Let me tell you a story
26th January 2009: I listened to a radio broadcast detailing the Burns’ night festivities in Alloway. This was, of course, on Sunday which is the real Burns’ night, as the broadcaster insisted on telling the audience every third sentence… or so it seemed. Given my Scottish antecedents, you’d have thought I’d be out celebrating the Ayrshire Bard myself, but instead I snoozed on the settee, book in hand, a glass of wine for company. Perhaps I should have opened that bottle of Jura sitting in my kitchen cupboard.
Still, I needed to rest, because the night of nearly everyone’s celebrations – the 24th January – found me in Llandough Hospital. Not an ideal Saturday night, but fortunately, also one that saw me both free of harm and ultimately lionised for an act that brought happiness to a few lives. Let me tell you a story…
The late Doug Symonds – with his new wife Evelyn
I arrived at Llandough in the middle of Saturday evening, roughly seven-thirty: this is a time tactically calculated to leave me little time to visit with a relative. Not my usual habit, I should add, just a behaviour specific to this particular relative. You would have to meet him to get the full measure of how much a displeasure this is, and it was only because my mother goaded me with guilt laden urgings that would have done a Monseigneur credit.
As I walked through the entrance to the hospital, I met with a friend and former colleague. Her reddened eyes spoke of enough to make me pause in my stride, rather than exchange warm but fleeting greetings. “What’s up?” I asked.
“Mum and Doug,” she started before dissolving. I waited, extending a hand to her shoulder as she added, choking on every word: “Doug is inside. Emphysema. Few days left. He said, he said…”
