Thursday, October 21, 2004
Memory Lane
Sometimes I feel so utterly alone. It wouldn't matter if a hundred people read this page, or a thousand, or ten thousand. It wouldn't matter if I was surrounded by friends, or feeling pensive standing alone by the Thames at sunrise. It wouldn't matter if I had a good woman on my arm, or, for that matter, bad.(although the bad ones are always more fun, innit.)
I know, I know. It's all in my head.
*****
I found this post today by accident. I like his account of the archtypical National Day Parade. Pfiffle. Nice neologism. I like.
*****
I took a trip down memory lane today.
I hadn't meant to, and memory lane turned out to be called Hospital Avenue. As I walked down it on some trivial errand for my future employers, I was hit by a sudden sense of deja vu. The further along the road I walked, the more real the memories felt, and then I knew that I had been here before.
Ghosts of people seemed to walk around me; I remembered walking with a small group of doctors to a lunch where they would try (futilely, in two of our cases) to persuade us not to do medicine, and whinge and gripe about what it really meant to be a doctor before telling us not to be put off because as far as medicine is concerned, the sky's the limit; it felt like only moments ago the words came off my numbed lips : But the way you tell it, the sky has a low ceiling.
I began to remember a certain forensic pathologist, father to one of the Legends that, apparently my cousin would later shag and tell on; but I remembered instead a kindly man with a sense of humour bordering on insanity who washed his hands too many times a day. The images came faster and more confusedly; I remembered a jolly fat man everyone called the Incredible Super Fat Man, I remembered the smell of "belahchan" (do you want to smell a dead body?) I remembered. I remembered. I remembered.
And as I walked around unfamiliar buildings, my feet taking the lead from me, I wondered... is that it? Is it that one? And then I rounded the corner, and with growing certainty, I knew it was this one.
I walked around to the front.
They've changed the words on it, from ISFM to SHA, but it's the same building.
Exactly the same building.
And I remember...
I know, I know. It's all in my head.
*****
I found this post today by accident. I like his account of the archtypical National Day Parade. Pfiffle. Nice neologism. I like.
*****
I took a trip down memory lane today.
I hadn't meant to, and memory lane turned out to be called Hospital Avenue. As I walked down it on some trivial errand for my future employers, I was hit by a sudden sense of deja vu. The further along the road I walked, the more real the memories felt, and then I knew that I had been here before.
Ghosts of people seemed to walk around me; I remembered walking with a small group of doctors to a lunch where they would try (futilely, in two of our cases) to persuade us not to do medicine, and whinge and gripe about what it really meant to be a doctor before telling us not to be put off because as far as medicine is concerned, the sky's the limit; it felt like only moments ago the words came off my numbed lips : But the way you tell it, the sky has a low ceiling.
I began to remember a certain forensic pathologist, father to one of the Legends that, apparently my cousin would later shag and tell on; but I remembered instead a kindly man with a sense of humour bordering on insanity who washed his hands too many times a day. The images came faster and more confusedly; I remembered a jolly fat man everyone called the Incredible Super Fat Man, I remembered the smell of "belahchan" (do you want to smell a dead body?) I remembered. I remembered. I remembered.
And as I walked around unfamiliar buildings, my feet taking the lead from me, I wondered... is that it? Is it that one? And then I rounded the corner, and with growing certainty, I knew it was this one.
I walked around to the front.
They've changed the words on it, from ISFM to SHA, but it's the same building.
Exactly the same building.
And I remember...
