Best of British luck
As an adult. I’ve never seen the same doctor twice. This speaks to infrequent attendance, but also lends a certain hesitancy to presenting symptoms, as it is always a “first date” and as an inveterate people-pleaser, the last thing I am going to do is tell a perfect stranger just how unwell I am.
“as an inveterate people-pleaser, the last thing I am going to do is tell a perfect stranger just how unwell I am.”
This bit is going to rotate in my head like a chunk of lamb on a spit for a long time,
I keep wanting to read it as “As an invertebrate people-eater…” I keep picturing some sort of monstrous mollusk or something.
well aye there’s yer problem, mate, you’ve got no bones
A one-eyed, one-horned, invertebrate people-eater…
Who wears short shorts?
He LIKES short shorts!
That is the absolute essence of modern GP group practice meeting traditional British reticence and deference and I hate it.
In trying to mitigate your hate (as an inveterate people-pleaser) perhaps I will inadvertently end up living longer. But most likely I will turn bright yellow, try to muddle through, and be found as a skeleton years later.
“He lived as he died; as a collection of neatly arranged bones”
Thing is, I think from a people-pleaser perspective, the doctor would probably be most pleased if you have something serious/interesting wrong with you. The last thing they’re going to be pleased by is yet another reticent man coming in saying ‘well I’m not sure it’s really anything, I’ve just had a bit of a pain in the mornings recently, but I wasn’t even sure whether I needed to come in or not’.
It is a joke these days when you are asked to put the name/contact details of your GP on a form or whatever – “whoever happens to be free on the one appointment they were able to offer me within a six week period”.
“He lived as he died; as a collection of neatly arranged bones”
I want this on a t-shirt.
So, what you’re saying is you are not, in fact, an invertebrate.
Understand, Mr. Allison sir: I am just as bad. I was raised to conduct myself with decorum in the face of important people (doctors, civil servants, solicitors, etcetera), which makes it what you might call “piss difficult” to reveal the truth about any sort of suffering or ailment. These are Busy People, you know? They’re Up There, and Down Here us knows our place and don’t want to be no trouble sir. Cue tugging of forelock and compulsive apologetics.
This is why I have the musculoskeletal stature of a pensioner despite being thirty years away from claiming, you know?
See you in the boneyard, Jonathan, two skeletons doffing our cap to an imagined Magistrate
Alas, Jack, a man of science is likely to know that time travel is well nigh impossible. You might as well try convincing him that there exist demons that suck up happiness, or selkies attending primary school.
Or sentient onions whose parents are aliens wearing superhero costumes.
Google couldn’t help me; would you?
I think John has a creation named Onion Dan who fits the description.
“It’s Lem. Would you like an onion?”
He’s a right laugh when you get to know him.
See “The Case of the Lonely One”: https://www.gocomics.com/bad-machinery/2017/04/15
What he needs is a man of mad science.
Dave could sort this out
But at the cost of how many universes where they probably don’t want to exist as much?
Tim?
I think there’s decent odds that it’s Tim’s fault to begin with.
I’ll be very disappointed if a character named Fengus Bartleby Beng-Bop doesn’t appear somewhere at some point.
Or at least the name cameos on a business card or someone’s mail or the like…
Alaric, off-topic, but the other day I was listening to Helen Zaltzman’s Allusionist podcast, and there was a question sent in by someone named Alaric, and I thought to myself “there’s only one other place I recognise that name from…” – would that happen to be you? Wouldn’t be a totally surprising confluence of interests! And you certainly couldn’t say the same for my name…
Sorry, it wasn’t me. The name’s pretty rare, but not unique.
I’m in the U.S., but I *do* know an Aloric [sic.] And I knew an Alaric* when I was active in the Society for Creative Anachronism in the early 80s.
*Not his real name.
My next door neighbour in Letchworth was called Alaric!
Perhaps your neighbor is the Zaltzman fan!
More of an Andy Zaltzman fan I think
I get the sense that it’s a bit less uncommon in the UK than it is in the US (though by no means common).
