Train him up

Easter approaches and so we are into school holidays. This means I’m at home doing jobs and reading about near nuclear catastrophe (excellent book called ‘The Dead Hand’ about cold war relations - thanks M&D).

One of my highly important holiday jobs has been making fruit juice. We have lots of fruit trees in the holiday grounds. Getting avocados can be tough as the trees are close to the sleeping quarters of the heavily pregnant lady unit. And they are extremely good at hoisting themselves up the trunks at the first sign of pickings. Fortunately, they are less keen on limes.

Last week, Mary and I picked a bag full of limes. And I went to work in the kitchen. After an hour of de-juicing, the mixing began. Into a big pot went 1 1/2 litres of water, 2 kgs of sugar, citric acid, something else acid and some baking soda. And then onto the big hob. An hour later I had four wine bottles full of lime juice. Initially I was under whelmed by my work. Surely four wine bottles worth would be drunk in a couple of days? But then the delight. I had apparently been making concentrate. So a week on and we have drunk less than half a bottle. Furthermore, the flavour of the drink is highly commendable. Definitely worth a prize in the Woodstreet Village Show. With some potential for development as an alcopop.

I sense that I may soon be called upon for even more serious work. For this week we are very short of doctors. There were due to be three doctors on holiday. However, another has fallen ill and her partner (another doctor) is with her. Meaning we are down to five and a half. Resources are being stretched further by pressure on the hospital to meet its circumcision quota. At the moment, this seems to be the only health target of interest to the politicians (they see it as a way of reducing HIV; in fact the benefits of reduced infection risk are highly likely to be offset by misconceptions in the community that it results in immunity from STDs). As a result, one of the two most experienced doctors remaining is being forced to go to circumcision camps all this week. Thereby highly jeopardising lives of patients in the hospital. I think the solution is to send me to do the circumcisions. I'm sure I'd manage. And I've got a favourite joke I could tell to help settle nerves (‘What do you call a cheap circumcision? A rip off'.)