Stick It to Survive

By Robert Bowman

In this third volume of Memoirs, Robert Bowman again draws on Events and Experiences from his interesting International Legal and Commercial Consultancy career which has spanned over 4 decades.
In so doing, he inexorably draws the reader into the highs and lows of working internationally at ‘the sharp end’ – where nothing is quite what it seems and every day throws up new challenges………..
In this exciting volume of ‘Dispatches from the Coal Face of Life’, the reader experiences 20 Tales of Survival – whether from the pastel confines of a Hospital ward or the exotic surrounds of an Indian Wedding to the ghosts of the bloody battlefields of Waterloo, Gettysburg and The Little Big Horn.
In this new stimulating volume of hard hitting historic writing, the reader will feel the heat of a multi-million dollar football transfer deal and the pressure of a multi-million dollar ship auction to facing overwhelming odds in courageous battles for survival.
From the first Chapter to the last, the reader is taken again on a memorable and sometimes poignant journey and emerges at the end somehow strengthened by the experience.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Nov 26, 2019
• ISBN: 9781728331041

Book preview

2019 ROBERT BOWMAN. All rights reserved.

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transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

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This book is printed on acid-free paper.

ISBN: 978-1-7283-3103-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-7283-3105-8 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-7283-3104-1 (e)

Published by AuthorHouse 11/21/2019

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Twenty Tales of action, courage…………………..and sometimes survival at the Coal Face of Life.

This book is for my old friends Barbara in Washington,DC, my indefatigable Lee Ho Skipper ‘Papa Hemingway’ Keef on Aphrodite’s Isle and General Manfred von Trier, Stadtkommandant und Reisehaartrockner - who all know more about sticking with it and survival than the rest of us roped together……and, of course, not least to Staff Nurse Irene who was there for me when I most needed her.

And, of course, many thanks again to computer wizard Derek N who toiled long and hard to bring it all together.

Books by the same Author

Memoirs:             Wicked to Fly - Volume 1

                           Ticket to Ride - Volume 2

                           Stick It to Survive -Volume 3

Travel:                 Inside Guide to Greece

                           Inside Guide to Dubai

Faction:             Nemesis

                         Autumn of the Shepherds

        Eye of the Dragon

                         Kathy Blue

Fiction:              Anvil

                         A Time of Innocence

Short Story Collection:        Targets Full of Feathers

Contents

Incantation

1 ‘Of Canulas and Catheters……’

2 Caught!

3 Rescued from the Jaws of the Green Goddess

4 From Garage…….to God

5 The Strange Case of the Early Morning Boom in the Night

6 The Multi- Million Dollar Transfer

7 Doing the Big Bucks Bougie-Woogie in Caen

8 The Impecunious International Dinner

9 In the footsteps of Napoleon

10 The Villa on the Lake

11 My Best Exotic Marigold Wedding

12 Sailing and Sinking in the South China Sea

13 Of Historic Castles and Bridges……and Czech Courage

14 In the Cornfields of Pennsylvania

15 Walking in the Shadows of Valkyrie

16 An Englishman in New York

17 Strangers on a Train

18 In the Land of the Greasy Grass

19 Hong Honky-Tonk Kong

20 Ill Met By Mel Anoma

Stick It To Survive

Photographic contents:

1 The Green Goddess awaits her next meal .…

2 Junior Priest and The Petrol Heads

3 The Million Dollar Ship Auction in Caen, as reported in local press

4 After the auction ….

5 The battlefield of Waterloo exactly 200 years later

6 The view from the battlefield to Mont St. Jean

7 The Redcoats return to Waterloo 200 years later

8 The Battle is re-enacted 200 years later

9 The entrance to the Wansee Villa

10 The Wansee Villa garden, conference room centre

11 My Best Exotic Marigold Wedding

12 With the bride and groom .….. and proud father

13 The proud goodship ‘Dirty Dicks’ flying the pirate flag

14 The Dirty Dicks Dragon Boat Team

15 Sinking .…

16 Surviving .…

17 St. Cyril’s Church, Prague

18 The battle scarred aperture to crypt

19 The view from Little Round Top, Gettysburg

20 Union Cavalry return to Gettysburg 150 years later

21 The statue to the Conspirators, Bendlerblock, Berlin

22 Plaque at the Bendlerblock, Berlin

23 The hill of Custer’s last stand

24 The Monument atop the hill

25 The batlefield at The Little Big Horn

26 Shrine erected to the fallen Lakota Sioux

Remember………

Just as Possession is said to be nine-tenths of the Law so Survival……is nine-tenths of Life.

