Tuesday, February 22

 

I had a call from the local medical centre that Dr Joske wanted me to have some blood tests.  It was interesting because I’ve never met Dr Joske who it seems is the doctor at the practice responsible for my on-going health program.  I might have had three or four appointments at the practice since we moved to Longford and each time I’ve seen a different doctor.  Even though she would not recognise me in the street, Dr Joske still has some way of knowing when I need to be bled.  I think there’s probably an alarm on her computer which alerts her to when her next patient needs his regular check-up.

 

The pathology nurse is available at the practice from 8 o’clock each morning.  I needed to fast so I postponed my breakfast, filled my wee bottle and was on the step when the doors opened.  The nurse hadn’t turned up so I waited patiently.  By 8.15, there were 10 people in the queue.  Eventually, the practice nurse was delegated to start dealing with the crowd , otherwise there would be no room for people waiting to see a doctor.  The delinquent nurse wandered in at 8.50.  I never heard what her excuse was, and it may have been a good one, but I was pleased that she wasn’t carrying a cup of coffee.  It would have been adding insult to injury if she had stopped to buy a coffee while we were all waiting for her, having missed our breakfasts.

 

The long wait gave me a chance to observe the other people in the surgery.  They were a typical cross-section of people you might meet in a country town. Most were over 60 years of age, as you would expect.  They ranged from the well-dressed to the shabby, from the well-fed to the scrawny, from the cheerful to the miserable.  It was the voices which gave them away as country people.  Nowhere did I hear the soft accents of the townie.  Instead, there were the flattened vowels and tortured accents of the person for whom school was just an interruption to their real lives.  The receptionist behind the counter was one of the worst: she had a voice that would have shattered glass. 

 

I’m afraid I’m becoming a snob in my old age.  I don’t mean to denigrate these salt-of-the-earth men and women who’ve, no doubt, made a great contribution to society but I wish they would take a little more care with their speech.  Surely, it’s not that hard.  Are they frightened their friends might regard them as pretentious?

 

If you missed Back Roads on ABC this week, you missed hearing some of those voices.  It’s worth watching the show just to meet Rob Wilson, a breeder of rare chickens, who has the most extraordinary personal story.  It’s on iView.