The Smell of Hyacinths

Hyacinths. The first thing he could smell was the hyacinths. He had always loved the smell and he was content to lie still, enjoying it. He became aware that he had been in a deep, dreamless sleep. He could feel the dry sheets under his body, the cool air on his chest. None of this was unpleasant. The peace was reassuring, although he had no idea what he had been doing before the long sleep. Suddenly he noticed he was breathing, and he took a deep hyacinth-scented breath and opened his eyes.

The walls, carpet and ceiling were beige. He was on a single bed, lying on his back, shoulders propped up by several pillows. The blankets and sheets were securely tucked in, next to the the discrete metal railings that would have stopped him falling out of bed if he had moved in his sleep. If he turned his head slightly to the left he could see the one large window that allowed a bright but comfortable light into the room. The frosted glass obscured the view outside, but that didn't bother him.

He turned his head slightly to the right. There was a table next to him, its top just above the level of the railings. The only thing on the table was the bowl of hyacinths, pink and blue. He could remember being a little boy, planting hyacinths with his mother, being delighted when the grew. He had always loved hyacinths.

He turned his head back to a neutral position, looking straight ahead, breathing the scent of the flowers, unconcerned about everything else. It was surely springtime, with the cool but comfortable air, the bright but unaggressive sunlight, and the the hyacinths.

***

He doesn't see the door as it opens, but does hear the footsteps on the carpet. A man in blue surgical scrubs stands beside his bed. The man smiles at him.

"Hello there," the man says, the voice deep, rich, reassuring. "It's good to see you are awake."

Unable to return the greeting; lips, jaw, tongue too unresponsive.

"It's OK," the man says. "You have had a very hard time recently. You don't have to say anything."

A shared smile.

"I thought you might like the flowers. As soon as I saw you I thought you would like hyacinths. I brought those from home." Check the pulse, check temperature. "I breed hyacinths you know. From scratch. Not many people do that these days. It is easier just to buy the bulbs, but much more satisfying to do it my way." The man crouches, his head level with the hyacinths. "But that's how I started, with bulbs from a supplier. I guess that's how we all started."

More eye contact, another shared smile.

The man stands up. "I guess you are still pretty tired. I'll leave you alone for some more rest. If you need anything, pull on this." A cord placed in the right hand. "That will set off a buzzer, and I'll be back right away."

A smile and a slow blink of acknowledgement.

And he was alone again, in the quiet room, alone and still in his private springtime, unconcerned, enjoying the cool but comfortable air, the bright but unaggressive sunlight, and of course the smell of the hyacinths.

Chipmunks

If something is very good, say a device for removing cat fur from the lint filter on the tumble dryer, or a gadget that makes a buzzing sound when you accidently put something non-recyclable into the recycling bin, people often say something like "That Defurrer™ is the best thing since sliced bread." It is a little known linguistic fact that before the invention of sliced bread, people used to compare new inventions to chipmunks, as in "My new Recycalert® is the best thing since chipmunks!¹

This all changed in 1842 when Arthur Slice patented and released his Device For Automatically Preparing Convenient Lamalae From Bread. Despite its name, and its alarming rate of coal consumption, the steam-powered device soon became popular, particularly among the industrious working class people of London, who were often too busy picking pockets, working as prostitutes, spontaneously bursting into song and dance, and dying of communicable disease to cut their own bread. (The middle and upper classes at the time had servants who prepared all their bread. These servants, known as "breaders", were always working class.)

A loaf of bread, when passed through Arthur Slice's machine, was cut into several of what Arthur Slice liked to call "lamalae". The working classes didn't take to this word. "Look, Mr Slice," they said. "We are the humble working classes of London. We are all hard working. Right from the moment we are born we have to start picking pockets until we are old enough to work as prostitutes and die of communicable disease. What with that and all the singing and dancing, we never had time for education. We can't use a posh word like 'lamalae' in the context of our food. And besides, the correct plural of 'lamella' is 'lammellae'. We're going to call them 'slices' instead." This so shocked Arthur Slice that he sold the rights to his invention to an early-Victorian consortium of industrialists and retired to Scotland to study Latin.

The "Slice Bread" machine became established throughout the Empire in the 1840s. The working classes were able to make sandwiches in record time and the middle and upper classes no longer had to employ a servant just to cut bread. Soon the phrase "its the best thing since sliced bread" entered the English language.

