Arthur's Medical Records

Extracts from his Medical records...
(Cannot read all the notes - what passes for writing could just as easily be the trail of a rather deranged spider from the ink-well to the sink. NB - ask Gandalf if it might be elven script or even hobbit hieroglyphics (in their case more likely to be loweroglyphics). (The young lady on the right has nothing to do with these extracts; she just happens to be Uncle Albert's favourite tv actress)

Bamberger-Marie disease - repeated inco-ordinated jumping movements; repetition of meaningless words; inability to make decisions. Sounds like most people nowadays, especially those on TV chat shows (not just the hosts...)

Snow blindness - Cannot distinguish between white and yellow snow, which could prove an unwelcome gastronomic surprise. Either sort would be wrong for railway tracks. Cannot say the same for those of yesteryear, which we cannot find. Gets worried when the temperature drops to the low thirties - we aren't sure exactly what sort of creatures live in the araucaria at the bottom of his garden, but suspect they might be metallic.

Space Accident - Cannot define gravity. Says that Commander Data is far more human and a better actor than the rest of the new lot on Star Trek. Does not seem aware of all the other later crews since Baldie and the Monkeys.

Behaviour assessment - difficult - what do you make of a man who buys his cat a water bowl labelled DOG in large Gothic lettering, on the grounds that his cat, being Siamese, cannot read English?

Labyrinthine disorders: cannot find Minotaur. Ilium X-ray: looking for topless towers, some of which (definitely Latin types, if not Trojan horses) are to be found on page III of Acta Solis Romana. Maintains he was actually checking for evidence of the construction of the female form being based on the Golden Mean.

Selective Amnesia, (a posh way of saying that Arthur only remembers what he wants to). Perhaps it should be called Voluntary Amnesia? What a lot of people seem to suffer from it... Begins in childhood with school homework...

Blood donation: refuses to give armful

Vertigo, vestibular disorders - as when asked if he had vertigo, replied, No, I live just round the corner... Feels dizzy on standing up, probably connected with his happy little sayings, such as "If you want to get a hat, get ahead" and "Please leave your head when minding your seat". Those who investigate mysterious places on this planet should try looking inside Arthur's head for a start. When asked why his daughter's rabbit was wearing blue ribbons, said the "scarlet ribbon's for her hare".

Confusion. I suspect that he has suspended his disbelief so willingly for so long that it is the real world which appears an illusion to him. The world inside his head is obviously a much happier, (& probably slightly more illogical...) one than the one outside him. Wants a watchdog to cover the dog-watches and a horse-race for his racehorse.

Writer's cramp -organic - caused by rehashing other people's jokes and verses - and a few proverbs, one of which gave rise to Arthur's heroic lines:
If it be true, as I've been told -
That all which glitters is not gold,
'Tis also true - just think of it -
That all which smells need not be manure.
We understand that he has written much more but have advised him that our computer lacks sufficient space to contain all his literary masterpieces, there being without doubt so many places into which said items might be inserted with pleasure and profit to all...

Communication from: Arthur. Says he doesn't understand why the Social Workers and the Doctors keep checking up on him and giving him all these tests when HE knows there's nothing wrong with him that a sparkler up the nose won't cure and why shouldn't he stand on one foot while reciting the Ode to a Farthingale and quaffing a quart of Gobelin's "Old Bayeux"? (11/12ths by volume) Left him muttering into his beard about being transmuted down ever-narrowing wires emptying into a tin and plastic universe of binary bits happily multiplying by addition, without help from slide-rule or log-table, deep gurgling snug in the middle of the fifteenth dimension - which he says one can reach quite easily with the right steps in the right direction at the right time. Added something about you can be in two places at the same time if the places are far enough apart.
Come back Spock, Jim says all is forgiven...
Perhaps we ought to have an NHS Philosophy Section to which we can refer those like Arthur who worry about the whys and wherefores of Existence. He thinks it might be connected with the square root of minus 1 - and why not? But it's all very confusing, really, & you can't get the wood, you know.

Communication: remarked that the "baud rate" at which data is transmitted between computers and peripherals should not be confused with the "bawd rate" which, by its very nature, can be interpreted as a rate of change or charge - and is, either way, a lot greater and certainly more expensive. Perhaps he ought to have a chat with Great-Aunt Edie - the one who insists she managed to record the voices of the departed [some time after they had departed] on her posh reel-to-reel tape recorder (back in the days before the advent of the ubiquitous walking-men and their cassettes, when you could get a pint of shrimps for a shilling down Peckham Rye and the Saturday-Morning Cinema was only 6d). There are times when his conversation spends most of its time off the track.

Arthur complains (what other verb would do?) bitterly (as usual) that his calculator keeps turning itself on in his pocket and he doesn't know just what it's doing working out sums on its own, and it might be UP TO NO GOOD hiding away in his pocket and for all he knows could be working against him. He's trying to discover why he gets so muddled and needs to work out the exact number of seconds he's been alive, in order to sort out his biorhythms curves. Muttered something vaguely rude about deceit and tangled webs and where one should insert the average calculator; this in response to remark about constipation and working it out when he hadn't got a pencil... Just as well these thoughts are but bits of binary electrics to the computer, otherwise the poor thing would be off its nut trying to understand the logic of Arthur's arguments and what connection there could possibly be between the first and last words in each of his sentences. Which is a pity - he'd far rather talk to a robot than to a tiresome human...

Wants to know if our pretty coloured screens will display the pills available in their actual colours so that the computer operator can issue what the patient asks for - i.e. "can I ave me green pills wiv the yeller stripes agin" or words to that effect?? And will the computer lessen the number of pills to be taken in the day by increasing the speed of issue of the prescription or is this yet another mirage and delusion of grandeur occasioned by having to spend a fortune to store more and more information about less and less?

Critic - let's get back to the question of the million monkeys and the typewriters, he said, when I last called - someone said that given enough time they would produce the works of Shakespeare (and presumably, given a German keyboard, those of Goethe); can't be true, can't possibly be true - just look at what gets written on the Internet.....

To prevent these pages becoming too long, and in case you're not actually cheesed off with them, page 3 will give you more if you really want any more.....