HEARTBEAT: It is an extremely nice autumn day as I write. It is crisp and clear and as I look from the study into the garden, I can only marvel at the astonishing red gold colours of the leaves of the Virginia creeper.
They are eddying and whirling around the garden in a gentle breeze and I suppose they will soon have to be collected and composted. I must say that I miss the smell of bonfires at this time of year. I don't think we are allowed to have them now in case the world will stop or something. What happens at Halloween? Are we going to put all those young environmental savages in prison? Thornton Hall we may need you soon.
A useless piece of information comes unbidden. How was it that the Romans were able to grow grapes as far north as York? It must have been pretty warm then. Of course they didn't know anything about ozone anyway, so they probably were not unduly worried. While on the subject, I was reading lately about the last mini ice age in Dublin and London; how the rivers froze and how markets were held upon them and even fires were lit and chestnuts roasted. It strikes me that the temperature goes up and down quite a bit. I would not be at all surprised if we were all still around in a thousand years or so, always providing of course, that the present government remains in power and that Mary Harney remains Minister for Health. Look how they looked after us all in the devastating crisis of the Millennium Bug. There's an election coming fellow citizens, let the good times roll. Well at least the good promises.
There was some better news unveiled, however. We've only lost one computer programme this week, or maybe it never existed. It only cost €3 million, so it doesn't really matter. You could win that on the Lotto. But the point is that the previous smoke-free minister announced it, and his department confirmed that it was up and running. Minister and staff are clearly identifiable. What happens now? In passing it might be noted that officials in the department received performance-related bonuses last year. This is richly deserved as they are without doubt some performers.
Like Enda Kenny, I am apparently no good at sums. I had alluded as indeed did many commentators, to the 100,000 or so employed in the health service. I was corrected by the Taoiseach who said the true number was nearer 145,000. Now Prof Drumm in talking to the conference of hospital consultants (IHCA) refers to the 70,000, employed by the HSE. Roll up; roll up, ladies and gentlemen, now you see them, now you don't. And for our next trick, no please stop right there I really don't want to know.
Back to the real world where things are tangible and you can experience and understand them. Some of my colleagues and contemporaries claim that from the best of their doubtless faulty recollections, we were not the collection of monastic hermits that could be inferred from my column. Rather they claim that we were normal social animals within the usual constraints of time and money.
This was the Dublin of the Dolphin, the Trocadero, does anybody remember the Paradiso? Very rarely, when flush, there was the back bar in Jammet's, the Red Bank and Alfredos. I do not imply that we were regulars in any of these establishments but occasional migrants. When the Red Bank departed the scene the building became a church, which was obviously what Dublin really needed. Occasionally also, those so inclined and who felt, usually erroneously, that they were possessed of the requisite knowledge, went to the races. Remember the Phoenix Park and Baldoyle, both sadly departed. Custom dictated that such forays, particularly if successful, finished in the Dolphin Hotel in Essex Street. These were usually group visits, but sometimes we were accompanied by young ladies, lacking the discernment to stay miles away from us. Places like the Russell and Hibernian hotels existed then, but they might as well have been on the moon for all their relevance to our lives. The Shelbourne and Gresham hotels for the compulsory dress dances also figured.
Young men about town, we most certainly were not and relative penury led us to more simple pursuits. There were dances in the clubs and a plethora of now vanished ballrooms in the city. Wilder souls got as far as Dolly Fawcett's or at least claimed they had. There were the parties in flatland, admission a brown paper parcel containing your six bottles. The trick was to securely hide your six pack and live off somebody else's. This occasionally led to misunderstandings, to put it mildly. Invitations were nice but rare and such were usually taken to include all your friends and indeed the whole pub. On occasion some luckless girl giving a decorous party at home in the presence of her parents had to face this happy mob decanted on her doorstep demanding admission. Had I been a father in those days I would not have wanted my daughters associated with the likes of us.
As perpetual "guests", for want of a better word, inevitably we discussed becoming the hosts at a "res" party. These were a genre of their own. It might strike some that there might be difficulties in organising such in the middle of a working hospital. There were, but we followed generations of residents in countless hospitals down a well-mapped route. All campaigns experience difficulties and ours was no exception. The first was always going to be the most difficult, and so it proved.
Maurice Neligan is a cardiac surgeon.