Paradise is to be found nowhere on earth…..it can only truly be found in the mind.

Incantation

Please do not stand beside my grave and weep,

My body is silent but my Spirit does not sleep,

I am still here in the whispers of the gentle breeze,

I am still there in the waters caressing the beach.

And in the glistening, winking jewels amidst the snow

Even in the soft murmurs of the river’s flow…..

Please do not stand beside my grave and cry

Because I am not there. I did not die………

‘I think it frets the saints in heaven to see

How many desolate creatures on the earth

Have learnt the simple dues of fellowship

And social comfort, in hospital’

Amora Leigh, Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861)

‘Of Canulas and Catheters……’

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Hospital.

The mere word or even a faint hint of the smell of the place always engenders unduly morbid fears and loathing……and that’s before we even contemplate the dedicated people who actually work there.

Hospitals. Shining clean corridors (hopefully) full of whispering, hurrying, concerned people – some of them clad in self-important white coats, all of them wearing anxious, concerned expressions. Behind the scenes, the large lifts take the sick up to their Operations and Fate or The Discharged cheerfully down to their Freedom…..out on Parole, until the next time.

Hospitals – love them or loathe them (and you can do both, believe me) – they seductively welcome you into their all embracing, humanistic grasp and will only let you go once they have taken that final CT scan, extracted that all important fourth phial of blood or pumped up that final gripping blood pressure reading.

Hospitals. Breathe deep…..and enjoy. Because sometimes they can be very funny places, full of very interesting people who inadvertently confound your fears and put your mind mercifully at ease.

Hospitals. They can be fun…….Don’t care? Don’t believe me? I know, I was there…….been there, done that, got the scars to prove it. Six Ops in 2 years, 3 times in the same small ward in 1 year. Must be some kind of strange medical record - make a Note in my voluminous Medical File.

I could hear the faint roar of its engines as it climbed into the multi-coloured sky in the distance. The smear of orange and pink of the dawn was spreading across the distant sky to the East signaling the start of another days flights at the airport.

I smiled….even though I was lying prostrate in the hospital bed with all kinds and lengths of tubes attached to my arms and down there, below the waist. I was happy because, despite all the medications and medical attention, my body-clock seemed to be still in perfect order. It had nudged me awake again to witness the first flight of the day and somehow I found that faintly re-assuring.

It was 6am and the small ward of 4 beds was still in darkness but over by the desk the shifts were changing. The capable night duty staff were quietly handing over and giving their Reports to the Day staff who were now arriving. I had been in this Hospital, even this bed, several times this year and I knew their routines well by now. When the Day Shift came on, when the Bed Manager would arrive in an hour to check Bed availability for that day and later at 9am when the Consultants and their Registrars and their attendant ‘teams’ would visit on their rounds…….Eventually the Day Staff would check out to be replaced by the Night Duty Staff again. All of them were totally professional and worked long hours and were a shining example of the Best of Britain’s NHS.

The routines, the duties, the smiling faces of the efficient nurses – men and women – I knew them all and their various nationalities……the ever smiling and gracious Asians, the brisk and efficient Brits, the Latin flourishes of the Spanish and Portuguese. In my stays at the Hospital I knew all of Life was here….the smiles and the heartaches, some of them told me about all their Hopes and Aspirations. And that wasn’t only the Staff…….

It was invariably early in the morning when they told you to arrive….presumably after the Bed Manager had given the All Clear. There was always something nice and calming about presenting oneself for an Operation early in the morning.

