Is It Just Me? (17 page)

Now, to your second task. Oh yes, it’s Task Time. How did you fair with the last one? I spent a lovely evening at home alone without my mobile. I found myself concentrating far more on the film I was watching, having a little think about my life, making up a poem that I then recited to an ornamental duck, before realising I had no idea what the time was because my mobile also serves as my watch. All in all, it was rather freeing. Don’t tell Little Miranda but she’s probably right: having time away from technology is surely a good thing.

Your second task might feel as un-British as getting a bra fitted, sitting comfortably in a sauna, Zumba dancing, or not laughing at a yoga fart, but please don’t shy away from it as it will do you the world of good, I promise. I would like you to:

GOOD LUCK AND GOD SPEED

Well, you know what, we’re only halfway through our literary romp. But we’ve got plenty more to discuss on our journey; many more life-hiccups to warn Little M about. Talking of hiccups – a minor complaint, but hellish when they pop up at the wrong moment, yes? So with hiccups in mind, let us move onwards with Miss Book, to discuss the frankly murky Mr Subject that is . . . HEALTH.

S
o, My Wonderful Dear Reader Chum! Please note at this half way point you have been upgraded to not only Dear but Wonderful. And more than that may I say how terrific you look. Quite the stunner. What a lovely top – is it new? (How brilliant would it be if you
had
just bought a top and settled down to read this chapter?) After a restorative pit stop, I hope you’re feeling in fine fettle.

^*
Little Miranda enters, not in even nearly fine fettle
^*
I can’t breathe, help. Oh my goodness, that was terrifying. Oh dear, I’m going to faint, oh, I didn’t like that . . .

Little M, what
is
going on?

I’ve just scrambled out of Miss Handel’s chemistry lesson. Normally I would skive it because really what’s the point of litmus paper? But because it seems the highlight of my adult working life is ordering stationery, I thought I had better learn some stuff. I blame you for this. I swear, I can’t breathe. We were doing some weird experiment with strange powders and a Bunsen burner to try to find out how much energy there is in a peanut and then see if it would explode by coating it with copper. Or something useful like that. Anyway, Podge made me do ours because she was busy finishing the packet of peanuts and now I’m SURE I inhaled some poisonous gases. I mean, I don’t want to be dramatic but I’M DYING! I AM NOT LONG FOR THIS WORLD.
^*
swoons, rallies
^*
Quick, I must write a will . . . I can’t breathe . . .

Will you calm down?

Calm down? I’m DYING! This is no time for calming down. Call Mum. I need her to arrange for Dollar to sing ‘Mirror Mirror’ at my funeral.

Look, you’re obviously not in your dying moments . . .

You don’t know that . . .

I know it for certain. As evidenced by the fact that I’m standing here now, in rude health, at the ripe old age of thirty-eight.

Oh. Oh yes. Oh. Sorry about that. Sorry about that, everyone. At ease, if you please. I just thought Miss Handel had poisoned me with something that felt like it had stung my lungs . . .

Stung your lungs? No, that didn’t happen. Your lungs remain very much un-stung. What you’re suffering from is a minor panic attack, brought on by an overactive imagination. (It won’t be the last, MDRC.) I bet Miss Handel told you it was nothing to worry about, didn’t she? You should have listened to her. She knows what she’s talking about.

I am not sure she does. I am convinced she has made up that periodic table thingy. What IS that?

I still have no idea.

I’m going to go back and tell Miss Handel that I shan’t be partaking of her stupid, terrifying classes any more for no other reason than frankly her hair’s too big for her own good. I mean, seriously, what’s she hiding in there? Nest of bees? Nest of squirrels more like. It really is a mighty bouff, and that much hairspray near the Bunsen burners is surely a risk. I am going to tell her I’ll report her to the head.

I’m afraid you need to keep on good terms with Miss Handel. You’re actually going to re-meet her in twenty years’ time when you go back to visit the school.

Why do you go back to school?

