J W Booth AUTOBIOGRAPHY c11

Chapter 11 – Trials and Tribulations.
My son was ten and my daughter five when we moved to Middleborough, so both of them had a large slice of their education in that area. Both proved to be reasonably intelligent and Christopher showed a fair amount of athletic ability, the last thing I should have expected from any son of mine. Ann had a good deal of artistic skill from quite an early age, which was not quite so unexpected, but very pleasing just the same.
My wife Margaret enjoyed pretty good health and, once she had recovered from the shock of her first visit, when she came by train via such beauty spots as Cargo Fleet, settled into Teesside and made friends with her usual ease.
When I, was at Swanley, the nurse had terrified my mother by repeatedly describing me as a very delicate boy. I wasn't really delicate, I could have been better described as weedy. I never looked very robust, but, on the other hand, I was rarely even slightly ill. No medical examination had ever found anything wrong with me and up to the mid-sixties I had served nearly 30 years in the Civil Service and never taken a day's sick leave.
About 1964, a friend and colleague of my age collapsed and died of a coronary and this got to me much more than it ought to have done. I had a morbid fear of sudden death. After medical advice and sympathy, I gradually snapped out of it, and symptoms
1ike dizzy spells disappeared.
In 1966, they recurred and became worse, but having made a fool of myself before I tried to ignore them. Finally, in January, 1967, which was to prove a traumatic year for me, I was smitten with severe stomach pains and removed to hospital. The fact
that I had just passed the age at which my father had died of Stomach Trouble was not lost on me. I was scared stiff, but it was not 1929, and a very capable consultant surgeon named Mr Fordyce soon diagnosed diverticulitis, which is apparently due to a weakness in the wall of an internal vessel, leading to
inflammation and pain. It is usually curable without surgery and was in my case. However I remained patently unwell, my temperature was up and they didn't 1ike the look of my blood.
Finally Mr. Fordyce decided that I had a pelvic abscess, a theory which he verified by opening me up and 'draining it off'.
I was in hospital, for the first time in my life, for four weeks and was amazed how quickly I became institutionalised. I must have a flair for it. Middleborough General had started life as a workhouse and still looked like one. There was a sort of pecking order in the men's surgical ward based on the nature of one's operation, Men who had been practically disemboweled were top of the heap, while an unfortunate Scottish steel erector in the next bed to me, who on1y had piles, was more a figure of fun. I ranked somewhere between these two extremes.
I expected the nurses, who were mostly teenagers, to think me as o1d as the hills, but I was actually 20 years or more younger than most surgical patients and we got on fine. The bed was made up by two nurses each morning, with me still in it, and they usually discussed last night's adventures across me. If I ventured to join in the conversation they didn't mind, but they looked startled, as if the bed itself had spoken. My schooldays had left me in awe of nursing sisters and schoolmasters but the ward-sister was quite young and not very intimidating. As I now have a niece who is a nursing sister and my son is a schoolmaster, the phobia has 1arge1y worn off.
My maiden aunt, in her middle 70's, was visibly failing, and my sister was admitted to hospita1 in London in June with a lump in her breast. She had a mastectomy from which she never fully recovered. Auntie Ada died in 1968 and my sister in 1970.
Thus my maternal grandmother, my mother and my sister had fallen victims to cancer and I was left with no blood relations in the world except my own two chi1dren.
In October 1967, I had my first interview for promotion to Assistant Collector and failed the greatest single disappointment of my life. It was not the end of the line, as each Surveyor normally had two interviews and I actually had my second in 1968, and was rejected again. In all probability this second failure meant that I would see out my service as a Surveyor, but it didn't depress me nearly so much as the first one had. This was partly because I knew I had blown it in 1967and not done myself justice, whereas in 1968 I gave it my best shot and if that wasn't good enough there was no help for it. But mainly, I knew that whatever happened to then subsequently,Surveyors rejected on the first interview were not regarded as in the front rank. We all kid ourselves that we are.
