Totally Bona Fide

Yesterday when I was at the Doctors, waiting to be violated by the nurse, I spent quite a lot of time sitting on a plastic seat, looking right at the ‘Sexual Health’ notice board.

Normally I read back issues of Woman’s Realm and Yachting Weekly with the best of them, but yesterday I really wasn’t in the mood.  I have never really got to grips with the randomness of the reading material available in doctors’ surgeries. Not only are all periodicals at least three years out of date, and torn to shreds where people have ripped out recipes, or filled in Sudoku grids until they’ve ground holes through the paper, but there is usually that yawning social divide regarding what is available in terms of titles.

There are always really high end, specialist magazines (not porn, although this might make the waiting room more lively), like Mink Owners Weekly;  Mahogany Sideboards U Like, I Own A Diamond Charabanc etc.  These are the kind of magazines that cost about £15 a copy, and I see in WH Smiths and wonder who the hell buys them.

Doctors and Dentists, clearly.

Then there is the Take A Break generation type mags.  ’I sold my love child to Philip Schofield for fifty pence.’  ’My lover killed me and ate me, and now we’re celebrating our diamond wedding’.  ’Fifty fascinating things to do with Spam.’

It’s all a bit weird.

I fall into neither category.  I need a surgery that stocks Grazia magazine and Viz.  That’s more my line.

So, because I didn’t want to read about how the Countess of Norfolk cleans her emeralds, I stared at the ‘Sexual Health’ board.  I liked the fact that it was colour coded, pink for girls, blue for boys, and that each of them had a separate section of their own, with a very large bit of blank noticeboard between them.  It is indicative of the dire warnings the posters relayed about the perils of coitus.

Best to abstain and just place a large piece of chip board between you really.

That’s what Jason and I do, and we haven’t had a child for over five years now.

So let that be a lesson to you.

I found it interesting that in the ladies section they had tacked on a poster about bowel cancer, which I seem to think has very little to do with sexual health, unless I’ve been doing it wrong all this time.

Which could also explain why we haven’t had a child for over five years.

There was a large poster on the manly side of the board which shouted the word ‘TESTICLES’ in huge letters.  Underneath the title was lots of tiny writing. It was so tiny you would have had to either be Eagle Eye Action Man or sneaked up really close to the board to read what you should worry about if you have testicles.

Nobody was going to do that in a packed waiting room.  Which will explain why causes of testicular cancer will probably go through the roof in Broughton Astley in the coming years.

The best poster of all though was one which seemed fairly gender neutral, and hovered more towards the man part of the board, but crept in parts into the no man’s land bit.

It said: ‘Simple, Confidential Test for Chlamydia. Please Ask At Reception.’

I looked around.

The waiting room was heaving. Everyone, of course, is local, because otherwise they wouldn’t be able to register with the surgery.

It is a small place. I bet you most people there knew someone else in the room socially.

At the side was the reception desk.  There were three women chatting to everyone coming in to register.

Their voices competed with each other.  One lady was talking to an elderly patient.  She suddenly laughed loudly and said: ‘Oh yes Mary! Make mine a G&T won’t you?’

It echoed round the room like the muezzin calling the faithful to prayer.

I substituted the line with: ‘Oh yes Mary! Of course you can have a chlamydia test. It’s totally confidential.’

And imagined a hundred heads all swivelling round with one accord to stare accusingly at poor Mary at the reception desk.