Extracts from Vernon Coleman’s Commonplace Book

October 16, 2024 by Doctor Vernon Coleman

In olden times (before even I was born) it was customary for ladies and gentlemen to keep a scrap book containing items they’d collected from books, magazines and newspapers. They’d add in quotes and snippets from conversation they had remembered and wanted to write down to keep. Those volumes were called ‘commonplace’ books.

My newly published commonplace book contains stories, anecdotes, lists, comments, quotes, etc., which I think you’ll enjoy. The book also includes some of my recollections and idle thoughts. I hope you’ll find new facts, thought-provoking opinions and titbits of information which will make you want to say: ‘Hey, listen to this…!’

Doctors off the Career Track
Today, doctors all determinedly follow a strict career path. From the moment they purchase their first stethoscope they take aim for a distant target with the dedicated aim of becoming a GP, an obstetrician, a forensic psychiatrist or an orthopaedic surgeon specialising in left knees. In the bad old days, there were students (and I confess I was one of them) who left medical school with one ambition remaining: never again to sit any examinations. It was these young doctors who provided ageing, single-handed GPs with locums, ships with the doctors they needed before they could set sail and casualty departments (the forerunners of Accident and Emergency Departments) with surgeons to stitch up accident victims on a Saturday night. Eventually, of course, most young doctors would settle down and step foot on a career path of some kind. But they would, I believe, be more rounded, more capable, more knowledgeable of the world, and better able to care for their patients, for having spent a year or two off the beaten track.

Litter, Kindling and Councils
Councils have made it illegal for anyone to pick up bits of wood from the roadside. Individuals who collected broken branches and kindling to take home to burn have been arrested and charged with theft by aggressive councils who have claimed ownership of fallen wood found on the roadside. Councils claim the rationale behind this oppressive, heavy handed behaviour is that our trees must all be protected because they eat up carbon dioxide and also because burning wood is bad for the environment. It is strange, therefore, that governments everywhere obtain much of their ‘green’ power by burning wood in power stations. Moreover, in the UK and Europe the wood comes from trees in America which are cut down and chopped up with petrol or diesel powered saws, transported to the East Coast in diesel powered lorries and trains and then carried across the Atlantic ocean on diesel powered ships before being taken from the ports to the power stations in diesel powered lorries. Despite the burning of all this fossil fuel, the official, government approved burning of wood is officially labelled ‘green’, and considered to be just as harmless and as renewable as solar or wind power. The other odd thing, of course, is that councils all over Britain are furiously chopping down trees as fast as they can, not for fuel but simply because trees are considered messy in that once a year they have a habit of distributing their leaves on the roadside. Worse still some trees, such as cherry and magnolia, insist on ignoring the rules about littering and allowing their blossom to fall where it may – invariably without obtaining permission from the requisite department.

Time
‘All my possessions for a moment of time.’ – Elizabeth I

Abuse
It is hard for anyone to remain resolute and dignified in a world where abuse is the commonest currency of expression.

Office ‘Workers’
Office staff in central London (many of them civil servants) now work just 2.3 days a week. This is one of the lowest figures in the world. Could this possibly be linked to the fact that Britain has the worst productivity levels in the world?

The Bush Tavern Bill of Fare
A Bill of Fare for Christmas Day 1790, prepared for a Bristol coaching inn called the Bush Tavern, listed more than 100 dishes including turbot, eels, teal, coot, snipe, larks, widgeon, a veal’s head, cuckoos, owls, golden plovers, swan, stares, sea pheasant, venison, reindeer tongues and a 47lb turtle. The pub also provided a roasting pig, 18 carp, six saddles of mutton, 116 pigeons and a vast variety of other game, meats and seafood. (Incidentally, the unfortunate turtle was a popular delicacy and was hunted almost to extinction. The gelatinous substances from the upper and lower shell, known as calipash and calipee, were regularly served at banquets. As the turtle grew rarer, cooks invented the mock turtle made from calves’ heads. And so when Tenniel illustrated Alice’s meeting with the Gryphon and the Mock Turtle he drew the turtle with the head of a calf. (I don’t know why, but I thought you’d like to know all that.) Dickens visited the Bush Tavern in 1835 and used it as background in his novel The Pickwick Papers.

Booze
‘I should have never switched from Scotch to Martinis.’ – Humphrey Bogart

All the above are from `Vernon Coleman’s Commonplace Book’ – just out – which is available from the bookshop on www.vernoncoleman.com

Copyright Vernon Coleman October 2024