Open Writing

The bang was heard all over the hospital. I’ll never forget it. I was on C ward of Leicester General Infirmary at the time. It was August; I remember that because I should have been going on tour to Australia with the cricket team. The Wexley First Eleven; we were reckoned to be the best amateur team in the Midlands. Blow me if we weren’t invited to play in Perth for three weeks and I was going to miss it.

It was either 1984 or 85, I’m not sure which. I was absolutely gutted.

The hospital was in uproar, quite a few of the staff panicked. Would they have to evacuate the patients? Was it the boiler house or the laundry? There were gas appliances in the kitchens – maybe one had exploded. In the end a patient had caused it. He could have gone to prison if he hadn’t been so badly injured. George was his name. George Minton I think it was.

Oh, by the way, my name is Eric, Eric Berryman.

I opened the bowling and batted number three. I could have turned professional: two County sides were trying to sign me up..

I was slowing down a bit back then, I have to admit. It was the fags; I’d been trying to stop smoking for almost three years.

Mind you, I did get down to five a day. Capstan Full Strength they were. At one time I’d be on to my second packet by the time I went to the pub. Bit of a ritual that, going to the Fox and Nightgown after the match. Wound me down nicely that did, a pint of Newcastle Brown and a fag with the lads. Lovely pub The Fox as well. Low beamed ceilings and mellow oak furniture –real comfy like.

Fred was a super landlord; I loved my nights in there. The problem was I loved my cricket more, so the cigarettes were going to have to go.

There were no such things as nicotine patches back then. It was all about steely determination - well will power anyway.

As I say, I had got down to five fags a day but still struggled with the long run up when I was bowling. I had to stop smoking altogether if I was to keep playing.

The ad’ in the Leicester Bugle was impressive. ‘I helped Anthony Hopkins, Richard Branson and thousands of others to stop smoking,' it proclaimed. ‘And I can help you.’ ‘Money back if you’re not satisfied etc etc.’ If he could help Branson he must be good, I thought. I liked Virgin Atlantic and once went to the States on a Boeing 747 they had leased from Argentina Airlines. That would be in ’84.

I phoned the number in the ad’ and made an appointment. I expected to be hypnotised but they said in my case that wouldn’t be necessary. It was more a psychotherapy approach to stiffen up my resolve to quit. There would be five sessions, if all went well. At ninety-five pounds per session, plus the guy’s book and four audiotapes it didn’t come cheap. My self-control was being tested to the limit. Seven hundred pounds it cost me. All right for Anthony Hopkins, I thought. To be fair it did the trick. After a few early wobbles, I was cured. I was a really smug so and so. There’s nothing worse than someone who’s given up fags. They bore the backside off you.

I was all ready for the trip of a lifetime when I found this lump in my flannels. A bloody hernia. I could not believe it.

“It needs doing as soon as possible son,” the consultant said. “You can forget cricket for a bit.”

So that’s how I found myself on the sixth floor of Leicester General, C ward. Fifteen of us down each side with identical pink floral curtains round the beds. The man with the pale green complexion on my left looked as if he might expire any minute. ‘No chance of conversation there,’ I thought.
I didn’t much like the look of the guy on my right either, but at least he was sitting up reading a paper. He was really old – at least in his sixties I reckoned.

I remember asking his name. Hello, I’m Eric - Eric Berryman,’ I said.
“George”, the ‘other bed’ said. “It’s cold in here at night,” George said, and then went back to his paper.

“What you in for then George?” I persisted. It must have been my anxiety; I’m not usually this nosey.

“Emphysema. You’ll hear me coughing most of the night. I just can’t stop once I start. Missis brought me some of them Potter’s sugar free cough pastilles. Could have been Smarties for the difference they made.”

‘Charming,’ I thought. A poor nights sleep: that’s all I need.

It soon became clear. George was and still is, a smoker.

He was sliding off to the toilets for a crafty smoke and this with lungs that were in shreds. If ever I saw a nicotine addict it was George.

‘Nothing to do with me,’ I thought. It’s up to the staff to know what’s going on. I was amazed that no one could smell the tobacco; I was sickened by it. What with the coughing and the reek of smoke, it was purgatory. I hadn’t slept for two nights and my op’ was the following day.

George was going down hill fast and it was no surprise to me when the nurses brought oxygen to ease his breathing. The oxygen cylinder was just to his right hand, on the bedside locker. A tube from the cylinder connected to a facemask perched on George’s forehead for him to pull down over his mouth when he was struggling to breathe.

There was a steady hiss coming from George's bed as the life-giving oxygen poured into his mask.

‘Bliss,’ I thought, ‘I can sleep.’

And then unbelievingly, George pulled out a Park Drive and flicked his lighter.

There was a few seconds silence and then an almighty explosion, which shattered some of the windows. I was thrown out of bed and into the nurses’ station at the end of the ward.

George’s bed collapsed; his sheets and pillows on fire.

As you would suppose, I never went back to smoking.

My hernia ‘op was postponed by a week and I was able to get back to the cricket and The Fox and Nightgown.

I heard that George never went back to smoking either.