by 3am I was the most poorly I’ve ever been in my life. I could not deal with this shit, and I didn’t know at the time that it was glandular fever and thought that I was actually dying, and so I went to the train station at half 5 in the morning and got the first train home.
The train home, for a start, was fucking horrible. There were three drunk boys, obviously on their way home after a night out who were well horny. They would not shut up or leave me alone until I told them that I was quite heavily diseased, possibly dying, at which point they all moved carriage and left me to die in peace.
After two days at home and not feeling any better, I decided to make a doctor’s appointment and see what the old bastard who’d been dealing with me for all of my life so far had to say about why I was ill.
I went in and told him what was wrong with me. Up until this point in my life, all of my visits to the doctor had been with either my Mum or my Dad, and so I was not used to being in a room alone with a doctor, and trying to tell them what hurt.
But I did try. I told him that my throat hurt, my head hurt, my stomach hurt, I felt like I was going to die, and I can’t sleep because my throat felt like it was trying to close up and murder me.
He was one of those cunts who hears but doesn’t listen. The first thing he did after I’d described all my woes was to ask how my Mum was doing. I don’t know, I told him, she’s a twat. He did a little cough. He did not look in my mouth or touch the Satsuma-sized glands in my neck, but instead told me that I had a throat infection, prescribed me antibiotics and sent me on my way, telling me to drink lots of fruit juice because it would make me ‘feel better’.
At home and on doctor’s orders, Dad fetched me plenty of juice and ran around after me while in between sleeping and whining I was reading
The Princess Bride
, telling Dad how it was different from the film. I took my antibiotics for three days before my hands started to feel very peculiar. On day four the skin started to peel from the palms of my hands and soles of my feet.
I don’t know if anything similar has ever happened to you, but it is very fucking unnerving to be reading a book and having bits of your own hand peel off and stick to the pages. I went back to the doctor. A different one this time who looked in my mouth and felt my glands and gasped when I told him what I’d been prescribed. It was only then that I was told it was probably glandular fever, throw the fruit juice and antibiotics away and go and have a blood test.
I had my blood test and stayed at home and missed a lot of uni. The skin started to heal on my hands and feet and after a while I stopped making plans to murder the GP who had nearly killed me.
He still works at the practice though, a big fat cunt who wears tweed and goes hunting, he’s a fucking delight. If you’re from where I’m from you’ll probably know him, so if you get the chance, do pop in and tell him he’s an arsehole from me. Ta.
Howards End
‘Howards End
is the involved story of two sisters and a house and the family which occupies it. But hints about the plot do little justice to the subtle art with which the narrative is developed or to the delicate pattern of its composition. This is not one of those novels which can be taken to pieces or put together, as if it were made of neat prefabricated units of experience. In the tangle of unpredictable and contradictory circumstances which beset the characters of
Howards End
there emerges a convincing portrayal of the complexity of human affairs. Margaret and Helen Schlegel, so different in character, are women of intense individuality: Forster’s analysis of the values and impulses which animate them make this book an absorbing scrutiny of motive and behaviour.
Thought E.M. Forster only wrote five novels, here and in
A Passage to India
he created what are widely held to be masterpieces.
The cover shows a detail from
The train home, for a start, was fucking horrible. There were three drunk boys, obviously on their way home after a night out who were well horny. They would not shut up or leave me alone until I told them that I was quite heavily diseased, possibly dying, at which point they all moved carriage and left me to die in peace.
After two days at home and not feeling any better, I decided to make a doctor’s appointment and see what the old bastard who’d been dealing with me for all of my life so far had to say about why I was ill.
I went in and told him what was wrong with me. Up until this point in my life, all of my visits to the doctor had been with either my Mum or my Dad, and so I was not used to being in a room alone with a doctor, and trying to tell them what hurt.
But I did try. I told him that my throat hurt, my head hurt, my stomach hurt, I felt like I was going to die, and I can’t sleep because my throat felt like it was trying to close up and murder me.
He was one of those cunts who hears but doesn’t listen. The first thing he did after I’d described all my woes was to ask how my Mum was doing. I don’t know, I told him, she’s a twat. He did a little cough. He did not look in my mouth or touch the Satsuma-sized glands in my neck, but instead told me that I had a throat infection, prescribed me antibiotics and sent me on my way, telling me to drink lots of fruit juice because it would make me ‘feel better’.
At home and on doctor’s orders, Dad fetched me plenty of juice and ran around after me while in between sleeping and whining I was reading
The Princess Bride
, telling Dad how it was different from the film. I took my antibiotics for three days before my hands started to feel very peculiar. On day four the skin started to peel from the palms of my hands and soles of my feet.
I don’t know if anything similar has ever happened to you, but it is very fucking unnerving to be reading a book and having bits of your own hand peel off and stick to the pages. I went back to the doctor. A different one this time who looked in my mouth and felt my glands and gasped when I told him what I’d been prescribed. It was only then that I was told it was probably glandular fever, throw the fruit juice and antibiotics away and go and have a blood test.
I had my blood test and stayed at home and missed a lot of uni. The skin started to heal on my hands and feet and after a while I stopped making plans to murder the GP who had nearly killed me.
He still works at the practice though, a big fat cunt who wears tweed and goes hunting, he’s a fucking delight. If you’re from where I’m from you’ll probably know him, so if you get the chance, do pop in and tell him he’s an arsehole from me. Ta.
Howards End
‘Howards End
is the involved story of two sisters and a house and the family which occupies it. But hints about the plot do little justice to the subtle art with which the narrative is developed or to the delicate pattern of its composition. This is not one of those novels which can be taken to pieces or put together, as if it were made of neat prefabricated units of experience. In the tangle of unpredictable and contradictory circumstances which beset the characters of
Howards End
there emerges a convincing portrayal of the complexity of human affairs. Margaret and Helen Schlegel, so different in character, are women of intense individuality: Forster’s analysis of the values and impulses which animate them make this book an absorbing scrutiny of motive and behaviour.
Thought E.M. Forster only wrote five novels, here and in
A Passage to India
he created what are widely held to be masterpieces.
The cover shows a detail from
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