I’m sitting here trying to read Arctic Dreams by Barry Lopez discovering how the Muskox survives the intense cold (it has no specific ‘musk’. It’s name is a misnomer. Imagine plodding about the tundra with the winds swirling up your pelt only to find that you’ve been named wrongly as a species). While I’m reading I’m itching from welts that are appearing all over my legs and arms. They come and go at certain times of the day and due to me dousing my limbs with calamine lotion. I would approach a doctor but I don’t want a re-run of the Birkenhead fiasco.
Many years ago – around 30 – while I was living in sin in Birkenhead I was bathing and thought I detected a lump in my right testicle (‘mon testicule droit’ as they say in Paris). Being a right panic merchant I immediately made an appointment with a doctor at a surgery round the corner. (I would have gone to the newsagents up the hill but Mr Khan knows fuck all about such matters).
My appointment was with a Doctor Sparrow, I remember, a handsome chap wearing a subtle though distinctive cologne.
“Lump on ma baws, doc. Pure shitin’ it”
“Ahem. Take off your trousers and pants”.
“Where should I put them?”
“Over there on top of mine”
Seems the good doctor too was a fan of Chic Murray. We were getting on great.
He footers and fumbles with my gonads.
“Can’t seem to detect any lump at all”.
“Honest, doc. It was there before I came out”.
This is beginning to look suspicious. He tells me that when it comes back again to ring immediately and he’ll tell the reception to give me an emergency appointment right away.
Very next day and there it is again; wee lump, right testicle. I does as he says and rush away around there praying that my lump sticks around for the good doctor to cop a feel.
It doesn’t.
I detect a glint of doubt, maybe even panic in his soft blue eyes.
Third time lucky and he tells me it’s ‘just gristle’.
We still keep in touch to this day.
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