Max's trip to the doctor

Thursday March 10th, 2005

Confound that little hairy mongrel excuse for a man! Stoddart has had the temerity to call for my resignation! Well, we'll see about that; pawns can be troublesome, but their alliances are easily broken.

Meanwhile, time to meet my new GP, a tryst postponed for some months now by the indulgent maternity leave granted to those on the public sector payroll. My new purveyor of potions, prescriptions, pharmaceutical products and placebos, is a slim woman ('Annabel'), with shoulder-length blonde hair, and a low-cut top, who greets me with the type of weary professional smile reserved for 4pm on a Thursday afternoon. Glossy inkjet photos of her newly-minted progeny festoon the desktop wall.

Check my blood-pressure? Why, of course doctor, let me roll my shirt-sleeve up.

Annabel bends over me to wrap the sphygmomanometer's cuff around my upper arm, and velcros it in place with a firmness that suggests the good doctor is not unfamiliar with the joys of bondage. As she does so, I am unavoidably presented with a scopophilic view of this medical expert's shameless mammaries, swaying in pendulous harmony like a couple of tan-coloured, water-filled balloons, the perimeters of these bosom buddies framed within her deep-cut neckline, like a pair of white-wine-glasses in an Argos catalogue.

Perhaps in years to come, some medical statistician's meticulous, retrospective study will discover an inexplicable upward bias in the blood pressure of Dr Annabel's male patients, and much Bayesian analysis will thence be devoted to the deconvolution of this anomaly. For now, however, the only manipulations are those applied by Annabel's healing fingers, massaging the sphygmomanometer's fleshy bulb, pumping the tightly-wound cuff into a tumescent state, from which we both find the nearby couch and curtain offer the only possible relief. God bless the Hippocratic oath!