Oh, um, I do a kind of Question and Answer thing in the hall.

What, like a test in front of the whole school?
^*
panics
^*
It’s not on the periodic table is it?

It’s on ‘the arts’.

Shit me – I don’t know anything about the arts. Should I start doing homework now? That sounds properly horrifying. Is it because you didn’t pass your English GCSE, and it’s taken you twenty years to revise for it again, and because you’re so stupid you’re being made to come and retake it out loud in the hall in front of Miss Handel and the whole school? Oh God, Oh God . . . Oh no, I think I’m having palpitations. I knew I had a weak heart . . . I’m dying again
^*
suddenly has an interesting thought, stops dying
^*
Hang on, you’re telling me that Miss Handel will still be here in twenty years’ time? But she’s so OLD.

She isn’t. We thought her terrifically old, but it turns out she is actually the same age as I am now. Therefore, on the cusp of her sexual prime.

Urh. That’s made me feel sick. And my heart is going again. Those gases have done something to me, I swear it . . .

Calm down.

Sorry. I’m being a giant massive loser from Planet Loser, aren’t I?

Yes, you are. You’ll do this regularly. Several times a week you fly into a massive panic about whatever illness you think you’re currently dying of.

I am not
that
bad.

May I refer you to the fact that for two years you believed the rumour that if you burped and farted at the same time you could explode and die? Or that when you stayed at Clare-Bear’s parents the other night and had an electric blanket for the first time, you were so worried that you might wet the bed and electrocute yourself that you didn’t sleep all night?

You never know. Better to be safe than electrocuted to death in the middle of the night. It would have been really embarrassing, and Clare-Bear would tell everyone at school I’d wet the bed.

Also, you used to think you’d better not get your tummy button wet in case water got into your body through it and drowned you, while yesterday you got up from the dinner table and washed a sausage because it looked ‘a bit germy’. And isn’t it true that if you’re ever even the tiniest bit hot, you start to worry that you might spontaneously combust?

No, wait – that
is
actually properly terrifying and does happen. I heard it on the news. One minute a man was just sitting watching the telly, the next he’s a pile of ash. I mean – BLOODY HELL! Seriously.

Shhh, you’re exhausting yourself. All this health worrying is turning you into a husk of your former bouncy self.

Now listen, as I have to tell you, Little M – there is actually something wrong with you.

^*
goes pale and quiet, whispers
^*
What?

You have got what we call . . . hypochondria.

OH.MY.GOD! How long have I got? Let’s get that will polished up. Sis can have my tape cassette collection and Mum can have my Ramsay Street duvet cover. Call Dollar, let’s schedule the funeral; I want Michael J. Fox to be one of the pallbearers. I know he’s very small, so you’ll have to find three other very small pallbearers otherwise he’ll just be walking along underneath a coffin floating above him . . . and I want the school choir to sing ‘Thank You for the Music’ and . . .

Stop, stop! A hypochondriac is simply someone who worries excessively about their health, to the point of thinking that any illness, however minor, is life-threateningly serious. Someone who spends about half their life convinced they’re dying. Someone, in short, exactly like you.

That’s nothing like me. I’m just . . . cautious.

May I refer you to last year’s ‘hairball’ incident? Tell our reader chum what you presented to the doctor.

Oh . . . umm . . . really? Ok. So,
I went to see Dr Mowatt and explained that I had this tickly cough in my throat and that I’d seen our cat, Ollie, cough up a fur ball, so I suddenly thought I might have a fur ball stuck.

And what did Dr Mowatt say?

He asked me if I was a cat. And said if I was, then I’d be able to cough it up. (He was, frankly, very patronising.) And then he said if I wasn’t a cat, had I been licking my cat or other pets to cause a blockage of fur in my throat? He said if I hadn’t, I was probably OK.

I do wish you hadn’t gone to him about it. I have to face dear old retired Dr Mowatt every year over a mince pie at Mum and Dad’s Christmas drinks party.

He’s still alive?

