I caught the 0731 Stirling bus, which conveniently stops in my village a stone’s throw from my house, then a train to my destination, a seven minute ride. I was totally dependent upon the bus, and the connection, because for the time being I was forbidden to drive. As usual, I thought to myself, I really must use public transport more often. It removes the strain of negotiating, for example, the notorious M8. And besides, you are not detached, but among people, in a community.
The weather was fine, and the ten minute walk to the hospital very pleasant. My scan appointment was for 1010 – said to be the happy smiling face on a clock – and I was in the hospital before 0900. So I had a coffee and did the Herald crossword. Then I wandered along the corridor to MRI at 0930. No harm in turning up early.
Good move. I was taken right away. Had I ever had an MRI before? No. Walk in the park. Takes about 15 minutes. You might feel quite enclosed. But just close your eyes, and go to your happy place. If you’ve had enough, just squeeze this ball. I resolved not to squeeze the ball. I looked at the couch, and, bizarrely and unaccountably, thought of a chamber designed for the administration of a lethal injection, as if I had some sort of premonition of events shortly to take place in Nashville, Tennessee. Utterly grotesque. They couldn’t find a vein. Perhaps the drip “tissued”, and the pentobarbitone dissipated subcutaneously. I believe pentobarbitone is also the agent of choice in assisted dying. That must have a failure rate, too. In the event, what would you do? Resuscitate the patient? Ask a medical ethicist. I bet you there’s a black market in pentobarbitone. I digress.
I lay supine on the couch. I inserted earplugs, and my head was further enclosed in more baffling, muffling material. Then the helmet, which contains the camera, was applied. I felt as if I were being strapped into a lunar capsule prior to a launch from Cape Canaveral. Or perhaps, a mission further afield. “Let’s go to Mars!” says the man strapping in the astronauts in Capricorn One. But the mission to Mars turns out to be a hoax, and the astronauts’ broadcasts back to earth from the Red Planet come from a back lot somewhere in Hollywood. Fake news.
I wasn’t apprehensive. In fact, the enclosed space didn’t bother me at all, partly I think because there was plenty of light. The only discomfort came from the noise. It was like being positioned very close to a burglar alarm, or a fire alarm, going off incessantly. Or more like a series of alarms; the timbre kept changing. I closed my eyes, and went to my happy place.
I flew a Cherokee Arrow from Ardmore up to the most northerly grass strip in North Island, at Waitiki Landing. I made the plane safe, and then I picked up a Ute and headed North West from Waitiki Landing to Te Pake Station, passing through wooded pastureland down to the big dunes, parked, slipped off my shoes, walked past the pink bloom of the ti-tree kahikatoa, and down Te Pake Stream in the direction of 90-Mile Beach. It was before the tour buses had discovered this magical destination. The sun was high in the February sky, and I had the place to myself. The shallow water of the stream was warm.
Half way through the scan, the noises morphed, to resemble a kind of mirthless chortling. I was reminded of Walter Mitty’s first fantasy, in his Secret Life. I could have been in a submarine. “We’re going through, Loo-tenant Berg!” Tapocketa-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa…. I could have been taking part in a Woody Allan film. I thought I was going to take a fit of the giggles. I tried to keep my head still.
90-Mile beach was deserted. I sat down beside some toi-toi grass, and experienced a strange moment of serene epiphany, exactly as I once did.
Then, a sense of movement. I emerged from the doughnut, and my helmet was being unclipped. An astronaut back down to earth. I felt quite dizzy, as if I were re-establishing acquaintance with gravity. This symptom is apparently quite common.
Then I was sent away for an hour, pending the result, for more coffee and a scone. I returned to good news. No acute lesion. I could drive again. I seem to recall one of Woody Allan’s characters had a scan of some sort, to detect, or rule out, a cancer. The scan proves negative, and Allan leaps for joy along Fifth Avenue, only to be crushed by the dawning apprehension that, in the nature of things, his reprieve was only temporary, and that sooner or later, the result would not be negative.
Anyway my left hand and wrist feel entirely normal and indeed, were working normally when I rehearsed yesterday in Linlithgow with the Antonine Ensemble, for a concert next week of Vivaldi, Mozart, Elgar, Britten, and Respighi. Ottorino Respighi’s Suite for Organ and strings (1905) is very grand, and sounds magnificent in the resonant space of St Michael’s, next to the Palace, in Linlithgow. As usual, I thought to myself, I really must do this more often. I shared a desk with somebody who used to lead the viola section of a major Scottish orchestra. It doesn’t half lift your game, sitting beside a virtuoso. And talking of virtuosi, Lawrence Power played Alfred Shnittke’s Viola Concerto (1986) in Glasgow on Saturday night. What a player. The concerto is bleak. But it has a magical end.
So, to all intents and purposes, normal service resumed. But I suppose I must have taken on board something of Woody Allan’s character’s pessimism, or at least, realism. I find myself minded to get rid of all the accumulated junk – well, not junk, but stuff – that is cluttering up my bijoux cottage, to save my executors the trouble.
