Diary - 24 April 2004 | The Spectator

As I lead a life of more or less untroubled serenity and I am in perfect health (except for a slight cough), it was unsettling to learn that I had cancer and that it looked inoperable. It wasn’t, thankfully, and a most delightful surgeon cut it out. Cancer is a strange disease and I am aware that it may still be lurking around biding its time, but there is nothing to be gained by fussing. Anyway, I still feel in perfect health and so when people ask if I feel better I have to explain that, so far, I haven’t felt ill. When the locals learned of my condition, as locals will, they all said that Eric, who lives a mile away up the mountain, had had the same thing and was now as fit as a flea. Just the other day, along came Eric on his digger and, sure enough, he is a fine, upstanding figure of a man with rosy cheeks. We had a nice talk about scars and the lovely nature of our shared Egyptian surgeon, who has the sort of charming manners that we thought had died out with the black-and-white movie.

I warmed to another fellow patient while in hospital. Immediately after she swallowed her dose of morphine, she reached into the bedside cabinet, drew out a half bottle of Scotch and poured a slug into her bedtime milk. I gave up alcohol when I gave up cigarettes, since I cannot see the point of one without the other, but I still understand. I sometimes feel a little sullen around 6 p.m. when once I would have set a match to the logs, opened a bottle and a packet of 20 and put the cares of the day behind me.