Yes. It’s just that youth makes you think every adult is way older than they actually are. Each time I see him, the memory of asking him if I had a fur ball makes me go all hot with shame and I turn a kind of Party Plum Puce colour. Half of me wants to pretend to be a cat, to prove that I wasn’t mad but actually part feline; then I realise if I start randomly miming cat actions at a drinks party, I will look truly nutty.

My Dear Reader Chums who live in small villages – I don’t know how you cope. You must bump into the local doctor regularly. Is it just me who assumes that every time you see your doctor out of context, they’re looking at you and remembering all the embarrassing conditions – real or imaginary – which we might have talked to them about in the past? If I were a doctor (heaven forbid – can you imagine?) I’d struggle not to point and laugh at everyone in the street.

But back to you, Little M. I am afraid you
are
a hypochondriac. Pure and simple. And do you know what I blame?
Neighbours
.

Why
Neighbours
?

When you go to a school on top of a hill in a Berkshire hamlet, your afternoon dose of
Neighbours
is the main contact you have with the outside world, isn’t it?

S’pose so.

Which is why you can’t not call any yellow Labrador you see Bouncer and why you call all of your imaginary boyfriends Scott. And if someone in
Neighbours
gets a headache or forgets something, within five episodes they’re horribly dead of a brain tumour. This is because
Neighbours
is a fast-paced and dramatic television series, which requires a high turnover of interesting characters. Correct?

Correct.

And this has, I’d humbly suggest, warped your perspective on the human body and its capacity for disease and healing. Do you see?

Um . . . yes. I suppose that sort of makes sense. Will I always have hypochondria?

No. We grow out of it. More or less. We’re now sane enough to be able to watch DVDs of
ER
without imagining ourselves dying on a gurney.

DVD?
ER
?

A DVD is like a round, flat video. And
ER
is a fabulous television programme from the mid-1990s, which is mostly fabulous because of the presence of one Mr George Clooney.

Who’s George Clooney?

Gosh, what a treat you have in store there! He’s a film star. And without wishing to blow your mind too much – he’s ten times better looking than Kevin Bacon.

Whoa! Not possible. I watched Kevin Bacon in
Footloose
again last night – wowzer buckets. Is this George better even than Tom Selleck?

Tom Selleck? I’d forgotten that one.

Tom Selleck in
Three Men and a Baby
is totally gorge. I want to marry him. Actually, I decided last night I would quite like to marry a doctor. Because then I’d feel totally calm and reassured at every turn.

That might be nice: not because I’d want his medical knowledge; more because I’m rather drawn to the white coat and the commanding manner and generally get a bit giddy with the air of caring authority and then that stethoscope . . .

You’re thinking this out loud . . .

I am so sorry, MDRC. Moving on . . .

Time passes. Hypochondria abates. Though I must confess, I still hate being ill. It’s a rotten business. Rotten, rotten, rotten. And is it just me, or does going to the doctor present many a social dilemma, which one would rather not deal with? Going to the doctor is frankly a rotten business. Rotten, rotten, rotten. (I have said rotten so much now, it’s not even a word to me – just a sound. Try it.)

Much as I love, respect, and owe a debt of gratitude to the many healthcare professionals who’ve done their bit to prevent my early demise, I must confess that a visit to the surgery is certainly on the list of one of life’s trials where I regularly come a cropper.

Firstly, it’s called a surgery.
Surgery
. A grim, drawly word, I’m sure you’ll agree, thick with images of blood and scalpels and general sicky grimness. If you’re ill, why can’t you go somewhere positive and fun-sounding: the Hug-Me-Better Love-Dome, perhaps, or the Health-O-Sphere?

Of course, now, with certain ailments, you may not even get
in
. You rock up blearily to the door of the doctors’ surgery, palpitating, groaning and sweating, wondering vaguely if it’s flu. Only to be confronted with a big sign that reads: IF YOU MAY HAVE FLU, PLEASE DO NOT ENTER THE SURGERY.