The new Team for that day would have just come on duty and would efficiently slot you into a cubicle and draw the curtains round, ready for the succession of medics who would see you during the morning……the Registrar, maybe the Consultant….definitely the Anaesthetist. Soon they would move you on to a small ward (always containing 4 beds with 2 near the panoramic window…..). You had always requested your favourite window bed and, depending on departing patients and luck, four times out of six you got lucky. Over fifty per cent ‘success’ rate at this level wasn’t bad…..Then you would settle into your familiar surroundings, unload your books and newspapers, check the water jug was topped up and to hand and then settled down to wait…wait for the ‘inherited’ lunch or evening meal bequeathed to you by a now ‘departed’ previous patient…a stranger who had ceded you his taste buds but who was now gone forever. Later, you would wait for the first uneasy night and eventually wake to that strangely comforting orange and pink dawn outside into which the first flight of the day would fly.

If you are lucky, during your enforced hospital stays, you will be surrounded by interesting people. On my ward during my stays, I had enjoyed the company of a lively 90 year old ex-RAF pilot who regaled me with tales of flying Lancasters over burning Berlin during World War 2…..another cheerful Charlie kept me spell bound as he told what it was like to fight the EOKA terrorist gunmen in the streets of Nicosia in the late 1950s. There was also smooth, unruffled David who was struggling to recover after his operation for prostate cancer but could still recount the funny side of working as an Inspector for Her Majesty’s Income Tax….he was a living, albeit prone, monument to a cautionary tale -if you don’t pay your taxes, it could come back to bite you in most unpleasant ways.

Then there was Bob, the active market trader, who was married to a lively Irish lady…..turned out they had got married in the same Catholic Church in London as I had. At least they were still married all those years later which was more than I was. Maybe they were luckier and didn’t have the same tipsy Irish priest as my wife and I had. And then there was smiling Fred who really did have something to smile about. One day whilst we watched the News in the TV room, he suddenly revealed that his son had won the National Lottery a couple of years back. I looked at him and tried to assess whether he was kidding but I don’t think he was. I asked whether he was joking. His smile broadened. Yes, his son had suddenly found Camelot and had whistled all the way to the Bank with a few Million. He was working at the time on the production line at Vauxhall but had soon given that up, of course. He and his wife had soon exchanged their cramped semi-detached for a large house in the country, his modest Vauxhall saloon for a sleek Porsche and now he spent his Saturdays in a Director’s Box he had bought at one of the leading Premier League Football Clubs.

Hoping to wipe the smile off his self-satisfied face, I asked Fred whether he thought his son was now Happy or Bored with Life………he continued to smile and said fifteen million bought a lot of pleasurable moments. Looking at the contentment on his face, one could well believe it…..he had probably benefited indirectly as well from Camelot’s largesse.

Fred smiled at the memory and added cheerfully ‘They still played the Lottery each week despite their Big Win and his wife still liked to play her Bingo…….why, even last week her numbers had come up and she had scooped two thousand pounds!’

His throw away comment only confirmed what I had long suspected. When the tablespoons of luck were dispensed amongst the population some benefited more than others. It was having hearty chats like this that kept you smiling and boosted the morale whilst the NHS staff worked their magic with their endless rounds of duties, tubes and medications.

The outlook from my bedside panoramic window gave a fascinating view not only of the flights taking off into the open, clear skies from the distant airport but gave also a particularly nice view of the nearby red-brick Parking block. Or the Hospital ‘Bank’ as I came to call it once I had heard what the patient’s relatives had to pay per hour there whilst they were visiting their nearest and dearest. There was something vaguely unethical in the way Hospitals were allowed to sub-contract Hospital Parking to third party companies for a split of the overall ‘take’. It made one wonder why, in a post-operational delusion, why the Hospital authorities hadn’t gone the whole hog and opened a real live Casino in a nearby block to relieve the loose change and notes off the unsuspecting visitors as well.

It was therapeutic to gaze out every day on the distant, neat green fields and hear the distant hum of the speeding traffic on the nearby motorway. The visitors who arrived every evening to see their loved ones temporarily laid up in bed, always complained about the cost of the Parking. To extract such large amounts of coins from the relatives of the sick (and dying) always seemed to me to be particularly callous. Surely the small comfort of the visits should be unsullied by extracting vast monetary compensation from the suffering relatives?

