CHATTY man

An encounter in the hospital waiting room

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Every six months or so I have my eyes checked at the hospital. It's nothing serious, although it's kind of you to ask, just a condition that needs monitoring.

The form is this. The doctor looks into my eyes, while asking me to concentrate on her left earring and then on her right earring. There are one or two checks with expensive machines, then she tells me everything is fine and we talk about knitting.

This is odd because I’m not a great knitting fan, which suggests that she’s mistaken me for somebody else.

But I smile and nod as she tells me about the baby blanket she's just finished, or the scarf for her nephew.

Anyway, a couple of days ago I was in the waiting room. Actually, the phrase waiting room is a bit grand to describe this area. It's really just an open space at the junction of two corridors.

There were three of us sitting quietly. A woman of about 40 or so was reading a very elderly copy of a celebrity magazine (‘Cary Grant welcomes us into his wonderful beachside home, and answers the question everybody is asking - what’s new starlet Elizabeth Taylor really like?’).