It's true, you know: you can learn things from watching Quiz shows. In fact, sometimes the answer to a problem that's been bugging you for years will just pop up as if by magic. It happened to me yesterday when Marlilyn and I were watching Richard Osman's House of Games, a particularly innocuous pseudo quiz show with a reasonably articulate 'host'. The question was: In what year was the first operation held under the (UK) National Health Service? The answer was 1948.
It was like the heavens opened and the answer to a puzzle which has annoyed me for years was revealed. There was no NHS in 1947 when, still living in Scotland, I needed my tonsils removed. The question was, why was it done at home? It would have been very expensive to pay a doctor privately, so, my two aunts Jenny and Bette, both nurses, turned Aunt Jenny's bedroom into an operating theatre, walls swathed with sheets, kitchen table sterilised, and so on, and the operation took place there. Was there a doctor, or did my aunts take turns at cutting? Who knows?
I only know that it needed to be done again, this time in 1950, when the NHS would pay for it and the doctor was definitely qualified. I can still remember the ward where I was taken to recover: a long, long room with beds down each wall, quite close together. And I remember the icecream I had later to make my throat feel better.
Try doing that today!
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