In a recent NHS Report in England, it was disclosed that over a dozen Hospital Trusts in the country were earning more than 3 million a year from their Parking charges. The Hospitals do not charge for Parking in Scotland and Wales so why do they charge in England? Greed, I suppose, and the eternal almost desperate need to always ‘protect the bottom line’. But surely making large amounts of money from the relatives of patients who were unfortunately detained for treatment in the Hospital is morally and ethically indefensible?

The smiling lady arrives with the usual breakfast which I had ordered on the form the day before. It is not a bad system and seemed to work OK, but it inevitably meant you had no control over the first day’s meals when you first arrive and a successor patient inherits your choice from you the day after you are thankfully discharged. I had found the food generally very enjoyable – especially the more ‘exotic’ offerings one could choose from the List like Chilli Con Carne and moderately spicy Chicken Curry. The breakfasts on the List tended to be ‘light’, the lunches tastily and daringly ‘heavier’ whilst the dinners culminated in almost a full evening meal (say soup followed by casserole then dessert and cheese and biscuits). The only problem was that it was served at 5.30pm nearly on the dot every day which tended to put one’s internal body clock out of sync. If the Dinner lady was in a good mood, one could sometimes inveigle an extra course from the trolly if one of the patients had been discharged early or passed away. During my time on the ward, I had the occasional extra Chilli Con Carne left behind by a discharged patient but, happily, was never presented with one left by a permanently discharged patient…..I fear that might have proved to be indigestible.

The kitchens in this Hospital were particularly well run which is not always the case. The tone was set by the ubiquitous List that mysteriously appeared on your table every morning for completion. After a while it became a highlight of the day. What to choose from the List and what to avoid. The Chefs had put a rudimentary dietary diabetic guide alongside the dishes in the shape of Smiley faces. The more Smiley faces a dish had, the better for diabetics it was. Every few days, a Form would arrive from the Chief Chef asking for ‘feedback’ on what the patient thought of the dishes. It felt like one was taking part in a market survey and I always tried to help by complimenting the Chef on his choices, say his particular good chicken Casserole for Saturday night whilst putting in a faint criticism of the batter on the Friday fish and chips.

I was always conscious not to put down too much criticism because you had to give your bed and ward at the top of the form and I was always fearful of injuring the Chef’s gourmet feelings. I did not want to risk having my food being tampered with out of some kind of wayward culinary revenge. ‘What happened to Ken?’, ‘Dunno, he was recovering from his Op OK but was never the same after he complained to the Chef about the Thursday night Bangers and Mash.’

It was always the first 24 hours of the hospital stay which created slight problems. Apart from the anxieties over new medications and the planning for the Op, there was always the strange ‘inherited’ food selections of the previous patient of the bed I now occupied. If one was hungry, the choices had the tendency to take the edge off any hunger. Tucking into, say, a perfectly beautiful Fish and Chips ordered by a stranger 24 hours before always seemed rather sad. Had the patient who ordered it been in a celebratory mood after surviving yet another happy pain-free day after his Operation? Or, more depressingly, had it been ordered and then the patient removed….either to another ward or to perhaps another more heavenly place? (No pun intended) On my visits, it was always the first 24 hours that could be really the testing time…….

Sometimes, it was not only because of the previously ordered meals. The Operation or ‘procedure’ for which I had been inducted into the Hospital in the first place would often be scheduled for early on in my stay at this medical ‘hotel’. So it was the usual ‘Nil By Mouth’ sign up above the bed and prepare for the tensions and hopefully not too much drama……I always found the experience of having seen a few episodes of the TV medical dramas like ‘Casualty’ and ‘Holby City’ prepared me for the environment on the ward….and in the Operating Theatre.

I have always wondered why they call it the Operating ‘theatre’. Is it because it is the stage where the star actor the Consultant,dressed in his dramatic gown and gloves, steps forward to ‘perform’ his art upon the prone body on the ‘medical’ stage. But why exactly ‘theatre’ when invariably the only appreciative audience as such is the attendant Anaesthetist and the Consultant’s own Registrar?