Sadly, not everybody was happy. There were hundreds of unemployed breaders who formed into an unruly mob and were going to march on Parliament in April 1844, demanding that Arthur Slice's Device be banned. Ugly scenes were avoided when all the breaders died of the same communicable disease in March.

The chipmunks, who were used to being hailed as the best thing before sliced bread, were also deeply unhappy. All over England, gangs of chipmunks smashed Arthur Slice's Devices. The situation was so bad that in Parliament passed the Chipmunk Prevention Act of 1846, which, among other things, made it illegal for chipmunks to gather in groups of three or more, for even a single chipmunk to be within 30 yards of a licensed bakery, or for a chipmunk to be in line for the throne or be married to someone in line for the throne. Prince Albert invented the sport of chipmunk hunting, and often lead chipmunk hunting parties in Hyde Park. It is now widely believe that he died after being poisoned by a militant chipmunk, but the Royal family released a cover story about typhoid to avoid scandal.

Arthur Slice returned to invention in 1850, having become frustrated with Latin. He died in 1851 in what appeared to be a freak accident involving a prototype of a machine he called the Device for Producing Convenient Wedges from Circular Cakes, although the question of why the pieces of his body were covered in tiny paw marks was never fully resolved. He was buried in Highgate Cemetery. Following instructions in his will, his tombstone was in the shape of a lamella of bread and had only the words "Fuck the subjunticve" carved on it.

This is why, to this day, you will never see a chipmunk buy a loaf of sliced bread.

---

1. Of course, nobody ever actually said that, as sliced bread was invented before the Recycalert®, so the phrase "best thing since sliced bread" was in use for decades before anyone had any opinion about the Recycalet®.

Milk Bottles

The invention of the milk bottle was a significant event in the history of Western Civilisation. For the first time there was a convenient, hygienic way to deliver milk to the consumer.

Prior to the invention of the milk bottle, milk was delivered via a network of plastic hose pipes that ran from house to house. Every kitchen had a milk tap in it. This was an extremely inefficient way of distributing milk, as the typical distance between the cow and the tap would be several miles. Most people drank less than a pint of milk each day, but you can get much more than a pint into several miles of hose pipe. You had two choices; either take the first milk that came out of the tap, which was usually quite elderly by this point, and almost always off, or you could run the tap until fresh milk came out. This was very wasteful and meant you had a few hundred gallons of rotting milk in your kitchen. As a result, very few people drank milk, the nation's health suffered, and from time to time an over-full cow would explode because nobody was drinking her milk.

When the milk bottle was invented, all of this changed. Fresh milk could be delivered in conveniently-sized portions direct to your door. More people drank milk, the nation's health improved, and fewer cows exploded.

For a couple of years after the milk bottle was invented the network of milk pipes lay unused. Then researchers at the Royal Society in London worked out how to use them for the nationwide distribution of electricity.

At the time, electricity was drawn directly from the ground by hand-operated pumps. Every village had electricity pumps in the square, and some of the grander houses in the towns had their own private pumps in their back yards. If you needed electricity in your house, say to run the light bulbs in your bedroom, you took a bucket out to the pump, placed it under the outlet, pumped the handle, and filled the bucket. Then you took the electricity back to where it was needed and poured it into your light bulbs, or perhaps your 19th Century television set.

Carrying electricity in this way was very dangerous. If you slipped and fell, you could get raw electricity everywhere. A splash of electricity on the skin could be very painful, often leaving a scar. Electricity buckets were very heavy, and may of our grandparents can remember seeing people made lame in electricity spills. Piping the electricity through disused milk pipes made it much safer. That is why electricity pumps are only seen in museums, and to this day electricity comes into our homes and offices in plastic tubes.

Toothpaste

Many years ago, when I was the youngest in the family, I remember playing with a tube of toothpaste. I must have been about a year and a half old, so it couldn't really have been any later than 1977. In those days toothpaste came in the traditional metal tubes with the screw caps.

This tube of toothpaste wasn't at home. It was in the supermarket, J&J Foods in King's Square. I was in the child's seat in a shopping trolley, and I was not happy. My two older brothers were there, and my Dad was there too. But my Mum wasn't. Even though Mum was safely at home, barely five minutes' drive away, I missed her. I have always been close to my mother - I apologise for the cliché, but its true - and I knew she wasn't well. I was fussing because I wanted to be with her.

I remember my oldest brother, Matthew, was walking on one side of the trolley. At the age of eight he was helping Dad do the shopping, walking a few feet ahead, collecting things he knew we needed. Martin, my other brother, was on the other side, a four-year-old boy trying to help his Dad, trying to be his older brother.

