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Plop the Raindrop
IF my brain was big enough to remember everything I’d seen, I’d probably be fatter than the Earth by now. It’s what happens when you are indestructible and live for millions of years, as water droplets like me do. Fortunately we’ve developed a system for sharing information between us in a sort of worldwide waterway, a bit like your worldwide web. So when we are bouncing along in a river or being bashed around in ocean waves, we can link up to share memories, news and other information. It can even happen in trickles of water sliding down a window pane. Next time you sit by a tumbling stream listen to us having a chat. A lot of what you hear is rubbish. Do you want to know what everyone had for tea or what elephant poo tastes like? But a few weeks ago I was remembering being stuck in a dark damp cave a few hundred thousand years ago when some of your ancestors turned up. One of them started scratching the cave walls. I was right on the end of a stalactite, so too high up to see clearly what was happening. As it happened, a friend of mine read my mind and said he’d been stuck in the same cave fairly recently and it was now world famous as the site of some of the world’s earliest cave paintings. I expect these days they would be called graffiti and someone would go along and wash them off. The next thing you knew these early human beans were scratching stuff on stones and bark and all over the place and had invented writing. I must confess that’s something I’ve never mastered. The nearest I’ve ever got to a book is getting stuck in ink. Of course these days your head would explode if you had to remember all the information that comes your way. Life was so much simpler years ago. Your ancestors seemed happy simply to find water, food and shelter and then found time to drag huge rocks miles so they could stand them in the ground. I could never work out why. Early road signs perhaps? These days you seem to keep everything you need to know on machines rather than in your own minds. I suppose it’s understandable when there’s so much information to take in. But the real world is so much more interesting. MENDIP GRANDAD
Back on stage
HEALTH & FAMILY
FOR me, the best indicator that the pandemic is under control is people returning enthusiastically, and without fear, to live music, theatre and comedy events. The joy of last year’s Valley Fest above Chew Valley Lake will take some beating, but this year I’ve already signed up to do two shows at the 2022 Edinburgh Fringe. The largest open arts festival in the world has had a By Dr PHIL huge influence on me. I first attended in 1990, as half of HAMMOND an angry, shocking Bristol-based junior doctor double act called Struck Off and Die. We delighted and offended people in equal measure, winning awards for our Radio 4 series whilst getting record numbers of complaints to the Broadcasting Standards Council. We were successful enough to launch my partner, Tony Gardner, into a stellar acting career (My Parents Are Aliens, Fresh Meat, Lead Balloon, Last Tango in Halifax, The Larkins). I decided to stick with medicine but combine it with comedy, journalism, broadcasting and campaigning. And as I hang up my stethoscope at 60, I still hope to have a good few years of writing and performing ahead of me. So less of a retirement, more of a renaissance. My first Edinburgh show this year is called Dr Hammond’s Covid Inquiry. I’ve covered the pandemic in depth, every fortnight, for two years so I’m going to try to put it altogether, welcoming different opinions without hating each other. The fringe entry says: “Private Eye's MD and best-selling author of Dr Hammond's Covid Casebook dissects the pandemic. The more certain someone is about Covid, the less you should trust them. Do we know what went right and wrong? Could we have prevented it? Why are experts so polarised? “Can you trust a leader who petrifies the people while partying? Should we have copied Sweden? Or Taiwan? Have vaccines saved us? Will we be kinder to animals and children? Are pandemics here to stay? Can we disagree without hate? Warning. May contain traces of doubt, compassion, humour, nuance and batshit.” My second show is later and darker, and reflects on how medicine has changed from when I first did a locum shift as a doctor in 1985, even though I was still a medical student, and nearly killed a patient. It’s a reflection on all the campaigning I’ve done on stage and in print to try to make the NHS safer, and yet waiting times are as long as ever and it’s more stressful and less fun. The show’s called How I Ruined Medicine. “The outrageous confessions of a retiring NHS whistleblower. Doctoring used to be like Downing Street. Posh unaccountable alcoholics working silly hours, cocking up, covering up and laughing it off. Then I broke ranks and ruined it. “For 37 years I've worked in the NHS and exposed its darkest secrets. The NHS is still dangerously understaffed and error-strewn but now everybody knows it. I've spawned an army of regulators, lawyers and aggressively informed patients demanding excellent care in a collapsing service. You're even supposed to know what you're doing and prove it. How unfunny is that?” The good news is that I’m only going for two weeks (August 15-28th, 14 performances of each show), so you can still enjoy Valley Fest the week before and cycle up to Edinburgh. Tickets go on sale on March 3rd (https://tickets.edfringe.com/box-office). If that sounds beyond you, I’ll be doing some local shows too, with The Art of Living When You Know You’re Going to Die on March 4th at the Merlin Theatre Frome – as part of the Frome Kindness Festival. https://allevents.in/frome/dr-phil-hammond-presents-the-art-of-living-whenyou-know-youre-going-to-die/200022073904521. And I’ll be back at Wedmore Arts Festival on May 7th. Come and say hello.
MENDIP TIMES • MARCH 2022 • PAGE 59
