£2

I went to the Hornsey Central hospital for an ENT appointment today. I’ve been having issues with a cough which won’t clear and they suspect I’ve got a form of acid reflux, which, bizarrely, is potentially linked to my hyper-mobility, which, I’m told, is the new term for double-jointedness.

Anyway, in true Haringey Council style, the fancy new hospital building I was in today - all glass atriums and steel - doesn’t have a single water fountain. Not one. I went to the woman behind reception and asked where I could get some water and she said, somewhat nervously, “you could go to the cafe and buy some.” I’d actually walked to the appointment and genuinely didn’t have my wallet with me, so buying water wasn’t an option. Furthermore, in an ENT clinic, which deals with matters of the mouth and throat, I think you might expect some sort of water fountain, particularly if patients are being asked to sit and wait for their appointments in a hot atrium with the sun pounding down through a glass roof. Frankly, shouldn’t all public buildings have access to water? Is it even illegal not to?

The receptionist very kindly filled a mug with water and handed it to me, apologising and telling me there wasn’t a water machine because no one would take responsibility for it! But it felt very strange. There were “hygiene stations” everywhere for patients to “decontaminate” their hands, but you can’t drink that gel stuff! Or can you? ;-)

Whilst I was waiting, I became horribly aware of a very high-pitched beeping. It was like the sound dial-up modems used to make in the late 1990s. It was right on the edge of audible and it made me incredibly confused to the extent that I went to another receptionist to ask what was going on. She merely shrugged. When I returned to my seat, I asked the man behind me if he could hear it as well, and he nodded, confused. It was at that point that a woman sitting on the front row of chairs turned round and said “it’s his hearing aid.” She pointed at the old man sitting next to her. I looked at her, “oh crumbs. Does he hear all that awful noise as well?” “Yes, it drives him mad!”

We went into Muswell Hill for lunch and went to various banks to pay in various cheques. I had to stand in a queue at Barclays for about twenty minutes. The middle-aged woman in front of me broke my heart. She wanted to pay £2 into her account. It struck me that this is the sort of money I regularly spend on a cup of tea which I gulp down in seconds, and there she was treating two pound coins like they were the most precious things in the world. There are so many layers in society.

I went to the gym, and then we went to Kwik Fit to get a new tyre fitted, having a little walk on Hampstead Heath whilst waiting for the work to be done.

I came home and spent the next six hours taking every single book down from the loft. Our loft has become a fifteen year dumping ground for anything we can’t think of anything else to do with! I have thrown 100 books away - mostly those which were utterly destroyed by building work over the summer, and created a pile of some 600 to take to charity shops. I have kept about 100, all of which are really special in some way. Many of them were filled with little drawings done by friends of mine in the 1980s. Some were the annotated scripts of plays and musicals I’ve directed. Others had photos and postcards stuffed inside. There were some beautiful messages on the inside sleeves. Others as good as broke my heart, including some of the books that Arnold Wesker gave to me. Quite bizarrely, he once wrote a book of erotic stories, and the inscription he’d written inside said, “Dear Ben, I’m not quite sure why YOU should want to read these, but here they come with my best wishes for 1999. Love ‘Nold.” He always liked that I called him ‘Nold...

I’m quite shaky as I go to bed tonight. Emotionally drained as well as being quite physically damaged by all the heavy lifting of books. I am not much looking forward to this move. It’s gonna be exhausting. More reason to chuck everything away!