I WASN’T feeling so well a while back and couldn’t work out what was wrong. No energy, feeling insecure and anxious, lack of appetite and what have you. Then I stopped drinking. That was the signal something was seriously wrong. Now, I never go to the doctor – like most alpha males – on the basis that if I do go they’ll only find something wrong with me. Then I’ll be ill, see? But if I don’t go, I’ll be fine. And, to be fair, it mostly works out that way.
Our old family doctor was called Dr Yellowlees which I always thought sounded like an exotic infection. Whenever my mum took me along with a perceived ailment, his perennial response was: ‘It’s growing pains.’ He was an old charlatan but he was also right.