GRISELDA AND THE DOCTOR

The reprehensible old Griselda was of the opinion that she could monitor her own health...

It came as a shock to Griselda Entwhistle when a letter from the local doctor arrived inviting her to attend at his surgery for a check up as a consequence of her age, because as far as she was aware she didn't have a doctor. Not one of her own, that is. Not one with notes about her, awareness of her great age (well over one hundred, let it be said) and not one that had the right to communicate with her via the gift of snail-mail.

“There's only one thing for a soul to do, and that's have it out with him!” she told the landlord of the Crown and Anchor whilst enjoying a tipple of his well-diluted best bitter.

Thomas the Greek (the said landlord) nodded sympathetically. “He probably wants to take a peek at your liver,” he murmured. “Quite a few of my best customers get to have their livers peeked at. Take Tom Coppley, for instance. He's barely got a liver at all, which accounts for his complexion, I've been told. But he goes along, pukes in the doctor's waiting room and comes racing back here for refreshment on account of feeling dehydrated. But Doctor Kidneywort is a fair-minded man, even though it's me saying it.”

“Fair-minded?” queried Griselda. “I'll see how fair-minded he is! I'll go and beard him in his den! I'll go and have it out with him! Why would any doctor worth his salt want to poke and pry at my innards? There's nowt wrong with my bits and pieces, you can take it from me!”

And with that she swallowed the beer-flavoured water she'd been drinking and set out for Doctor Kidneywort's premises.

He had a two-story grey-brick surgery a stone's throw from the Crown and Anchor, largely because that hostelry produced his more interesting patients and was responsible for a fascinating range of fatal conditions. And it was to this surgery that she made her centenarian way with the last drips of weak beer still evaporating from her chin.

The receptionist was one signally well-named Amelia Breast, a remarkable young woman and the apple of her parents' eyes, especially her father's who had decided to dedicate the reminder of his days designing and producing a fascinating range of supportive undergarments with sufficient tensile strength to do justice to his daughter's immense bosom. He was still clearly at the development stage because said bosoms had, it seemed, a life of their own �" both left and right sides, that is. They wibbled and wobbled in time with her breathing, which Griselda might have found distracting had she been of a male persuasion. But being an old and reprehensible woman she found said mammary masses merely distracting.

“I want an explanation!” she demanded, and waved the letter of invitation before Amelia Breast's eyes.

“Doctor Kidneywort wants to see all the old farts in Swanspottle,” replied the mammarian delight. “He wants them to live into ripe old age, enjoying a full sex life to the grave,” she added, smiling sweetly and adjusting her left breast complete with visibly engorged n****e, which appeared to have popped out of its restraining halter.

“I want nothing of the sort!” spluttered Griselda. “I will see the rogue at once, if you please!”

“You need an appointment...” began the receptionist, who by now was experiencing positioning problems with her right breast.

“He didn't have an appointment when he … when he … when he wrote this to me!” protested Griselda in a voice so penetrating that Doctor Kidneywort poked his nose out of his surgery door to see what the fuss was all about.

“Can I help?” he said in the sort of voice that is normally reserved by thespians for rapists and vicars.

Griselda waved the offending letter under his nose and fixed him with her eyes. Both of them, that is: when she wanted to be severe she used both of her eyes simultaneously. It was only when she was being kindly that she allowed her left eye to wander elsewhere.

“It's for your own good,” murmured the good doctor. “It's so that I can check that you're well and likely to stay that way...”

“What's it got to do with you?” barked Griselda. “I'm well, I can tell you that, and as fit as a fiddle, I can tell you that as well. And if I wasn't I'd poke amongst the herbs and suchlike in the ditches around Swanspottle and make an appropriate spell. That's what I'd do, and then I'd be better again!”

“We can't have old ladies...” began Doctor Kidneywort.

“Who are you calling old!” shrieked Griselda. “I don't say you're a young whipper-snapper with no more right to be on this good Earth than a viper, so why do you call me old?”

“Everyone is old,” muttered the doctor, desperately. “When a baby has its very first birthday we say that it's one year old. When a lad joins the army it's agreed that he's old enough to be shot at. So there's not much wrong with me saying you're old, is there?”

Griselda, who hadn't seen things in that light before, merely muttered “Pah!” while she struggled to find a suitable acerbic response, and Doctor Kidneywort took advantage of her momentary confusion to draw her into his surgery and take her blood pressure.

“You need tablets,” he began. “Your BP's going through the roof! You're about to blow a gasket! Here �" take this prescription to Mr Pills the Chemist. You'll find yourself feeling a lot less … explosive.” And he pushed a small sheet of paper into her hands whilst simultaneously escorting her out of his surgery in the hope that he could get rid of her before she regained her senses.

“Is that all?” cooed the over-bosomed receptionist, smiling at Griselda's obvious discomfort.

“Pah!” she said again, and very secretly muttered the sort of spell that no old lady should ever resort to.

And Amelia Breast's massively reinforced brassiere shot away from the chest region of her body with a loud hiss and wrapped itself very snugly around Doctor Kidneywort's head.