In this Hospital for my 6 Ops, the Anaesthetists were always thankfully on the ball – giving just the right dosage having been forewarned of the unfortunate episode that incurred in 1983 at The Royal Ear, Nose and Throat in London when an incorrect dosage was applied. (For further details of what occurred on that traumatic occasion, the reader is referred to ‘Distant Voices, Altered States’, Chapter 9 in ‘Wicked to Fly’). But this time, the Anaesthetic ‘teams’ were marvellous. In one particular Op, an impressive multi-national team of 4 prepared me with an epidural before delivering me on the gurney through those ominous swing doors into the flood lit ‘stage’.

In that particular Op, I had chosen to be fully conscious throughout the entire ‘procedure’ but happily felt nothing below the waist. The view had been discreetly blocked off as well so all one could do was study the various nodding heads of masked surgeons as they beavered away below my waist.

In another Op, early on in the endless treatment, they just wheeled me onto the ‘stage’ on the gurney and injected the anaesthetic straight into my urethra. After a while everything became ‘comfortably numb’ and one could watch the overhead TV screen which was showing the Registrar conducting his ‘explorations’. In fact, after a while, the plot on the screen began to look the same so I asked the team if they would mind choosing another Channel.

The best part of having the Operations or ‘procedures’ was the inevitable stay in Recovery afterwards. Whether long or short, it was always enjoyable being monitored by a highly efficient team of international nurses. The ‘procedure’ after the administering of a general anaesthetic was the longest, as was the stay in Recovery afterwards. At least 3 hours had passed as I slowly came round and gradually gained some strength. The nurses were always so attentive administering to their charges as a procession of prone patients on gurneys were wheeled into their presence. Eventually, I would get to know them all in Recovery. I practiced the Tagalog language with the Asian ladies and learnt that most of them had worked over in the UK for over ten years and now had families as well. The quickest way to recover from an Op was to imbibe endless cups of tea and eventually consume a tasty sandwich . As this was usually the first real food or drink one had consumed in the last 18 hours, it was always life-enhancingly welcome.

The stays on the ward after the Ops were always strictly monitored and controlled. There was always a fine balance between holding you in for another couple of days to monitor progress or deciding the Op had worked and the patient could be released so as to free up another bed to satisfy the demands from the Bed Manager.

There were always days of protracted tension as the decision was being made between the Consultant, his Registrar and the rest of the medical ‘team’. And, if at last, after several days the word came down that one was to be ‘released’ in the morning there was always the endless flow of documents that the bureaucracy produced to be signed and dated. But at least you now felt relief – no more painful canulas inserted in the veins of your left hand, no more intrusive catheters residing and chafing in your urethra…….

And then there came the fateful morning when you awoke, as usual, early to watch the first flights take off into the dawn. After breakfast, you signed the last forms and completed the last tests and then packed your book and oddments into your overnight bag. Then you made the emotional farewells to your fellow bed sufferers and the medical team on the ward and took the long walk away from the drawn curtains round the bed and down the corridor to the lift. At this point, you always felt slightly tender but at least 100% better than when you had arrived at the crack of dawn all those days before.

Now, as you carried your overnight bag towards the lift, you tried to forget your arrival all those days before and what had happened since, just tried to concentrate on leaving this place with the warm embrace and face what was waiting outside. The final trip down in the large lift to the ground floor was always one of mixed emotions. Glad to be leaving this tight, institutional embrace yet wary of the post-operational days ahead.

The hurrying figures down on the ground floor were always a surprise after the well-ordered calm of the oasis of peace you had left upstairs.

Somehow it was comforting to know that the world had not stopped whilst you had occupied that bed upstairs for all those days, Life had carried on. You would smile and exchange nods as you saw a familiar face in a distinctive white coat or the familiar face of the lunch lady taking a well-earned break.

Clutching your bag close, you walk slowly and tentatively out into the fresh air and breathe deep to get the taste and smell of the Hospital out of your lungs….and system.

You looked up