It started so promisingly.
Margreet
and I had been invited to a birthday party in London ’s most famous 18th century gaming
club.
So,
dressed accordingly, we took the Underground train almost door to door, with us
having to stand up in the rush hour crush.
At
the club, after ascending the grand, red-carpeted staircase, we passed a gaming
room where many tables, designed for gambling with cards were looked down upon
by oil portraits in gilded frames of long-dead worthies.
As
the door of this famous room fortuitously happened to be open, we had a glimpse
through it to where, in the 18th century, great estates and
plantations were lost and won – along with probably slaves and possibly wives.
After being
unable to sit in the Tube, and then standing up at the party for an hour or
two, I felt a bit faint, and managed to reach a chair with Margreet’s support.
My eyesight
and brain became a little befuddled – rather like blacking out when throwing an
aeroplane around the sky as G-forces take effect (except that then the brain is
more intact).
Margreet
saw my ashen face and called an ambulance.
The
fact that two Members of the Cloth offered me water, frightened Margreet more
than me.
First
to arrive, by bicycle, was a paramedic who, seeing that blood had drained from
my face toward my feet, led me, under the direction of a servant, to the
aforementioned gaming room (where the gamblers had departed). I was asked to
lie prone on the floor.
Blood
to the head, a satisfactory pulse rate, demeanour and spirits, soon returned.
But
when medics are called, precautions have to be taken. So all of the medical
equipment able to be taken on a bicycle was put to use.
The
summoned ambulance men had difficulty in locating the building as, in the 18th
century, there was no need for it to have a number. And, accordingly, no number
to the place had since been thought necessary.
Now,
with the arrival of the ambulance men, and me feeling normal once more, I was
put into a chair and, because there was no lift in Georgian times (the one for
food being too small for anything larger than a small roasted ox – standing
up on end), I was carried down that rather grand staircase, with ambulance men fore
and aft, as if in a sedan chair. I expect
that Georgian estate owners, having lost their property and inheritance at the
tables, might well have fainted, too, or had the vapours or whatever, and been
carried down to their carriages in much the same manner.
I
was taken to the hospital where my pacemaker had been installed and cleared by
general and cardiac doctors to go home, and to have the pacemaker checked on
another day.
By
the early hours of the morning we were home, and glad to consume a bowl of hot
soup.
The
pacemaker, which had, until then, given me the feeling of indestructibility,
was checked the following day and found to be in excellent working order. I had
fainted only by standing up for so long, with blood sinking downward.
As
before, I cannot over-praise our National Health emergency and back-up
services.
But
I would rather not have to use them quite so often.
