Wasted with Waugh

Sunday 9 March 2014


Darling Freddie, how too too ghastly.  Make sure Mummy doesn't fob you orf with any non-U drugs.  Get morphine and cocaine and ketamine and a gin fizz and tell the Ritz to send you oysters and plovers eggs.  Put it all on my account.


I had a lump-that-was-nothing removed a long time ago.  It was my first taste of general anaesthetic, and bloody hell, I loved it.  A lugubrious South African, covered in freckles and with an incomprehensible accent, held my hand and recited an incantation.  I floated away, trailing a vapour of disconnected numbers and felt my hand slip from his as I ascended to the heavens.

I had been reading the correspondence of Nancy Mitford and Evelyn Waugh. For those Nancy-lovers among us, its more fabulously spiteful social commentary; bristling with in-jokes and shot through with her misguided loyalty to the bastard Colonel that would never marry her.

My next memory is of lying in a high-sided bed, through whose slats I could see another patient.  I was aware of a voice berating Nancy and begging her to dump that sod Palewski, to stop giving money to her pointless soak of a husband, and to write at least seven more books set in Paris.

When the nurses in the corner shouted 'Please, be quiet!' for perhaps the tenth time, it dawned finally that it was me talking, that I was not chatting with Nancy Mitford, but lying in a cot with my arse on show, holding hands with the lady next to me.  I whispered "so sorry." She asked me, "Are we alive?"  That stumped me and I drifted happily about between worlds until the South African appeared to take me upstairs for more counting games and to check I knew my own name.

Last week, Freddie hurt his arm in training.  He sat covered in mud, blood and glory as we eavesdropped in horror on the lady in the next cubicle, describing how difficult it was to go to the loo with all those blisters.

I have spent many hours at A&E with various muddy lads over the years, and fully expected them to strap up a nasty sprain and send us home.  Instead, as soon as they saw the X-ray, they talked about operating that night, about allergies and weight and the options of pinning and plates and all sorts of scary stuff. Eventually, they plastered him up and we have to go back every few days for the next few weeks for consultations and more X-rays and time off school, and using special software instead of a pen, and having all the girls argue about carrying his lunch tray.

There's a still a chance they will operate. he told me this afternoon, from under a pile of discarded socks, football magazines and empty cereal bowls, that apparently you can end up quite bonkers after a general anaesthetic, and how brilliant it feels to get so spectacularly wrecked just lying on a bed.  "Nonsense," I said with my poker-faced-hypocrite Mummy face on. "There's nothing wonderful or dangerous about it.  You won't know a thing."

Photograph: Thurston Hopkins/Getty

14 comments:

  1. I am sorry to hear Freddy has been injured, but your comments on anesthetic are hilarious. It all feels so soft, floaty and lovely, till the drugs wear off. Hope he can avoid surgery:-)

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    1. Thanks Jennifer, me too. Amazed we've got this far without something being broken, and it's a particularly nasty one. Still, lovely having him at home for a few days!

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  2. Hello Elizabeth:

    We have, we fear, in recent times had rather too much of hospitals and anaesthetics. Indeed, a recent emergency operation [taken off an aeroplane and into an ambulance upon landing] in Budapest was, in itself, an eye opener where conditions are not quite as they are with the darling NHS.

    But we are much relieved to learn that you have survived your experience as, without doubt, Freddie will his!

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  3. I'm so sorry to hear that; what an alarming experience that must have been. I agree, the NHS is a complete gift. We are very lucky indeed. A friend told me recently that she didn't go to the doctors for the entire two years she lived in the US; she just googled symptoms and acted accordingly....

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  4. So you are blogging again and, I see from your sidebar, you've written five posts already in March. Are you feeling ok or did you have a quick whiff of something when you were in A&E?

    I may need to make myself a coffee, or something stronger, and settle down for a read.

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    1. Feeling annoyingly chipper, suspect may have picked up something in A&E. I'll put the kettle on, how's your mum?

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    2. Mum seems to have turned a corner since the new year. Dad died in February 2011 and it has been very hard for her but she always tries to stay cheerful and is as daft as ever.
      Thanks so much for asking x

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    3. Daft is lovely, good for her. Is she still in the North East? Am thinking about a nip to Northumberland in the summer, think my brood need to experience Craster Kippers. Who am I kidding? The dog will eat them x

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  5. Sorry to hear of Freddie's misfortunes. He is lucky to have you as his caring mother. Somehow, by some miracle, my family has not returned to the ER since I gave birth to my daughter. I suspect that these visits are part and parcel of having boys; at least that is what I hear from my friends.

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    1. I think they are right; there's a certain invincibility about lads, isn't there?

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  6. Nancy Mitford's banter sounds exactly like Diana Cooper's to her "Darling Monster". I do hope you speak to Freddie the same way. A bit of eccentricity with your Freddie would probably be much appreciated by him, by the sound of it.

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    1. I have tried, but Freddie's preferred communication du jour is Irish, with as many 'feks' and 'Holy Mother of Gods' as is seemly for Tesco on a Thursday afternoon. It has been lovely having him at home!

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  7. Christ this fredfie must be important. He must also think his mothers blogging language is foul!!!
    Im off to bed. Ciao

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    1. His mother is a filthy-mouthed harridan and he is a workshy little soap-dodger with a questionable taste in television.

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Please leave a comment if you can be remotely bothered - anything you have to say is valuable and I absolutely love hearing from you all. Elizabeth