One of the patients I see regularly as a voluntary hospital visitor, who has been in hospital for weeks, seems to be getting better. Still skeletally thin, he is now sitting up and complaining. His problem is that he longs for a jacket potato with just butter. He hates beans. But he might as well ask for gravadlax and dill. On the hospital menu, baked potatoes only come with baked beans.
I asked one of the Thai ladies who deliver the food if he could possibly have a plain spud. ‘Not possible,’ she said, ‘all with beans.’ She said she would go and ask someone, but who that might be I don’t know: I have never seen anyone in charge of food.
‘It’s hopeless,’ he told me. ‘I’ve asked them before, they won’t do it.’ The only alternative in the potato department is a wet grey mush, and people quickly learn to avoid the fish pie with its slimy contents and topping of grey cumulus blobs. One Spanish patient told me that in hospital at home they’d been served fresh fish most days from the local harbour. The medicine, however, wasn’t as good as the food, so she came here. When I asked her about the fish pie, she put her tongue out in disgust.
There are in fact a great many dishes on the long laminated menu card. You can have curried goat, ackee and saltfish, Arabic halal, Asian halal and Asian vegan, but no plain potato, ice cream, custard, diabetic desserts, or anything freshly cooked.
I had a look in the ward kitchen. It was sparkling clean, with acres of shiny stainless steel sinks and bright lights. It could have doubled as an operating theatre except it was unused, apart from four gleaming microwaves for defrosting.
Comments
Join the debate for just £1 a month
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for £3.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just £1 a monthAlready a subscriber? Log in