Simply Sue: All Present And Incorrect
You can usually tell when people have been on a course, says Sue Papworth. They tell you earnestly stuff you've known for years.
I never got the hang of being politically correct, and it’s got me in no end of trouble with serious folk. You’re for some reason supposed to be terribly sober and earnest if you’re incapacitated, and I find that quite impossible.
After I had the hospital’s Sand Dancing Team performing down my throat complete with camera crew, I was left communicating by hand-signals and fairly illegible purple scribble for a while. And I went to a meeting, speechless.
It was clearly going to be a good do when the woman in charge hurtled up twittering about this wonderful Disability Awareness Course she’d been on which had made her incredibly sensitive about how disabilities were totally irrelevant and you shouldn’t even mention them. (She was the sort of woman who talked in italics.) Trouble is, she was spouting this straight over my head to the chap pushing me, who was the taxi-driver, and totally bewildered. He scarpered.
(You can usually tell when people have been on a course. They tell you earnestly stuff you’ve known for years. That, or something so patently barmy you’re looking for Jeremy Beadle.)
The sensitive lady then shoved me into a room occupied by a woman with a labrador, and vanished. She’d set up a meeting between a dumb woman and a blind one, and hadn’t thought to mention it to either of us…
My best Harpo Marx impressions and purple ink were no earthly use, I was allergic to her guide dog, and I sat wheezing at one side of the room whilst she sat at the other wondering why she’d apparently been dumped in a cupboard with an indecent phonecall.
Our meeting was not a great success, and we added our own purple italics on the PC viewpoint. You’ll have spotted why - unless you’ve been on a course.
The other thing is, when you crack a joke you tend to get this blank look, and people scribble notes on clipboards and sidle out of the room, muttering.
One time I got abandoned in the corner of a hospital waiting room out of reach even of the 1957 Concrete Mixer’s Gazette. I was by the patients’ suggestion box, so I inserted the suggestion that all consultants should do one ward round and one outpatients’ clinic a month minus their trousers, as this would cause them to empathise with the poor soul who has to discuss matters of great importance with them whilst horizontal and half naked, and also cheer up the nurses.
Nobody ever replied. Maybe they thought it was just a joke. But like Terry Pratchett says, just because something’s funny, it doesn’t mean it isn’t serious.
