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| THE IMPECCABLE CLEANLINESS OF THE SUNSHINE MIND |
The thing, and I don't want to give the dignity of naming it anything else because it's begun to give me no end of trouble, like the effect of George's Magic Medicine, has grown to Titanic proportions in my imagination and...well, let's just call it a man boil, although the Japanese doctor at the hospital has elevated it to the rather noble status of an abscess on the old Gluteus Maximus.
Now, I do have a rather high resistance to pain, but without the pain killers and the subsequent ingestion of some kind of gut-settling antacid, I would rather sleep and pretend this wasn't happening, which I've started to do without the soporific effect of a good dram which I can't have anyway because of the antibiotic I have to take.
The Japanese hospital is cleaner than the cat houses in upmarket Thailand. If fact, the whole city of Fussa is surreally clean and I found myself taking a photo of a very rare and unusual phenomenon, a butt discarded in a gutter outside the hospital - that is of the genus nicotianao and not the result of some kind of unusual amputation.
Anyway, for a twenty bucks (or 2,000 yen) I can get myself attended to by a very ancient and gentle doctor who resembles Lao Tsu as I imagine him to have been. His bedside manner is impeccable and I'm hoping he doesn't remember Pearl Harbour and the subsequent melee at Hiroshima and Nagasaki as he tends the abscess with a 10 cent plaster.
They move around silently in their crisp whites and as I lie face-down on the table, I half expect to hear a mono-tonal voice from Kubrcik's HAL in the corner, Hurt him as much as you want, but don't turn me off. You need me!
Well, antibiotics now for another week and nothing to drink except milk and non alcoholic wine, a misnomer if there ever was one, like ginger tea.
The final irony is that after traipsing through some of the most foetid and foul places on the map, I end up with this in Japan. Was it something I did in my last life?-Emperor Hirohito's revenge, perhaps.
The last twist is when leaving the hospital. I spot a sign above a hairdresser's:
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| THE UNCANNINESS OF THE UNLIKELY CO-INCIDENCE |
I think back to my old friend, Dr Quaisar Alam in Bhodgaya - he should have been on my case for sure.
As a friend said, That's life. There but fortune, pal...I reply.