Poor Jack. It looks like a serious problem.
Yes. There will be less of a problem when they have him fitted for a strait-jacket!
It’s a british GP, he’ll just get some paracetamol and an appointment for “talking therapy” 6 months from now.
That’s now. This is then. I suspect it was different then.
Telling the truth doesn’t tend to work out well in time travel stories, does it?
In lot of other stories, either, tbh
The life of a GP in Tackleford must be challenging. What kind of differential diagnosis do you use to separate patients suffering from the delusion they’ve been bitten by goblins from patients who’ve genuinely been bitten by goblins from patients who’ve been bitten by boggarts? And what’s the recommended regime of treatment for any of them?
I don’t think they’re in Tackleford.
Might be Brentford. Such a lot happens in those small burgs.
A fine part of the world is Brentford, though it’s a fair hitch from Penge. And you can’t rely on the allotments in the slightest.
I’ve never been to Penge but I hear it’s very nice.
I completely believe in Tredregyn, but I draw the line at accepting the reality of Penge. You have to draw the line somewhere.
I believe that, for all of them, the treatment is the same: a rest cure in a quaint Cornish seaside resort at Tredregyn.
I wonder what Tredregyn was like in the ’90s?
Infested by mermen?
That would have been the heyday of Mrs Clovis, when she had them all at her beck & call.
I still have my commemorative William and Fengus tea towel somewhere.
I cannot upvote this enough.
I had to replace my Oyster card during the period of their wedding so I have a Wills and Feng Oyster card
FENGIE VS FERGIE – ROYALS IN TURMOIL OVER WEDDING SNUB – I remember the headlines well
HIGHLY collectible!
I feel like this is at least progress from back when he was failing to tell Shelley this in actual language, though whether thats because he’s actually having a breakthrough or is instead just that much less likely to make any paradoxes occur due to not really knowing about this doctor’s future is unclear for now.
As an adult I never saw the same doctor twice until I became transgender and then it suddenly became very important I finally find a regular GP.
QUITE. Yes. Once you find a good one, you stop messing around. Simply cannot afford to.
It was wise of Shelly to Sikh out a doctor.
“Best of British luck”
Is that an odd thing for a British person to say to another British person while they’re both IN Britain? Seems to me like it might be.
Actually, British Luck is the name of a band in her dossier, and in panel 1 she is answering some off-panel question of Jack’s with the album name “Best of British Luck.”
And “In You Go” was another album of theirs.
I thought that was their hit single.
It’s actually a fairly common joke-emphasis phrase. Actually, it feels a little bit dated now, but may be period-appropriate for the ’90s.
According the the Google ngrams viewer “best of British luck” took off in the late 1950s and had fallen back to a minimum by 1997, at least in written sources.
The phrase usually carries some irony, an implied (or in some case actually following) “you’re going to need it”.
I don’t know if you all know this but I like anachronistic language, probably to the detriment of my career
I’ll be honest; The quirky language is one of the things that’s kept me coming back all these years.
Do you think it would be fair to say that the word “anachronistic” is itself now anachronistic? “OMG grandpa, that’s such an old-fashioned word”, the kids all howl.
As someone else who can’t get enough of the quirky language, I agree: anachronistic language might also have been to the amelioriment of your career. (I will now plead my fifth amendment rights on how long it took me to settle on “amelioriment” as the best word-hash opposite of “detriment.” Some time may have been spent contemplating latinate roots…)
What kind of fertilizer works best to encourage latinates to develop healthy roots?
Tom: an anachronism can be out of time in either direction, so it’s not a synonym for old-fashioned.
“We shall do our best; because we are British, and British is best”
That reminds me of the line from Casablanca after Rick tells Karl the maitre d’ to make sure the Nazi major gets a good table.
Karl replies, “I have already given him the best, knowing he is German and would take it anyway.”
Maybe if you thought of the doctor as an imperfect stranger?
Pluperfect stranger.
Well, it is the past.
If the doctor were only a future perfect stranger, he will have discerned the ailment in short order.