In November 1967, I found myself back in Middleborough GeneralHospital. One Thursday I got stomach pains much worse than ever before. No doubt thinking it was a recurrence of diverticulitis my doctor left me overnight. I awoke about midnight in agony which soon afterwards seemed to ease and I slept till 6am. I woke to pain just as intense as before but,ominously as I realised later, less concentrated in the one place. I was taken in and Mr. Fordyce decided to make an exploratory operation, which disclosed a burst and gangrenous appendix.
My recollection of the next few days is hazy. Mr Fordyce had a way of looking into the ward at odd times, which re-assured the patients as much as it panicked the nurses, and I think it must have been on Saturday evening that he was checking me over. From behind the curtain a local church choir struck up a lively hymn and he offered to send them away if I found it disturbing. I said I didn't really feel well enough to quarrel with the church, implying that if he failed they were my only hope. He chuckled re-assuringly and actually I recovered very quickly.
It is interesting to compare my approach to my first operation and this second one. In January I was terrified by the prospect of the operation itself. In November I thought I was dying andknew I cou1dn't last long as I was so I cou1dn't get to the
theatre quickly enough. I don't remember being frightened at all; the pain left no room for that. I didn't realise how close a shave I had had until more than a week later. When I was admitted I recognised one of the nurses, but didn't see her again until the following Monday week when she returned from leave. About Wednesday she turned to me and said, 'I've justrecognised you. You were brought in last Friday week. You were bad'. When I had digested this, I said, 'Until you recognised
me, what did you think had become of that chap?’ She shrugged.
The hospital was in process of modernisation and half the surgical ward had already been completely refurbished. Needless to say, I was in the other half. That is the kind of luck I have with things that don't really matter.
There was an older and more traditional-type sister in charge, waging a running battle with both the staff nurses and practically everybody else. A young and rather slap-happy student nurse was her favourite target. One morning, the latter did not turn up, having overslept in the Nurses Home which was on the premises. Duly roused out, she arrived ten minutes later, very flustered. Sister said, 'Have you had any breakfast?. Oh, no, Sister, I came straight over. Well get some tea in the
kitchen and make yourself some toast'. Then, catching my eye, Sister said, 'Can't have these silly girls fainting all over the place'. I was not deceived; she was about as tough as amother hen. Months later I saw her in the street and she looked
just the same, only smaller.
Apart from curing my physical ailments, two spells in hospital did a lot to give me a better-balanced mental outlook. Each time there were a number of old men there who were not really surgical cases any more, but had nowhere else to go until they
died. I wondered why I had ever been afraid of sudden death; gradual death is far worse.
Another patient in for a prostate operation, had only one 1eg, having lost the other in 1916 in the trenches. He was one of a machinegun detachment hit by a shell between the lines and had lived about a week, drinking the water out of the cooling
jackets of the guns, until he was found and brought in. When someone said, 'How awful', he replied, 'I was the lucky one. The others were all killed'. He discouraged his wife from making too many visits because their son had died in the hospital the year before and 'it upset her', he didn't say how much it upset
him. I never met a more contented man.

Never having done much more than pay lip-service to the northern custom of seeing the New Year in, I sat up on the 31st December to see the old one out, feeling that it was the worst year I had ever lived through. In retrospect the only real tragedy
was the start of Ada's fatal illness. As far as I was concerned, my Guardian Ange1 had never done better. But for the diverticulitis which put me in hospital, I suppose the pelvic abscess would have remained undetected until it burst. If Mr.
Fordyce had decided to wait another day or so, the appendicitis might well have been fatal. As to my career, that seemed quite a small matter by comparison. Discussing the period with my son Christopher years later I said, 'In the space of about 12
months, I had two promotion interviews and failed both. I also had two serious operations and survived them both' Chris, who plays a lot of tennis.rep1ied, 'As they say, Dad, you have to win the big points’.
Throughout 1968 and 1969, I applied myself to running my district and coping with changes and challenges as they arose. Convinced that I should get no further, I was determined not to lose the pleasure of what I had by brooding on what might have been. If the Board thought I was only fitted to be a Surveyor, I would be the best one they ever passed over. They would never notice, of course, but I would, and you have to live with yourself. I had seen people who, denied promotion, p1ayed out time with minimal effort, which I regarded as downright dishonest. It also made them thorough1y miserab1e.