But I was in the middle, in the child's seat. And I missed Mum. I wanted to be with her.

We were near a shelf, and I was able to reach out and grab something - the tube of toothpaste. I took it out of its cardboard box and started to squeeze it. This was to be my first introduction to one of the fundamental laws of the Universe, a law that trumps the most sincere environmentalist. Entropy increases.

In my hand the tube felt metallic and cool. As I squeezed it I could feel the paste flow inside it. After a good few squeezes I wanted to put the tube back the way it was, uncrumpled and smooth. I did what any thinking toddler would do. I squeezed it some more, assuming that would even it out. Of course all that happened was it got more crumpled. I cried.

---

I remember my Mum crying about that time as well. It was just me and her. She was standing outside the car, holding me in her arms. We were on a country road, overlooking a huge field. "Oh Mummy, Mummy," my Mum was crying. I suppose it was then that I realised that my Mummy had a mummy herself, even if she wasn't here. I didn't realise the significance of the rows of rectangular stones standing in the field though.

---

Years later, I understood why Mum was crying. She told me she had only seen Dad crying once. And he was crying about that thing too.

The Nose Bleed

The first thing I did when I got into work this morning was have a ten-minute nose bleed. It wasn't planned; it was a completely spontaneous thing. I walked into the lobby, said hello to the receptionist (whose name I can never quite remember) and went upstairs to my desk. I felt my nose starting to run - at least I thought it was running. I wasn't too worried. I'd just been off work for a week with a cold. I got to my desk and decided to blow my nose before I took my coat and scarf off. That was when I realised my nose was bleeding, and bleeding quite entheusastically too. I was already half out of my jacket, but I'm quite well organised, nasally speaking, and always have a box of Kleenex sitting on my desk. Of course, during my week-long absence, my colleagues had used all but one of my tissues. The one tissue was almost enough to catch the blood as I wiggled out of my coat, but it wasn't quite enough and by the time I had my scarf off my desk looked like something out of a Stephen King novel. I had two options: find a colleague with an ample supply of Kleenex, or go to the bathroom. I decided that if there was another supply of Kleenex, then my own wouldn't have been so depleted, so I went to the bathroom trying not to leave too many bloody finger and foot prints. In the bathroom I stood next to the toilet, pulling out lengths of toilet roll form the holder, wadging it up and holding it under my nose and then discarding it into the toilet. After a few minutes, the toilet was filled to the brim with blood-stained toilet paper. I briefly considered leaving the toilet unflushed and starting the rumour that someone was really ill, but I decided against it and went back to mop up the dried blood on my desk. All in all, the nosebleed was a pleasant way to start the day. Not really too stressful, and nobody could look at me and decide I should be doing something else.

Andrew McFarland: Medical Physicist

Synopsis

Andrew McFarland - Medical Physicist is a medical drama based around the crime fighting activities of Andrew McFarland, the head Medical Physicist at NorHop, the 21st century Northern Ireland Hospital.

Extracts from episode 1:The Cooked Chicken

Scene 1

[Miss Louise Twysleton-Fyfe, a stunningly attractive nurse, and Andrew McFarland, the leading medical physicist in the Universe and a dead handsome hunk to boot, enter the Medical physics department one morning. They are the first to arrive.]

[LT-F] Oh, Andrew, I'm sooo pleased we are here alone again. I've been looking forward to this all week.

[AM] [speaks with deep voice, and rugged Northern Irish accent] Not now Nurse. This is war, and cancer is the enemy. Our job is to load the torpedoes of radioactivity![Brief pause while looking dramatically into the distance] Strange, what's that smell? Smells like something cooking.... Nurse, have you prepared a meal again, like last time?

[LT-F] No, I haven't. It must be coming from the hospital kitchens. I'll go and set up the Radiation Table ready for our first patient.

LT-F goes through door marked "Radiation Room: Caution - Deadly radioactive radioactivty".

[LT-F, offscreen] EEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!

LT-F runs back out of the room and flings herself into AMs strong arms, burying her head in his manly expanse of chest.

[AM] [Looking at ceiling] I said not now nurse. Wait ! [looks at her, full of compassion] There's something else, isn't there?

[LT-F] EEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!! EEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!! EEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!

[AM] What my dear, sweet nurse, what?

[LT-F] EEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!! It's Dr Beaumont EEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!! EEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!

