This is not the point of this story, although there are many things that could be said about his experiences as a care worker they are for another time.

Aberdeen Royal Infirmary - home for 2 months

Some months later FB woke up with a pain in his abdomen.  He went off to do his duty, thinking he just had a spot of indigestion.  All day the pain nagged.  In the early evening, he was playing football with the lads, but he had to withdraw to be violently sick.  The doctor came in the middle of the night and he was ambulanced to hospital.  He did not leave it for another 2 months.  FB will not describe all the details of what ailed him - suffice it to say that when he eventually did leave he weighed a mere 9 stone, and he'd put significant weight on in the last two weeks of his stay. It was a close run thing by all accounts - his parents, he learned later, were convinced that they had lost him. 

Also a film

1976 was the hottest summer on record and FB could only look longingly at the sizzling heat outside his window - elsewhere cricket was happening. 

As he slowly returned to life, a small TV was brought to FB's bedside and he could watch the Test Matches. His attempts to explain, mid bed bath, the wonders of cricket to the nurses were on the whole unsuccessful.  But the cricket was something to behold. Even in black and white the outfields looked scorched.  And there was scorching play too.

That summer brought the West Indies under Clive Lloyd.  His illness had meant that FB missed all the controversy about the following Tony Grieg's unwise grovel interview.   But he joined the action for the final Tests.  It was the start of the West Indies period of dominance, so well described in the book the Fire in Babylon.  The unrelenting assault by quick bowling complemented the dazzling batting of Lloyd himself and Richards and Greenidge.  Blistering.  No wonder the study found it was the best year.

And FB agrees - for it was a year he survived and learned many important lessons.  Not how to play leg spin bowling obviously, but much else.

So FB has more cause than most to thank the NHS and all who looked after him at that time.

Clapping on a Thursday evening - how can it ever be enough?