[AM] Has he been making suggestions again! Why, I'll show him!!!!!

[AM lets her go and goes into Radiation Room]

[Camera cuts to close up of AM's face, which is filled with righteous ire]

[Camera follows AM as he goes into the Radiation Room]

[AM] Now look here Dr Beaumont, you may be the finest neuro-oncologist this side of Augher and Claugher but you can't keep putting your.... My GOD! Who could have done this!

[Camera cuts to view of Dr Beaumont, strapped to radiation table. He has been there for some time and is obviously dead. His flesh is being cooked by the rays from the "Kancer Killer" radioactive radioactivity machine.]

[LT-F comes into radiation room, accompanied by Policeman.]

[LT-F] Oh, Andrew. I called the police!

[Policeman] Blarney! Well, well well. It's murder!

[Policeman handcuffs AM]

[Policeman] Begarah! Its to jail with you, sonny-jim. Everybody knows you hated Dr Beaumont ever since he put his --

[AM,interrupting] But no, I couldn't kill. I'm a healer!!!!!!

[Policeman] Riverdance! You'll get the chair for this!

[AM] I'm innocent! Nurse, you will have to help me find out who did this, and thus prove my innocence!

[LT-F] EEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!! EEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!! I will help you! EEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!! EEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!! EEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!! I love you!!!!! EEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!! EEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!! EEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!

[AM] I know, Fyffe-bunnykins.

The rest of the episode goes on to show how AM escapes from prison and proves his innocence. This is the final scene.

Scene 487

[Radiation room: AM, LT-F, six nurses, twelve doctors (all considerably less handsome than AM) the Policeman, five other policemen, Judge (in full robes) three boy scouts, and AM's cute little doggy who has helped in so many ways in this investigation - bless him - are present.Dr Beaumont is still on the table, still cooking.]

[AM] And you see Dr Beaumont, or should I say Herr Beefenburger, here, was so ashamed by all the things that he had done, that the only way out was for him to take his own life. So he strapped himself onto the table and turned the Kancer Killer on to maximum.

[Policeman] Ballykissangel, There's just one thing puzzling me.

[AM] Don't worry.

[Policeman] Terry Wogan! How did he tie his hands behind his own back like that?

[LT-F] He was always very skilled with his hands!

[AM] That's right nurse, but that's not how he did it.

[Everybody else] Whatttt????

[AM] You see, those aren't his hands.

[Everybody else] Whatttt????

[AM pulls Dr Beaumont off the table, revealing his arms are free, but underneath is Nurse Pink, with her hands tied behind her back.]

[AM] Dr Beaumont knew that the only other person who knew his secret was the late Nurse Pink, or should I say Madame Definitive, so he killed her, tied her hands behind her back and lay on top of her, making it look like he was murdered.

[Judge] But why was he so ashamed? After all he'd been putting his --

[AM, interrupting] After he tried that on Nurse Twysleton-Fyfe I gave him a good thrashing in the car park. That knocked some decency into him!

[Policeman] Blarney! That's why he tried to make it look like you killed him!

[AM] That's right.

[Policeman] Shamrock! Are you going to give me a thrashing for arresting you and then sue me as well?

[AM] No, good sir, I'm not. If there were more policemen like you on the job then there would be less criminals on the street.

[Policeman] Guinness! I'm saved!

[Judge] I think we'll have to call on your investigative skills more often, say once a week for 12 consecutive weeks?

[AM] That would be great.

[AM winks at camera and smiles]

[Dog barks three times]

[Everybody laughs]

[End sequence begins; music is YMCA in Japanese]

No residents of Augher or Claugher were harmed in the making of this episode.

About Love

What can I say about love? No really, what can I say about love? I'm 22. One of my friends thinks he knows about love. Listening to him talk is embarrassing, really. He met a girl in a bar a few weeks ago. She invited him back to her flat. Nothing happened, he was too scared. But he thought he was in love with her. He kept visiting her even when it was really obvious to everyone else that she was just interested in a drunken one-nighter. He told everyone that he was in love and he wouldn't leave her alone, even on one occasion when she was on a date with someone else. Really. It all ended in tears (of sadness for him, of relief for her) when she finally told him to get lost.

I'm 22. I understand about lust. You know where you are with lust. There is no doubt. You don't feel an ill-defined trembling in your stomach. You have a simple hard-on, a really clear message from your body. Lust has another significant advantage over love: it is much easier to sort out lust on your own.